The Full Biography
Ann-Margret. Singer. Dancer. Actress. The Swedish girl who made the early sixties move.
This is her story.
The image most people still carry is a redhead in motion beside Elvis Presley, Las Vegas light on both of them, the number so bright it still looks wet. The year was 1964. The picture was Viva Las Vegas. What the still cannot show is Valsjöbyn, a child on a ship to America, a near-fatal fall from a Lake Tahoe stage, and a performer who spent the next fifty years proving she was more than the kinetic girl in the still.
She was born Ann-Margret Olsson on April 28, 1941, in Stockholm, and spent her first years in Valsjöbyn, in Jämtland. Her father, Gustav, went ahead to the United States; in 1946 she and her mother, Anna, crossed and settled near Chicago, in Wilmette and Fox Lake, Illinois. Swedish was the first language. English was a job. She trained. She sang. She danced. Northwestern was brief. George Burns put her on a stage in Las Vegas and treated the kid as a professional. Hollywood found her the way it found people then: a nightclub, a test, a contract. Pocketful of Miracles (1961), for Frank Capra, was the debut — a supporting smile in a Damon Runyon fable. State Fair (1962) put her opposite Pat Boone as the girl who makes a Midwestern musical tilt. Bye Bye Birdie (1963) made her Kim McAfee, a small-town teenager in a picture about a draft notice and a scream. She was twenty-two. She was already a climate.
Then Elvis. Viva Las Vegas (1964) is the clip. Rusty Martin, a swimming instructor; the title number; a chemistry that was not a publicist’s invention. They were two young animals who could dance. The town called her the female Elvis and thought that was a complete sentence. She kept working. Kitten with a Whip (1964) is a cult bad-girl picture, Jody Dvorak, a hitchhiker the Production Code would have had trouble with a decade earlier. The Pleasure Seekers (1964) put her in Madrid with Carol Lynley and Pamela Tiffin. Bus Riley’s Back in Town (1965). Once a Thief (1965) opposite Alain Delon. The Cincinnati Kid (1965) put her opposite Steve McQueen in a poker picture that used the look and then discovered she could be still. Made in Paris (1966). The Swinger (1966). Stagecoach (1966), a remake, as Dallas. Murderers’ Row (1966) with Dean Martin. The Tiger and the Pussycat (1967). The sixties hired the motion. The motion was real. It was not the whole woman.
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The turn is 1971, and then 1972. Mike Nichols cast her in Carnal Knowledge opposite Jack Nicholson as Bobbie, a woman who is used and then left. The Academy nominated her for Best Supporting Actress. The bombshell had a second register. In September 1972, performing at the Lake Tahoe hotel, she fell more than twenty-two feet from a stage. Facial bones broke. She came back in weeks, which is not a metaphor. In 1975 Ken Russell’s Tommy brought a second Oscar nomination, this time for Best Actress, as Nora Walker in The Who’s rock opera — baked beans, a mother, a performance that is also a dare. Five Golden Globes, across the years. She had already, by then, married the actor Roger Smith, in 1967. He managed the career and stayed until his death in 2017. The marriage was the private climate. The nominations were the public correction.
She kept taking the jobs that used the second register. Joseph Andrews (1977) for Tony Richardson. The Last Remake of Beau Geste (1977) for Marty Feldman. Magic (1978) opposite Anthony Hopkins, a ventriloquist thriller that asked her to be frightened and then kind. The Cheap Detective (1978) for Neil Simon. Middle Age Crazy (1980). I Ought to Be in Pictures (1982) for Herbert Ross, a Neil Simon father-daughter picture. Television movies that were actually work: Who Will Love My Children? (1983), a dying-mother picture that brought another Globe; A Streetcar Named Desire (1984) as Blanche DuBois, a part the town had not filed under her name. 52 Pick-Up (1986) for John Frankenheimer, from Elmore Leonard. A Tiger’s Tale (1987). She never became only the Elvis number. She also never pretended the Elvis number was nothing. Both sentences are the life.
The stage act stayed the other instrument. She played Las Vegas and the big rooms through the 1970s and 1980s with dancers, a band, and a standard of sweat the stills do not show. Roger Smith booked the nights and protected the calendar. She recorded. She sat for the honors a sixties face is asked to collect and then went back to rehearsal. Newsies (1992) put her in a Disney musical as a newspaper owner’s wife. The 1990s would open the second civilian audience. The act had already kept the instrument warm.
Six things most people never knew
- The first language was Swedish. The American sixties star learned English as a child immigrant, not as a studio invention.
- George Burns was an early door. The nightclub years were work, not a montage.
- The Tahoe fall was twenty-two feet. She returned to performing almost immediately. The face in the pictures after 1972 is a repaired face that kept working.
- Two Oscar nominations, two different categories. Carnal Knowledge supporting, Tommy lead. The town had to change the file.
- She has five Golden Globes. The list is longer than the Elvis clip.
- She is still here. Living, working when she chooses, the last person in the room who was in the room with Elvis and still treats it as a job, not a relic.
Roger meant everything to me.Ann-Margret, on the marriage that lasted from 1967 to 2017
She has written about Elvis, about the fall, about the immigrant child. She has not made a career of the writing. Friends from the sets describe a professional who is warmer than the still and harder on a rehearsal than the still suggests. The public woman is motion. The private woman was a fifty-year marriage and a repaired face that kept the call time.
The later years
Home, after the nominations, was a long marriage and a long stage act. Roger Smith managed the calendar, the Vegas rooms, the television movies, the decisions about which pictures still deserved the repaired face. They had no children of their own; he had three from a previous marriage, and she took the household as a job. She played Las Vegas as if it were still a parish and not a museum of 1964. She played the talk shows. She played the White House when a state dinner asked for a number — the 1975 NARA still is a working night, not a relic. She did not become a waxwork of the Elvis clip. She became a woman who could still enter a room.
The 1990s found her for people who had missed the sixties. Grumpy Old Men (1993) and Grumpier Old Men (1995), opposite Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, let a new audience see the warmth without the old noise. Ariel Truax, a widow who can still stop a room. Any Given Sunday (1999), for Oliver Stone, put her in a football picture as a team owner. The Road to El Dorado (2000) used the voice in animation. Television kept her in the trade: miniseries, guest chairs, the kind of night a working actress of her age still treats as a mark. In 2010 she won an Emmy for a guest role on Law & Order: SVU — Rita Lichman, a woman with a past, hitting a mark on a cop show. It was not a lifetime apology. It was a call time. She took Lucky (2017) as a small independent opposite Harry Dean Stanton. She took Queen Bees (2021), a retirement-home comedy, in her eighties. In 2023 she released a gospel record, Born to Be Wild, and was nominated for a Grammy. The voice is not the 1964 instrument. It is still a job she shows up for.
Roger Smith died on June 4, 2017, of complications from myasthenia gravis, an illness he had carried for decades. Fifty years. She has said the marriage is what she is most proud of. She stayed in the work. She stayed in the honors circuit a woman of her age is asked to walk, and she walked it without becoming only a clip. She has lived, in the years since, as a widow who still takes a mark: festival introductions, the occasional picture, a gospel session, a public life that is appearances and a refusal to sit still as a museum of 1964. Sweden still claims her. Illinois still claims her. Las Vegas still runs the number. She is in her eighties. There is no death date on this life. There is a present tense: a performer who can still be recognized from a doorway, and who earned the quiet by surviving the fall and the typecasting both.
The house, through the long marriage, was Southern California and the road. Smith’s illness made the calendar a medical schedule as well as a booking sheet. She did not retire him and she did not retire the act. After 2017 the house was quieter. The work was not. Queen Bees asked her to be funny among other women of a certain age. The Grammy nomination for the gospel record asked the music branch to look at a woman the movie branch had typed in 1964 and retaken in 1971. She still treats a rehearsal as a job. That is the chapter the clip cannot show.
What those decades actually are is a long insistence on being a worker: Vegas, television movies, two Oscar nominations already in the drawer, an Emmy on a cop show, a comedy with Matthau, a gospel record, a husband who managed and then died, a repaired face that kept the mark. A generation saw the Elvis number and thought that was the whole woman. The Nichols picture, the rock opera, the Tahoe story, and the fifty years after are the rest. The still will last. The face that came back to work is the part the still cannot show.
The house through the long marriage was Southern California and the road. Smith’s myasthenia gravis made the calendar a medical schedule as well as a booking sheet. She did not retire him and she did not retire the act. After June 2017 the house was quieter. The work was not. Festival introductions. Queen Bees among other women of a certain age. A gospel session that asked the music branch to look again. She has said the marriage is what she is most proud of. She has not made a career of the saying. Valsjöbyn is still the first room. Illinois is still in the file. Las Vegas still runs the clip. She is still here, in her eighties, a worker who can be recognized from a doorway. That is the chapter. It does not have a death date. It has a present tense.
After the spotlight moved
It moved to the next redhead and then came back every time a clip show needed 1964. Viva Las Vegas is the climate. Carnal Knowledge and Tommy are the correction. The Tahoe fall is the fact the stills skip. The Emmy is a working night. Roger is the house. She is still here. That is the remainder.
She came out of Valsjöbyn and Illinois, took George Burns’s stage, danced beside Elvis, fell twenty-two feet, took two Oscar nominations, married once for fifty years, and still takes a mark when the mark is a mark. If you only remember the Las Vegas number, you have the still. If you remember the fall, the Nichols picture, the fifty-year marriage, and the repaired face that came back, you have her.
Sweden still claims the child. Illinois still claims the girl who learned English as a job. Las Vegas still runs the clip. The Emmy is a working night. The gospel record is a working night. Roger is the house. She is still here, in her eighties, a performer who can be recognized from a doorway and who treats the doorway as a mark. The still will last. The face that came back is the part the still cannot show. There is no death date. There is a present tense. That is the remainder. Valsjöbyn to Wilmette to a Tahoe stage to a cop-show mark to a gospel session: one worker, one repaired face, one fifty-year marriage, and a doorway she can still stop. The clip is 1964. The life is longer. Two nominations, five Globes, one Emmy, one fall, one husband, one repaired face, and a doorway she can still stop. Sweden to Illinois to Tahoe to now. The motion was never the whole woman. She is still proving it. The Elvis number is a clip. The repaired face that came back to work is the life. Roger is the house. She is still in the doorway.
Portrait: Studio publicity still · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons