- She joined the NAACP in 1934, having been disgusted by what she considered racism in her movie Prestige (1931). In 1935, she attended a benefit in support of the group's anti-lynching bill.
- [May 4, 1933] Was saved, along with traveling companions Alexander Kirkland and Marie Lombard, from shark-infested waters off the coast of Havana, Cuba, when their sailboat overturned. They were accompanied by a sailor, Magin Alvarez Prieda, who did not survive the incident.
- Her vehicle The Life of Vergie Winters (1934), in which she portrayed an unwed woman who carries on an illicit love affair with a married man and bears his child, was banned in Chicago and placed on the Catholic Church's list of films to be boycotted.
- Was the first major female star to join the Screen Actors Guild and later held the rank of second Vice-President.
- Was estranged from her only child, Jane, for several years before her death in 1981.
- Her father was Brig. Gen. George Grant Gatley, commander of the U.S. Rainbow Division in France during World War I. Mother Bessie Crabbe Gatley's father was also a military man. She had an older sister named Edith.
- Unlike most film stars at that time, Ann dressed down off-camera and had little concern for her outward appearance. She often attended premieres without makeup or fancy hair-dos. Gossip maven Adela Rogers St. Johns claimed that Ann was "...the worst dressed woman I ever saw in my life!".
- Was once a Dictaphone operator for the welfare division of Metropolitan Life.
- Met actor Harry Bannister while she at Detroit's Garrick Theatre in 1926 as its lead actress, producer, casting director and business manager. She hired him as a last-minute replacement leading man and they married later that year (daughter Jane was born in 1928). Their divorce in 1932 led to a year-and-a-half-long custody battle.
- Attended and graduated from East Orange High School in East Orange, New Jersey.
- Following her death, she was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills) in Los Angeles, California, in the Court of Remembrance.
- Her daughter Jane was born in 1928 and died in December 2005. She had another daughter, Grace Kaye Janssen, with her second husband.
- She was awarded two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, for motion pictures at 6201 Hollywood Boulevard and for television at 6850 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California.
- Was the leading lady of Robert Montgomery in two films - When Ladies Meet (1933) and Biography of a Bachelor Girl (1935).
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