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A popular Broadway actor who scored in his first show The Passing Show of 1921 (1920) and later starred in such productions as Czarina, White Cargo, and The Bat, Harry Bannister was nevertheless more famous as the husband of stage and screen star Ann Harding. They co-starred in Her Private Affair (1929), an early talkie from Pathé (later RKO) and a major success, and The Girl of the Golden West (1930), but unlike Harding, Bannister did not find favor with moviegoers, who apparently agreed with columnist Adela Rogers St. Johns' rather unkind description of him as "a handsome, vain actor of the old-fashioned scenery-chewing school." Suffering the indignity of being banned from the set of his wife's East Lynne (1931), Bannister returned to New York, where he produced the Broadway play Late One Evening (1933). He later managed the American Music Hall Theatre Group, whose famous revival production of the old barnstormer The Drunkard would run for more than a year.