Ann Harding (born Dorothy Walton Gatley; August 7, 1902 – September 1, 1981) was an American theatre, motion picture, radio, and television actress.

Having gained her initial acting experience in school drama classes, she decided on a career as an actress and moved across the Hudson River to New York City.

After initial work as a script reader, Harding began to win roles on Broadway and in small semiprofessional theaters, primarily in Pennsylvania.

After marrying conductor Werner Janssen in 1937, she worked only sporadically, with three notable roles coming in Eyes in the Night (1942), It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947) and The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956).

She worked occasionally in television between 1955 and 1965, and she appeared in two plays in the early 1960s, returning to the stage after an absence of over 30 years, including the lead in The Corn is Green in 1964 at the Studio Theater in Buffalo, New York.

[3] Three years later she found her "home theater" in Rose Valley, Pennsylvania, after being directed by Hedgerow Theatre founder Jasper Deeter[4] in The Master Builder.

First under contract to Pathé, which was subsequently absorbed by RKO Pictures, Harding was promoted as the studio's 'answer' to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's superstar Norma Shearer.

[8] She co-starred with Ronald Colman, Laurence Olivier, Myrna Loy, Herbert Marshall, Leslie Howard, Richard Dix, and Gary Cooper, and was often on loan to other studios, such as MGM and Paramount.

Harding's performances were often heralded by the critics, who cited her diction and stage experience as assets to the then-new medium of "talking pictures."

Following lukewarm responses by both critics and the public to several of her later 1930s films,[contradictory] she eventually stopped making movies after she married the conductor Werner Janssen in 1937.