Broncho Billy Anderson

Anderson was born Maxwell Henry Aronson in Little Rock, Arkansas, the sixth child of Henry and Esther (Ash) Aronson, both natives of New York. His younger sister was actress and singer Leona Anderson. His family was Jewish, his father's parents having emigrated to the United States from Prussia, and his mother's from the Russian Empire. His family moved to Pine Bluff, Arkansas when he was three years old. He lived in Pine Bluff until he was 8, when he moved with his family to St. Louis, Missouri. 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. In 1903, he met Edwin S. Porter, who hired him as an actor and occasional script collaborator.

For the last years of his life, Anderson lived at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California. In his later years, his legs were paralyzed as the result of a back injury that occurred while he was making a film.

He died of a heart attack in 1971 at the age of 90, at a Braewood sanitarium in South Pasadena, California.

He was cremated, his ashes previously went placed at the Chapel of the Pines vault that was not accessible to the public.