[7] His family was Jewish, his father's parents having emigrated to the United States from Prussia, and his mother's from the Russian Empire.

When he was 18, he moved to New York City and appeared in vaudeville and the theater, supplementing his income as a photographer's model and newspaper vendor.

He played a wide variety of characters, but he gained enormous popularity from a series of 148 silent Western shorts and was the first film cowboy star, "Broncho Billy.

He then made a brief comeback as a producer with a series of shorts with Stan Laurel, including his first work with Oliver Hardy in A Lucky Dog (filmed in 1919, released in 1921).

For the last years of his life, Anderson lived at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California.

[18] In 1918, Albert Levering drew a celebrity comic, Broncho Billy, based on the Hollywood western star.

For the past nine years, Niles (now part of Fremont), California, site of the western Essanay Studios, has held an annual "Broncho Billy Silent Film Festival.

The marker was donated by the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation in cooperation with the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum and Little Rock's First United Methodist Church.