Clara Lou “Ann” Sheridan was born in Dallas County, Texas on February 21, 1915 to George Washington Sheridan and Lula Stewart Warren Sheridan. A biography says that her family moved to Denton when she was 3 years old. Her father’s profession was listed as a machinist in a garage in the 1920 federal census and the family consisted of George W., Lula, their five children and George’s parents. George is said to have been a grand nephew of Union General Philip Henry Sheridan. Such a connection is not easy to verify using online genealogy records, although they may indeed be related in this way. Clara Lou was the youngest of the couple’s five children who lived to be adults.
Clara Lou attended elementary, junior high and high school in Denton and graduated from Denton High School around 1929. While in high school, she had been involved in the production of the senior play and was elected class president. She attended North Texas State Teacher’s College (now University of North Texas) where she was working toward becoming a teacher. She was a basketball athlete; she sang with the college stage band and participated in local arts productions. Various accounts of her initial start in films say that she had been entered in a Paramount Pictures beauty contest, without her knowledge, by one of her sisters. She won the contest, entitling her to a small part in a film called “Search for Beauty,” released in 1934. She signed her first studio contract at around age 18.
From that time on, she stayed in Hollywood, appearing in just under 100 productions in film and television. Her first appearances were credited under her real name, Clara Lou Sheridan, but in 1934 a studio executive suggested adopting Ann as her first name, which she did. Her first two years with the studio, she was given small parts in more than two dozen films. She was often uncredited in these early projects. Soon better roles opened up for her. Ordinarily, she was not cast as a leading lady but was well received on screen. Some of her productions are noted below.
She played the sister of an inmate in 1937’s “San Quentin” opposite Humphrey Bogart and Pat O’Brien, The film was a prison drama with O’Brien playing a prison captain, Bogart playing an inmate and Ann playing the sister of Bogart’s character. One account says that she and Bogart sometimes jokingly referred to themselves as brother and sister after this film. Later in the year, Ann appeared in another prison drama called “Alcatraz.”
In the 1938 release, “Angels with Dirty Faces” she played Laury Ferguson, opposite James Cagney, once again with Pat O’Brien and Humphrey Bogart. In this film, a priest (O’Brien) tries to prevent gangsters from corrupting a group of youths, cast as the Dead End Kids. The “Dead End Kids” were a number of young male actors from New York who appeared in several movies together in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
In the 1940 release, “They Drive By Night” Ann appeared as Cassie Hartley, the love interest of George Raft’s character in a cast that included headliners Humphrey Bogart, Ida Lupino, Gale Page and Alan Hale, Sr., who incidentally is the father of Alan Hale, Jr. (“The Skipper,” on Gilligan’s Island).
She appeared opposite Ronald Reagan and Robert Cummings in the 1942 release “Kings Row.” The melodramatic film was set in the 1890s and later years about the life of a family. One of her films, “Kings Row” was nominated for three Academy Awards. Despite its somewhat depressing though realistic plot it was a box office success and led to a television series of the same name which had a run of seven episodes in one season.
In “Shine on Harvest Moon” Ann played Nora Bayes, a Broadway star. The film was released in 1944. She had a top billing alongside Dennis Morgan, Jack Carson and Irene Manning. Dennis Morgan’s character, Jack Norworth and Bayes (cowriters of the title song), a married couple who each had long careers on Broadway. “Shine on Harvest Moon” was Bayes’ and Norworth’s signature song in real life. In this film, Ann appeared to sing in several of the 20 songs. The film’s plot revolves around the relationship between the two and the rivalry for Bayes’ affections (and the song) by another individual. Although Ann was considered to be a singer, but according to one account, her singing voice is dubbed in this production by another person, Lynn Martin. However, there are 9 or 10 films in which Ann is supposed to have sung. Also, somewhat unusual is the fact that this film is mostly in black and white until the finale which is in color.
Ann played the title role in the 1947 production, “Nora Prentice” in which her character is a nightclub singer who beguiles a married doctor, played by veteran actor Kent Smith. His wife is played by Rosemary DeCamp.
Ann appeared with Carey Grant in the 1949 comedy “I Was a Male War Bride” in which she played a Navy lieutenant married to Grant’s character. Grant dresses as a female Army nurse to get aboard a ship returning them to the United States.
Her career continued to be a steady stream of projects until around 1957, but she worked until her death in 1967. She appeared in two episodes of the long running soap opera “Another World.” Her last credit was appearing in most of the 27 episodes of “Pistols ‘n’ Petticoats,” a western drama set in Colorado in 1871. Ann referred to it as being similar to “Bonanza” and “the Big Valley.” During the filming, she was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, to which she ultimately succumbed. She died at her home in the San Fernando Valley of California. She would have been 52 in one more month. The day she died, January 21, 1967, the next to last episode of the series aired. Without Ann to appear, the series was then canceled.
She was married first to Edward Norris, later to George Brent and finally to Scott McKay, all of whom were actors (all are listed here with their screen names). She had met Scott McKay while exploring opportunities to act on stage. She and McKay began a romance and were married less than one year when she died. Ann had no children by any of her marriages. As she wished, her body was cremated and initially interred at another location before being reinterred on what would have been her 90th birthday at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles.
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