Ann-Margret Olsson (born April 28, 1941), credited as Ann-Margret, is a Swedish-American actress, singer, and dancer with a career spanning seven decades. Initially gaining notoriety in 1961 as a singer with a sultry, vibrant contralto voice,[1][2] she quickly rose to Hollywood stardom.
Her many screen roles include Pocketful of Miracles (1961), State Fair (1962), Bye Bye Birdie (1963), Viva Las Vegas (1964), Carnal Knowledge (1971), The Train Robbers (1973), Tommy (1975), The Return of the Soldier (1982), 52 Pick-Up (1986), Newsies (1992), Grumpy Old Men (1993), Any Given Sunday (1999), Taxi (2004), and Going in Style (2017).
Her accolades include five Golden Globe Awards and an Emmy Award in addition to two Academy Award nominations and two Grammy nominations. She released Born to be Wild, her first classic-rock album, in April 2023.[3]
Ann-Margret Olsson was born on April 28, 1941 in Valsjöbyn, Krokom Municipality, Jämtland County, Sweden, to the daughter of Anna Regina (née Aronsson) and Carl Gustav Olsson, a native of Örnsköldsvik. She described Valsjöbyn as a small town of "lumberjacks and farmers high up near the Arctic Circle".[4] Her father had emigrated to the United States, but returned to Sweden in 1937 and married Anna Aronsson. After Ann-Margret's birth, Gustav wanted to emigrate again with the family.
After World War II, his wife hesitated and Gustav emigrated alone, but was joined by his wife and daughter in 1946.[5] In 1949, Ann-Margret became a naturalized American citizen.[6]
Ann-Margret took her first dance lessons at the Marjorie Young School of Dance, showing natural ability from the start, easily mimicking all the steps. Her parents were supportive, and her mother made all of her costumes by hand. To support the family, Ann-Margret's mother became a funeral parlor receptionist[citation needed] after her husband suffered a severe injury on his job.[7] While a teenager, Ann-Margret appeared on the Morris B. Sachs Amateur Hour, Don McNeill's Breakfast Club, and Ted Mack's Amateur Hour. She continued to star in theater as she attended New Trier High School in Winnetka, Chicago, Illinois, a same school that she had graduated with two fellow movie stars Charlton Heston and Rock Hudson.
She was part of a group known as the Suttletones, which went to the Dunes hotel and casino in Las Vegas, which also headlined Tony Bennett and Al Hirt at the time. George Burns heard of her performance, and she auditioned for his annual holiday show, for which she and Burns performed a softshoe routine. Variety proclaimed that "George Burns has a gold mine in Ann-Margret... she has a definite style of her own, which can easily guide her to star status".[8]
Ann-Margret is a stepmother of three children of her husband Roger Smith, an actor, who later became her manager. She and Smith were married for 50 years from May 8, 1967 until his death on June 4, 2017. Before this, she dated Eddie Fisher[9] and was romantically linked to Elvis Presley when they co-starred in the film Viva Las Vegas in 1964.[10]
A keen motorcyclist, Ann-Margret rode a 500 cc Triumph T100C Tiger in The Swinger (1966) and used the same model, fitted with a nonstandard electric starter, in her stage show and her TV specials. 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 in rural Minnesota in 2000.[11]
In a 2012 interview, she stated, "All my life I've had this feeling, deep, deep, deep inside of me ...my faith and my feelings. ...I mean you go outside and you see flowers. You see the trees. You see all your loved ones, you see ...and then you think of Who created it all." She described her relationship with God, and with Jesus Christ as "something which is really important to me. If I thought that I would never see my mother and father again, I couldn't make it. I could not go a step further."[12]
On May 14, 2022, she was awarded an honorary doctoral degree in Humane Letters by the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.[13]
Ann-Margret began recording for RCA Victor in 1961, first recording "Lost Love". Her debut album And Here She Is ... Ann-Margret was recorded in Hollywood, arranged and conducted by Marty Paich. Later albums were produced in Nashville with Chet Atkins on guitar, the Jordanaires (Elvis Presley's backup singers), and the Anita Kerr Singers, with liner notes by mentor George Burns. She had a sexy, throaty contralto singing voice,[14] and RCA Victor 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 a minor success with "I Just Don't Understand" (from her second LP), which entered the Billboard Top 40 in August 1961 and stayed six weeks, peaking at number 17;[15] the song was later performed by the Beatles in 1963. In 1962, Ann-Margret was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best New Artist.[16]
Her only charting album was Beauty and the Beard (1964), on which she was accompanied by trumpeter Al Hirt. Other career highlights included appearing on The Jack Benny Program in 1961 and singing the Bachelor in Paradise theme at the 34th Academy Awards in 1962. Her contract with RCA Victor ended in 1966. In 1963, Life Magazine mentioned that her recordings had sold in excess of half a million units.[17]
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, she had hits on the dance charts, the most successful being 1979's "Love Rush", which peaked at number eight on the disco/dance charts.[18] In 2001, working with Art Greenhaw, she recorded the album God Is Love: The Gospel Sessions. The album went on to earn a Grammy nomination (forty years after her first) and also a Dove Award nomination for gospel album of the year. Her album Ann-Margret's Christmas Carol Collection, also produced and arranged by Greenhaw, was recorded in 2004.[19] 2011 saw the release of "God is Love: The Gospel Sessions 2"
In 2023, she went back into the studio to record a full-length album of new recordings for Cleopatra Records. "Born to Be Wild" featured 13 covers including "Splish Splash", "Earth Angel", "Son of A Preacher Man", and a new take on "Teach Me Tonight" featuring Pat Boone. Other guest performers included Pete Townshend, The Fuzztones, Paul Shaffer, The Oak Ridge Boys, and more. The album was released on April 14, 2023 on vinyl, compact disc, and on all streaming platforms.
In 1961, Ann-Margret filmed a screen test at 20th Century Fox and was signed to a seven-year contract.[20] She made her film debut in a loan-out to United Artists in Frank Capra's Pocketful of Miracles with Bette Davis; it is a remake of Capra's own Lady for a Day (1933). For her performance Ann-Margret was awarded her first Golden Globe, for New Actress of the Year alongside Jane Fonda and Christine Kaufmann.[21]
Then came a 1962 remake of Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical State Fair, in which she played the "bad girl" role of Emily opposite Bobby Darin and Pat Boone. She had previously tested for the part of Margie, the "good girl", but the studio bosses deemed her too seductive for that role.[22] In her autobiography, Ann-Margret wrote that the two roles seemed to represent the two sides of her real-life personality. She was shy and reserved offstage but wildly exuberant and sensuous onstage, transforming "from Little Miss Lollipop to Sexpot-Banshee", in her words.[23] In a 2021 retrospective of Ann-Margret's career for FilmInk, Stephen Vagg argued "she wasn't that well cast as a bad girl. Because she had so much energy and shape, producers thought she was; but she was more effective in parts closer to what she was in real life: an energetic good girl with a twinkle in the eye."[24]
Her performance as the all-American teenager Kim in Bye Bye Birdie (1963) made her a major star. Its premiere at Radio City Music Hall, 16 years after her first visit to the famed theater, was the highest first-week grossing film to date at the Music Hall. 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."[25][26] Her performance earned her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress. She was then asked to sing "Baby Won't You Please Come Home" at President John F. Kennedy's private birthday party at the Waldorf Astoria New York, one year after Marilyn Monroe's famous "Happy Birthday to You".[27] A few months later, Ann-Margret voiced an animated version of herself, named "Ann-Margrock", on the television series The Flintstones.[28] She sang the ballad "The Littlest Lamb" as a lullaby as well as the rocker, "Ain't Gonna Be a Fool".
Ann-Margret met Elvis Presley on the MGM soundstage when the two filmed Viva Las Vegas (1964). Filmink argued "She had so much energy and pep that she had blown her previous three male co-stars off screen, but Elvis could match her. He was the best on-screen partner she ever had, and she was his."[24] She recorded three duets with Presley for the film: "The Lady Loves Me", "You're the Boss", and "Today, Tomorrow, and Forever"; only "The Lady Loves Me" made it into the final film and none of them 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.[29] Choreographer David Winters was hired because Ann-Margret was his dance student and recommended him for the job.[30] It was Winters' first choreographer credit on film. He would go on to become a common collaborator for both Presley and Ann-Margret.
Bye Bye Birdie and Viva Las Vegas had established Ann-Margret as Hollywood's biggest new star, but a string of box-office flops followed until October 1965. The first, Kitten with a Whip, saw Ann-Margret give a "balls-to-the-wall performance" as a juvenile delinquent who entraps a politician.[24] She followed up with The Pleasure Seekers, yet another musical romantic comedy. Ann-Margret was excited to do her next project, Bus Riley's Back in Town; its writer William Inge had penned her favorite film Splendor in the Grass (1961). However Inge was so infuriated by the result that he took his name off the credits of Bus Riley. She then featured in Once a Thief, a crime film intended to be a star-making vehicle for French actor Alain Delon in the United States.[24] The actress learned decades later that during this time she had been offered the title role in Cat Ballou, a critically acclaimed box-office smash that the American Film Institute ranked as the tenth greatest Western film of all time. Her agent had turned down the role without telling her.[31][32] Ann-Margret broke her flop streak with The Cincinnati Kid, in which she played a femme fatale opposite Steve McQueen. It was her first hit since Viva Las Vegas, but her role was not a large one.[24]
While she was working on Once a Thief, she met her 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 was met with resistance from her parents.[33]
Ann-Margret starred in four films in 1966. Made in Paris, the first of these, was a fashion-focused romantic comedy in which Ann-Margret received top billing. FilmInk attributes its box office failure to "dodgy writing and uninspiring male leads".[24] A month after its release, she teamed up with entertainers Chuck Day and Mickey Jones for a USO tour to entertain U.S. servicemen in South Vietnam and other parts of South-East Asia. A moderately successful remake of the classic John Ford Western Stagecoach followed, with Ann-Margret essaying the role of a prostitute. She then starred in the "hopelessly confused" sex comedy The Swinger which, in Stephen Vagg's words, "came close to killing her Hollywood career more than any other [film] by virtue of its sheer incompetence."[24] Ann-Margret ended 1966 by featuring in the hit Dean Martin–starrer Murderers' Row, a spy spoof. Looking at Ann-Margret's uneven draw at the box office, Vagg points out that after Viva Las Vegas, her roles in hit films "had been parts any girl could have played" but the star vehicles that were tailored for her were all flops.[24]
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 that May) 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 celebrate backstage. According to Ann-Margret's autobiography, Presley sent her a guitar-shaped floral arrangement for each of her Vegas openings.[34] After the first Vegas run ended, she followed with a CBS television special The Ann-Margret Show, produced and directed by David Winters on December 1, 1968, with guest-stars Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Danny Thomas, and Carol Burnett. Then, she returned to Saigon as part of Hope's Christmas show. A second CBS television special followed, Ann-Margret: From Hollywood With Love, produced, directed and choreographed by David Winters, with guest-stars Dean Martin and Lucille Ball. David Winters and the show were nominated for a Primetime Emmy in Outstanding Choreography.[35]
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In 1970, she returned to films with R. P. M., where she starred alongside Anthony Quinn, and C.C. and Company with Joe Namath as a biker and her portraying a fashion journalist.
In 1971, she starred in Carnal Knowledge by director Mike Nichols, playing the girlfriend of a neglectful, arguably abusive character played by Jack Nicholson. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. Filmink argued this amounted to a comeback "in a way...because she never really regained her former status as an above-the-title star of feature films – her follow-up movies were 'girl' parts... the seventies were tough times for female stars who were not Barbra Streisand."[24]
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 20 pounds (134 to 115) eating unsweetened citrus.[36]
On Sunday, September 10, 1972, while performing at Lake Tahoe, she fell 22 feet (6.7 meters) from an elevated platform to the stage and suffered injuries including a broken left arm, cheekbone, and jawbone. 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 returned to the stage almost back to normal.[37]
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, for which she received her second Oscar nomination, this time for the Academy Award for Best Actress. In addition, she has been nominated for ten Golden Globe Awards, winning five, including her Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical for Tommy. On August 17, 1977, Ann-Margret and Roger Smith traveled to Memphis to attend Elvis Presley's funeral.[38] Three months later, she hosted Memories of Elvis featuring abridged versions of the Elvis 1968 TV and Aloha from Hawaii specials.[39]
Other notable films she co-starred in during the late 1970s include Joseph Andrews (1977), The Last Remake of Beau Geste (1977), the horror/suspense thriller Magic (1978) with Anthony Hopkins. She had a cameo in The Cheap Detective (1978).
Ann-Margret was an early choice of Allan Carr's to play the role of Sandy Dumbrowski in the 1978 film Grease. At 37 years old, she was ultimately determined to be too old to convincingly play the role of a high school student. Thirty year-old Olivia Newton-John got the role instead, and the character was renamed "Sandy Olsson" (after Ann-Margret's birth surname) in her honor.[40]
For her contributions to the film industry, Ann-Margret received a