
Ann-Margret dances with Elvis Presley
Ann-Margret is 81 years old today.
Ann-Margret Olsson is a Swedish-American actress, singer and dancer whose professional name is Ann-Margret. She is best known for her roles in Bye Bye Birdie (1963), Viva Las Vegas (1964), The Cincinnati Kid (1965), Carnal Knowledge (1971) and Tommy (1975). Her singing career spans five decades, like her acting career. She started in 1961.
Initially, she was billed as a female version of Elvis Presley. She had a minor hit in 1961 and a charting album in 1964, and scored a disco hit in 1979. In 2001, she recorded a critically acclaimed gospel album, and an album of Christmas songs from 2004 continues to be available.
And Here She Is: Ann-Margret, her debut album, was produced in Nashville with Chet Atkins on guitar, the Jordanaires (Elvis Presley's backup singers) and the Anita Kerr Singers. The liner notes were by her mentor, George Burns.
She had a sexy, throaty singing voice, and RCA attempted to capitalize on the “female Elvis” comparison by having her record a version of "Heartbreak Hotel" and other songs stylistically similar to Presley's.
She scored the minor hit, "I Just Don't Understand," from her second album, which entered the Billboard Top 40 in the third week of August, 1961 and stayed six weeks. It peaked at #17. In 1961, she filmed a screen test at 20th Century Fox and was signed to a seven-year contract.
Ann-Margret made her film debut in a loan-out to United Artists in Pocketful of Miracles with Bette Davis. It was a remake of the 1933 movie, Lady for a Day. Both versions were directed by Frank Capra. Then came a 1962 remake of Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical, State Fair, playing the "bad girl" role of Emily opposite Bobby Darin and Pat Boone.
She had tested for the part of Margy, the "good girl," but she seemed too seductive to the studio bosses, who decided on the switch. The two roles mimicked her real-life personality — shy and reserved offstage, but wildly exuberant and sensuous onstage.
As she summed up in her autobiography, she would easily transform herself from "Little Miss Lollipop to Sexpot-Banshee" once she stepped on stage and the music began. Her next starring role, as the all-American teenager, Kim, from Sweet Apple, Ohio, in Bye Bye Birdie (1963) made her a major star.
The premiere at Radio City Music Hall, 16 years after her first visit to the famed theater, was a smash hit. It was the highest first-week grossing film to date at that venue. Life magazine put her on the cover for the second time and announced that the "torrid dancing almost replaces the central heating in the theater.”
She was asked to sing "Baby, Won't You Please Come Home" at President John F. Kennedy's private birthday party at the Waldorf-Astoria — one year after Marilyn Monroe's famous, "Happy Birthday."
Ann-Margret met Elvis Presley on the MGM soundstage when the two filmed Viva Las Vegas in 1964. She recorded three duets with Presley for the film, "The Lady Loves Me," "You're The Boss" and a duet version with Presley of his song, "Today, Tomorrow, and Forever."
Only "The Lady Loves Me" made it into the final film and none of which were commercially released until years after Presley's death, due to concerns by Colonel Tom Parker that Ann-Margret's presence threatened to overshadow Elvis. Ann-Margret introduced Presley to David Winters, whom she recommended as a choreographer for their film.
Viva Las Vegas was Winters' first feature film choreography job and was his first of four movies with Presley and his first of five films, including Kitten with a Whip (1964), Bus Riley's Back in Town (1965), Made in Paris (1966) and The Swinger (1966). He also did two TV specials with Ann-Margret.
While working on the film, Once a Thief (1965), she met future husband, Roger Smith, who, after his successful run on the private-eye television series, 77 Sunset Strip, was performing a live club show at the Hungry i on a bill with Bill Cosby and Don Adams. That meeting began their courtship, which met with resistance from her parents.
Ann-Margret starred in The Cincinnati Kid in 1965 opposite Steve McQueen. She also co-starred along with friend, Dean Martin, in the spy spoof, Murderers' Row (1966). Finally, she starred as the lead in The Swinger in 1966 with Tony Franciosa.
Her red hair-color (she is a "natural brunette") was the idea of Sydney Guilaroff, a hairdresser who changed the hair-color of other famous actresses such as Lucille Ball. She was offered the title role in Cat Ballou (1965), but her manager turned it down without telling her.
In March, 1966, Ann-Margret and entertainers Chuck Day and Mickey Jones teamed up for a USO tour to entertain U.S. servicemen in remote parts of Vietnam and other parts of Southeast Asia. She still has great affection for the veterans and refers to them as "my gentlemen."
During a lull in her film career in July, 1967, Ann-Margret gave her first live performance in Las Vegas, with her husband Roger Smith (whom she had married in 1967) taking over as her manager after that engagement.
Elvis Presley and his entourage came to see her during the show's five-week run and to celebrate backstage. From thereon until his death, Presley sent her a guitar-shaped floral arrangement for each of her Vegas openings.
After the first Vegas run ended, she followed up with a CBS television special, "The Ann-Margret Show," produced and directed by David Winters on December 1, 1968. The guests were Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Danny Thomas and Carol Burnett.
In 1971, she starred in Mike Nichols' Carnal Knowledge, playing the over-loving girlfriend of a viciously abusive Jack Nicholson and garnering a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
On the set of The Train Robbers in Durango, Mexico, in June, 1972, she told Nancy Anderson of Copley News Service that she had been on the "grapefruit diet" and had lost almost twenty pounds (134 to 115) eating unsweetened citrus.
On Sunday, September 10, 1972, while performing at Lake Tahoe, Nevada, she fell 22 feet from an elevated platform to the stage and suffered injuries including a broken left arm, cheekbone and jawbone.
Husband Roger Smith flew a stolen plane from Burbank, California, to Lake Tahoe in order to get his wife to the surgeons at the medical center at UCLA for treatment. She required meticulous facial reconstructive surgery that required wiring her mouth shut and putting her on a liquid diet. Unable to work for ten weeks, she ultimately returned to the stage almost (some would say miraculously) back to normal.
Throughout the 1970s, Ann-Margret balanced her live musical performances with a string of dramatic film roles that played against her glamorous image.
In 1973, she starred with John Wayne in The Train Robbers. Then came the musical, Tommy, in 1975, directed by Ken Russell. For that film, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress.
On August 17, 1977, Ann-Margret and Roger Smith traveled to Memphis to attend Elvis Presley's funeral. Three months later, she hosted Memories Of Elvis featuring abridged versions of the Elvis 1968 TV and Aloha from Hawaii specials.
In 1982, Ann-Margret co-starred with Walter Matthau and Dinah Manoff in the film version of Neil Simon's play, I Ought to Be in Pictures. That same year, she appeared with a six-year-old Angelina Jolie in Lookin' to Get Out, playing Jolie's mother.
She has been married to Roger Smith since May 8, 1967. Prior to this she was romantically linked to Elvis Presley during the filming of Viva Las Vegas. She rode a 500 cc Triumph T100C Tiger motorcycle in The Swinger (1966) and used the same model, fitted with a non-standard electric starter, in her stage show and her TV specials.
A keen motorcyclist, she was featured in Triumph Motorcycles' official advertisements in the 1960s. She suffered three broken ribs and a fractured shoulder when she was thrown off a motorcycle she was riding in rural Minnesota in 2000.
In the 2005 CBS miniseries, Elvis, she is portrayed by Rose McGowan, in which her affair with Elvis Presley (played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is depicted during the filming of Viva Las Vegas.
Here is Ann-Margret in the classic “beans and chocolate” scene from Ken Russell’s 1975 film, Tommy