Anita Frances Garvin was born in the Hell's Kitchen area of New York, the youngest of 3 children to Ann Frances Donovan, who was half Irish and half Blackfoot Indian, and Edward Garvin, an engineer who was killed in an accident when Anita was 6. By the age of 12 she was 5' 6", enabling her to pass for 16 and get a job in a Mack Sennett bathing beauty stage show. Later she became a Ziegfeld Girl in the Follies but, having always been interested in films, left when the touring company of Sally arrived in California in 1924 to try to find work in films. Her good looks and ability soon got her work in comedies produced by the Christie Film Company and Educational Pictures. In 1925 she was hired by producer Joe Rock as leading lady for an up-and-coming comic actor named Stan Laurel, who the following year asked her to appear in Raggedy Rose (1926), which he was directing at the Roach Studios. Stan admired her dedication to comedy and introduced her to Hal Roach, who used her in the films of Charley Chase, Our Gang, and the comedy duo of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, with whom she made 11 films, including From From Soup to Nuts (1928), Sailors, Beware! (1927), the lost Hats Off (1927), Blotto (1930), and Be Big! (1931), playing Stan's wife in the latter two. She married band leader Red Stanley in 1930, and during the mid '30s they owned The Momtmarte, a restaurant in downtown Hollywood which attracted the top stars. They closed it in the late '30s, and she went into partial retirement, preferring home life and raising their two children, Anita Patricia and Edward. After appearing with The Three Stooges in their 1940 film Cookoo Cavaliers (1940), she retired permanently. She spent her last years in the Motion Picture Country Home in California and is buried in the San Fernando Mission Cemetery.