To those who knew her she was full of working-class warmth: the shy, softly spoken mother who instilled respect in her children; the gifted sportswoman who excelled at hockey until the war and marriage curtailed sporting success.
By the time she died, at 54, she was an alcoholic, a woman who had spiralled into the dark world of dependency simply, it would seem, because she was George Best's mother.
The story of Ann Best's tragic descent is little known. But next week a BBC drama will attempt to chart the rapid decline of a mother, staunchly teetotal until she was 44, who was to die prematurely from heart-related problems believed to have been triggered by her alcoholism.
Alcohol abuse campaigners have enthusiastically praised the film, hoping that the poignant portrayal of Mrs Best will now serve to widen the public's perception of alcoholism among women, by highlighting the predicament of "invisible" women - who first start to drink at home, away from public view, until alcoholism creeps up insidiously on them.
Best - His Mother's Son, to be screened next Sunday, focuses on the relationship between Best - who was himself to die an alcoholic in 2005 - and his mother between 1966, when the 19-year-old Best's fame had already led to him being dubbed the "fifth Beatle", and January 1974, when he turned his back on Manchester United and the highest levels of football at the age of 27.
The programme has been shown to leading alcohol abuse organisations and is being supported by the BBC's mental health initiative, Headroom.
Carys Davis, from Alcohol Concern, said the drama should hit home hard, especially at a time of recession, which had led to increased consumption of cheap supermarket alcohol at home.
"Women drinking at home and the effect on their families doesn't really get talked about," she said. "These are the hidden women. The public's perception of alcohol abuse is fuelled by the public's fear of alcohol-related crime. So they see the 18-year-old girls outside pubs throwing up. What they don't see is the long-term effects of alcoholism, the chronic liver disease, the effects on the families, because it is hidden."
Based on research, though fictionalised, the drama charts the different journeys taken by mother and son as Best relishes superstardom and all its extravagant trappings and his family struggle to adjust in the small, terraced house in Belfast where he grew up.
For his mother, with three children aged under five, the intense public scrutiny is too much. From being avowedly teetotal she begins drinking, first at home, then out regularly with friends. "In this case, it is all the more shocking," said Davis, "because it is someone who had been teetotal. And, if you can see how it can happen to someone like her, perhaps women watching it, who come home from a day at work and pour themselves a couple of glasses of wine and think nothing of it, maybe it will make them have a little think.
"With George Best, people could say, 'Well, it's up to him how much he drank, and if he had health problems that's his own fault, and it didn't really affect anyone and he died for it, and paid the price.' Whereas with his mother it's very different. Because you see how it affects her husband, and her children, and so on."
The drama was written by Bafta-nominated Northern Irish dramatist Terry Cafolla and stars Michelle Fairley, who appeared in the films The Others and Hideous Kinky, as Ann Best, Lorcan Cranitch, from Cracker, as her husband Dickie, and Tom Payne, from the BBC's Waterloo Road, as George Best.
The Best family declined to contribute to the making of the programme.
"I think this is the story of a family and how they coped with the decline of their mother," said Fairley. "This is the tale of how Ann Best coped or, rather, didn't cope with everything that was happening in her life and her son's life.
"Ann's alcoholism was a by-product. She was a very private woman, very shy, and she just couldn't stand the press scrutiny. Drinking was her way of numbing herself and of dealing with all the pressures. It's terribly tragic - two wonderful people damaged by alcohol within the one family." Most interesting was not that she drank, but why she drank, said Fairley, "what forces her to go there".
Drink changed her personality. "She was not a nice woman when she had alcohol inside her. Sober, she was a very shy, softly spoken woman who brought her children up to have manners, respect and a good education. She was an intelligent woman. But alcohol changed her personality - and not for the better."
Set against the backdrop of the Troubles, the drama examines the pressures the family found themselves under. "What we were trying to do was chart Ann Best's decline, just as her son's meteoric rise was happening," said Cafolla. "The story is really of how Ann came to drink. Ann had three kids under the age of five, the press were camping on the doorstep and everybody was looking at what George was doing. That must have started to eat away at Ann's identity. The press really latched on to George - he was called the fifth Beatle. The family back in Belfast were living in a glass bowl of publicity that they'd never asked for.
"The family weren't really aware of George's problems. It was only much later that people realised George had a drinking problem. He was young and people thought he was living an idyllic lifestyle. In a way, he was the first superstar footballer - the first Beckham. Now, people like that are given guidance. But, for George and for Ann, this was treacherous and uncharted territory."
Best, whose drinking curtailed his glittering career and who fought a public battle against alcoholism, died aged 59 from a kidney infection, a side-effect of the immunosuppressive drugs he was required to take after a liver transplant.