Bronco Billy Anderson was born with the name Max Aronson in Little Rock, Arkansas on March 21, 1880 (some sources say Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and his date of birth is also uncertain, possibly on March 10th), and he died in Los Angeles, California on January 20, 1971. He had changed his name to Gilbert Anderson before adopting "Bronco Billy" to personify his western movie character.

He was an actor_director_writer_producer, father of the movie cowboy, and the first Western star. Raised in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, Anderson had worked as a photographer's model and newspaper vendor before drifting into acting. He performed in vaudeville before joining forces with Edwin S. Porter as an actor and occasional script collaborator. In Porter's startling early film The Great Train Robbery of 1903, Anderson played several roles and afterward began to write, direct, and act in his own Westerns. In 1907, he and George K. Spoor founded Essanay Studios, destined be one of the predominant early studios. Anderson gained enormous popularity in a series of hundreds of Western shorts, playing the first real cowboy hero, "Broncho Billy."

Writing and directing most of the films, Anderson also found time to direct a series of "Alkali Ike" comedy Westerns starring Augustus Carney. In 1916, Anderson sold his ownership in Essanay and retired from acting. He returned New York and bought the Longacre Theatre and produced plays there, though without permanent success. He then made a brief comeback as a producer with a series of shorts with Stan Laurel. But conflicts with the studio (Metro) led him retire again after 1920. He continued to produce films as owner of Progressive Pictures into the 1950's. In his seventies, he came out of retirement for a cameo role in The Bounty Killer (1965).

He was presented with an Academy Honorary Award in 1957 as a "motion picture pioneer, for his contributions to the development of motion pictures as entertainment."