[6] She attended 64th Street Grammar School and Mount Vernon Junior High and first stepped on a sound stage at the age of 17 at MGM Studios to be screen tested by Edgar Selwyn.

Ann spent time among the more famous Hollywood kids of the day, such as Lana Turner, Judy Garland, Freddie Bartholomew, and Deanna Durbin.

[6] Berniece's MGM test did not work out, prompting her to get her teeth capped[6] and acquire theatre training at the Max Reinhardt workshop[4] on Sunset Boulevard.

[4] Savage instead made a screen test with Columbia Pictures—after playing Lorna in a Reinhardt acting showcase of Odet's Golden Boy"[6]—and was offered a contract.

"[4] She joined Joan Davis and Jinx Falkenburg in Two Senoritas from Chicago (1943) and starred (as a brunette) in the first of several outings with Tom Neal in Klondike Kate (1943).

[4] At this time, during World War II, Savage was also a popular pin-up model, including posing for a centerfold in Esquire shot by George Hurrell.

The two leads underwent role reversal, with Savage's Vera blackmailing Neal's Al, in a style described by her manager Kent Adamson as "vicious and predatory... very sexually aggressive".

After Detour, although Savage starred in a half-dozen more films during the later 1940s—including Scared Stiff (1945), The Spider (1945), The Dark Horse (1946), and Satan's Cradle (1949; a rare western)—her most prolific years were behind her.

Gaining cult status[5] and garnering critical acclaim as "arguably film noir's greatest low-budget feature", this exposure earned Savage a new, younger following.

She continued, however, to act on the big screen as well, including in Allan Dwan's Woman They Almost Lynched (1953) with Audrey Totter, Joan Leslie and John Lund.

[4] As offers for additional movie and television roles began to dwindle, Savage started appearing in commercials and industrial films before essentially withdrawing from acting by the mid 1950s.

Remaining blonde through her eighties and continuing to attend film festivals and galas, Savage had a series of strokes and became a resident of the Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital in California.