Biography
With Academy Award nominations for her performances as an actress along with her pursuits as a vocalist and dancer, Ann-Margret maintained a presence in entertainment for more than six decades while securing multiple periods of success on music charts as a recording performer. She first rose to prominence in motion pictures during the initial years of the 1960s through appearances in musical features alongside Elvis Presley, Bobby Darin, and Bobby Rydell. Her debut album, And Here She Is…Ann-Margret, along with her initial supporting part in the film Pocketful of Miracles, both reached audiences in 1961. Before the close of that year she achieved her sole entry in the Top 20 with the track “I Just Don’t Understand,” drawn from the subsequent release titled On the Way Up. Ann-Margret’s pivotal screen opportunity arrived in 1962 when she portrayed Emily in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s State Fair. The following picture, Bye Bye Birdie from 1963, brought her a Golden Globe nomination in the Best Actress category and paved the way for an extended run as a leading performer in numerous large-scale crime dramas and comedies shared with Steve McQueen, Alain Delon, and Dean Martin. Although her output of recordings diminished following the 1969 collaboration with Lee Hazlewood on The Cowboy and the Lady, she earned two Academy Award acting nominations during the 1970s: one for supporting work in Carnal Knowledge of 1971 and another for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her portrayal of Nora in the 1975 rock musical Tommy. Further recognition for her acting arrived in the 1980s, highlighted by an Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe victory for her interpretation of Blanche Dubois in the 1984 ABC presentation of A Streetcar Named Desire. In addition to roles in theatrical films such as the musical Newsies and the comedy Grumpy Old Men together with its sequel Grumpier Old Men, she received her fourth and fifth Emmy nominations during the 1990s prior to securing a statuette for a guest turn on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit in 2010. During this span she issued a pair of gospel albums, and upon entering her eighties in the early 2020s Ann-Margret sustained her acting commitments while completing a fresh long-player, the 2023 covers collection Born to Be Wild, whose participants encompassed Mickey Gilley, Pete Townshend, and Bye Bye Birdie co-star Bobby Rydell.
Swedish-born Ann-Margret Olsson entered the world as the sole offspring of Gustav Olsson and Anna (Aronsson) Olsson. Her father, an electrician who had spent many years residing in the United States, relocated back to America when she was one year old, securing employment in the Chicago suburbs and accumulating resources to bring his spouse and daughter across. In the interim Ann-Margret began to exhibit an affinity for singing and dancing. She and her mother reached the United States in 1946, establishing residence in Fox Lake, Illinois. There she received instruction in singing, dancing, and piano during childhood and attained naturalized American citizenship in 1949. In the middle of 1957, while participating in a television talent contest in Chicago, she attracted the notice of Ted Mack, presenter of the national program The Original Amateur Hour, who arranged her appearance on the broadcast. Later that same year she performed for a month with the Danny Ferguson band at the Muehlebach Hotel in Kansas City. Her initial recording session took place in January 1959 as an amateur endeavor consisting of a production staged by the Tri-Ship Club at New Trier High School and issued in limited fashion under the designation Lagniappe ’59 Presents “Be My Guest,” which featured a rendition of Irving Berlin’s “Heat Wave.”
Ann-Margret completed high school in the first portion of 1959 and enrolled at Northwestern University later that year, concentrating on speech with a secondary focus in drama. She and two fellow students collaborated with a Northwestern graduate to establish the ensemble known as the Suttletones, which performed at venues throughout Chicago on weekends. The next recording connected with her was likewise an amateur school project, Among Friends — Waa-Mu Show of 1960, an item sought by collectors despite her appearance solely as a dancer without featured billing. Upon concluding her freshman year in June 1960 she and the Suttletones traveled to Las Vegas for a club booking that did not materialize, after which they proceeded to Los Angeles where engagements were obtained. Rather than resuming her sophomore year she withdrew from university to advance her professional path while her classmates returned to campus. She secured her first recording agreement with Warner Bros. Records, which issued two singles and the album It’s the Most Happy Sound credited to Ann-Margret & the Ja-Da Quartet, although the releases failed to achieve commercial traction. While appearing in a lounge at the Dunes Hotel in Las Vegas she auditioned for comedian George Burns, who incorporated her into his Christmas program at the Sahara. The resulting visibility led to a recording contract with RCA Victor and a motion-picture agreement with 20th Century-Fox, which immediately arranged a loan-out to Paramount for her debut feature, Pocketful of Miracles, director Frank Capra’s remake of his 1934 production Lady for a Day starring Bette Davis.
Ann-Margret’s first RCA single, “Lost Love,” failed to register on charts. She next released “I Just Don’t Understand,” a blues-inflected rocking selection co-produced by Chet Atkins and incorporating Elvis Presley’s backup vocalists the Jordanaires, which entered the Billboard Hot 100 in July 1961 and advanced into the Top 20. Her inaugural RCA album, And Here She Is…Ann-Margret, appeared in October. A third single, “It Do Me So Good,” registered only a minimal chart entry in November. That same month Pocketful of Miracles reached theaters to favorable commentary, and she received the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year — Female. RCA directed her toward an assortment of pop, country, and rock material for the subsequent long-player On the Way Up. Issued in March 1962, the collection contained her interpretations of contrasting pieces including the pop composition “Moon River” and Presley’s blues-rock staple “Heartbreak Hotel,” together with the expansive ballad “What Am I Supposed to Do,” which maintained a five-week presence near the lower reaches of the Hot 100 and registered on easy-listening surveys. Also in March 1962 came her second motion picture, a remake of the musical State Fair that likewise featured Pat Boone and Bobby Darin. She had originally tested for the principal part of Margy; studio executives reassigned her to the glamorous, Broadway-oriented Emily, thereby enabling an energized reading of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Isn’t It Kinda Fun?” and a duet with Boone on the newly composed Rodgers ballad “Willing and Eager.” The soundtrack album attained the Top 20.
On April 9, 1962, Ann-Margret performed on the Academy Awards broadcast to deliver one of the year’s nominated songs, the title theme from Bachelor in Paradise. RCA sought to capitalize on her memorable appearance by returning her to the studio and labeling the resulting album The Vivacious One, yet the release did not succeed commercially. Greater fortune arrived on the screen, where she was selected for the cinematic adaptation of the stage musical Bye Bye Birdie, a satirical portrayal of Elvis Presley, in which she assumed the role of a Midwestern teenager granted the opportunity to bestow “one last kiss” upon a Presley-like teen idol prior to his induction into the Army. Her part received substantial expansion from its Broadway origins, as she opened and closed the film singing a newly written title song, performed another solo on “How Lovely to Be a Woman,” and joined additional cast members on six further numbers. Bye Bye Birdie proved successful upon its April 1963 premiere, and its soundtrack album climbed to number two while remaining on charts for more than twelve months. She earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress — Musical or Comedy.
Later in 1963 RCA issued the Ann-Margret solo album Bachelors’ Paradise in a delayed attempt to exploit her Academy Awards exposure from a year and a half earlier. Despite her cinematic achievements the album did not chart. Concurrently she attained a measure of lasting recognition by supplying the voice of Ann-Margrock for the popular prime-time animated series The Flintstones. In January 1964 RCA returned her to the Top 100 on album charts by pairing her with trumpeter Al Hirt on the long-player Beauty and the Beard. Following her work with an Elvis Presley imitator in Bye Bye Birdie she next joined the actual performer, co-starring in the Presley film Viva Las Vegas, which premiered in May 1964. She also contributed vocals to several numbers, delivering solos on Leiber & Stoller’s “Appreciation” and “My Rival” while sharing duets with Presley on “C’mon Everybody,” “The Lady Loves Me,” and the title song composed by Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman. An additional duet with Presley, “You’re the Boss,” was omitted from the completed picture. She had committed studio versions of it, “The Lady Loves Me,” and “Today, Tomorrow and Forever” (a Presley solo in the film) as duets with Presley, yet those recordings remained unreleased at the time, and no soundtrack album materialized, only an EP of Presley solo selections. Consequently purchasers were unable to obtain copies of several of her most notable musical performances.
RCA (which also held Elvis Presley under contract) instead paired her with vocalist John Gary on the duet album David Merrick Presents Hits from His Broadway Shows. Released in October 1964, the set remained on charts for four weeks. After three consecutive movie musicals her screen career encountered a misstep with the unfavorably received melodrama Kitten with a Whip, also issued in October 1964. Two months later she returned to theaters and record outlets with The Pleasure Seekers, a musical remake of Three Coins in the Fountain accompanied by a soundtrack album on which she appeared.
The issuance of three films within the single calendar year 1964 signaled Ann-Margret’s primary emphasis on her motion-picture work, although she remained willing to sing within her pictures and satisfy the conditions of her recording agreement. RCA elected not to produce an album for her in 1965, limiting activity to a single single while she appeared in three additional non-musical features: Bus Riley’s Back in Town in March, Once a Thief in August, and The Cincinnati Kid in October. The subsequent year yielded four film releases. She starred in the comedy Made in Paris in February 1966 and took a supporting part in the all-star remake of Stagecoach issued in May. She performed vocally in The Swinger in November, prompting the release of her final RCA long-player, Songs from “The Swinger” (And Other Swingin’ Songs), and appeared opposite Dean Martin in his second Matt Helm spy parody Murderers’ Row in December.
As with certain other entertainers, Ann-Margret encountered the cultural shifts of the 1960s, and by the conclusion of 1966 her career trajectory had begun to wane. Still only twenty-five years of age, she shared the same birth year as Bob Dylan yet had prepared herself for a mode of show business that appeared to be receding. RCA issued one further single before allowing her contract to expire in 1967. In May of that year she married television performer Roger Smith (77 Sunset Strip), who withdrew from acting to assume management responsibilities, and Ann-Margret undertook measures to redirect her professional direction. In June 1967 she made her debut as a Las Vegas headliner at the Riviera Hotel. In December 1968 she headlined her first television special, The Ann-Margret Show. Meanwhile motion-picture offers continued to arrive from abroad, and her subsequent several features were produced in Europe, South America, and the Middle East. (In one of them, Rebus, she performed a pair of songs; a soundtrack album eventually appeared in Italy in 2001.)
Ann-Margret resumed recording activity in 1969 with The Cowboy & the Lady, a duo album alongside Lee Hazlewood for LHI Records. (The album, which cultivated a dedicated following, received reissue in 2017.) A second television special, From Hollywood with Love, aired in December. Her initial American film role in several years arrived with R.P.M., released in September 1970, and the following month she appeared in C.C. and Company, written and produced by her husband. (A soundtrack album followed containing her recording of “Today,” composed by score creator Lenny Stack and also issued as a single.) Yet the part that restored her visibility and conferred credibility as a serious actress was her featured role in director Mike Nichols’ Carnal Knowledge, starring Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel, which opened in June 1971. The performance earned Ann-Margret her first Academy Award nomination for supporting actress and secured another Golden Globe. On November 15, 1971, she participated in a television production of the musical Dames at Sea, resulting in a soundtrack album.
Throughout this period Ann-Margret sustained stage performances in Nevada venues. In September 1972 she sustained serious injuries after falling from a defective platform during her engagement at the Sahara Hotel in Lake Tahoe. Surgery and rehabilitation ensued, yet she resumed performing ten weeks later. Setting that incident aside, she had effectively reconstructed her career by the mid-1970s, alternating screen roles (in 1973 the Western The Train Robbers with John Wayne and the French crime thriller The Outside Man) with television specials and stage engagements. In March 1975 she returned to movie musicals on a substantial and unexpected scale in director Ken Russell’s unconventional cinematic rendering of the Who’s concept album Tommy, assuming the role of Tommy’s mother. She was then thirty-three years old. Who lead singer Roger Daltrey, who portrayed Tommy, reached thirty-one shortly before the picture’s release. She contributed vocals to more than a dozen selections in the all-singing film, including two duets with Daltrey, “Champagne” and “Mother and Son,” newly created for the production. The double-LP soundtrack album reached number two and attained gold status. She received a nomination for her second Academy Award, this time for Best Actress, and captured her third Golden Globe, for Best Actress — Musical or Comedy.
During the latter half of the 1970s Ann-Margret maintained a steady schedule of film appearances, earning an additional Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress for 1977’s Joseph Andrews while also producing television specials and presenting her stage act in Nevada and beyond. The emergence of disco provided a further avenue into the music industry, and in October 1979 her single “Love Rush,” issued on Ocean Records and subsequently acquired by MCA, entered Billboard’s disco/dance charts en route to a peak at number eight. MCA supported a five-track EP released in 1980 as Ann-Margret, from which “Midnight Message” entered the dance charts in March and reached number twelve. Although disco was waning by 1980, she secured one additional chart placement beginning in October 1981 with “Everybody Needs Somebody Sometimes” on First American Records, which climbed to number twenty-two.
Ann-Margret encountered a private difficulty in 1980 when her husband received a diagnosis of myasthenia gravis, a neuromuscular disorder. She allocated greater attention to family matters, assisting with care for her husband and three stepchildren, yet as the primary earner she persisted in her professional endeavors. She accepted additional film roles in the early 1980s while reducing stage performances, ceasing them entirely by the end of 1983. Although she had previously avoided television films, her first such project, the sentimental drama Who Will Love My Children? (concerning a mother of ten facing a terminal condition), aired on February 14, 1983, and brought her an Emmy nomination. In 1984 she delivered a more distinguished television performance in an adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, embodying Blanche DuBois. The portrayal earned her a fourth Golden Globe, for Best Actress — Mini-Series or Television Movie.
She resumed stage appearances in October 1988 with her first engagement at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas in five years. She toured extensively over the ensuing three years, culminating in her initial performance at New York’s Radio City Music Hall in October 1991. In 1992 she appeared in Newsies, a children’s musical produced by Walt Disney that achieved modest commercial results yet yielded a soundtrack album that spent one week on charts. For the balance of the 1990s she maintained consistent activity in feature films (including Grumpy Old Men [1993] and Grumpier Old Men [1995]) and television movies (including the mini-series Scarlett, a sequel to Gone with the Wind [1994], and Life of the Party: The Pamela Harriman Story [1998], which garnered an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Actress in a Miniseries or TV Movie) while continuing to present her stage act. She issued a commercially successful autobiography, Ann-Margret: My Story (composed with Todd Gold), in 1994.
Ann-Margret sustained steady professional output into the twenty-first century. For the 2000 film The Flintstones in Rock Vegas she evoked her 1963 animated appearance by performing “Viva Rock Vegas” for the soundtrack (and the accompanying album). In February 2001 she ventured into musical theater for the first occasion (and returned to live performance after seven years’ absence), headlining a national touring production of the Broadway success The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and documenting a cast album. In a somewhat unexpected turn, 2001 also saw the release of her initial gospel album, God Is Love: The Gospel Sessions, supported by the Jordanaires (who had appeared on her earliest recordings four decades previously) and the Light Crust Doughboys with James Blackwood. The album secured her first Grammy nomination, for Best Southern, Country, or Bluegrass Gospel Album. Following an eighteen-month period on the road with The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas she assembled a new stage presentation by early 2003 and initiated her first solo tour in ten years. She maintained a recurring role on the Showtime series Ray Donovan in 2014, and in July 2016 RCA/Legacy compiled a digital anthology of selections and rarities from her RCA Victor tenure under the title The Essential Ann-Margret. In March 2017 the same collection received a physical edition from Real Gone Music under the designation The Definitive Collection. Her husband of fifty years, Roger Smith, passed away in June of that year.
While accepting occasional film and television assignments, in 2018 she appeared on Netflix’s The Kominsky Method and participated in an ensemble cast that included Frankie Avalon for the theatrical release Papa. She co-starred with Ellen Burstyn, James Caan, and others in 2021’s Queen Bees and surfaced on Cleopatra Records several months later with a newly recorded rendering of “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” featuring Sonny Landreth; the vinyl 7-inch followed a year afterward. Participants on the subsequent covers album Born to Be Wild additionally encompassed Mickey Gilley, Pete Townshend, and Cliff Richard, among further contributors. It appeared on Cleopatra in April of 2023.
Swedish-born Ann-Margret Olsson entered the world as the sole offspring of Gustav Olsson and Anna (Aronsson) Olsson. Her father, an electrician who had spent many years residing in the United States, relocated back to America when she was one year old, securing employment in the Chicago suburbs and accumulating resources to bring his spouse and daughter across. In the interim Ann-Margret began to exhibit an affinity for singing and dancing. She and her mother reached the United States in 1946, establishing residence in Fox Lake, Illinois. There she received instruction in singing, dancing, and piano during childhood and attained naturalized American citizenship in 1949. In the middle of 1957, while participating in a television talent contest in Chicago, she attracted the notice of Ted Mack, presenter of the national program The Original Amateur Hour, who arranged her appearance on the broadcast. Later that same year she performed for a month with the Danny Ferguson band at the Muehlebach Hotel in Kansas City. Her initial recording session took place in January 1959 as an amateur endeavor consisting of a production staged by the Tri-Ship Club at New Trier High School and issued in limited fashion under the designation Lagniappe ’59 Presents “Be My Guest,” which featured a rendition of Irving Berlin’s “Heat Wave.”
Ann-Margret completed high school in the first portion of 1959 and enrolled at Northwestern University later that year, concentrating on speech with a secondary focus in drama. She and two fellow students collaborated with a Northwestern graduate to establish the ensemble known as the Suttletones, which performed at venues throughout Chicago on weekends. The next recording connected with her was likewise an amateur school project, Among Friends — Waa-Mu Show of 1960, an item sought by collectors despite her appearance solely as a dancer without featured billing. Upon concluding her freshman year in June 1960 she and the Suttletones traveled to Las Vegas for a club booking that did not materialize, after which they proceeded to Los Angeles where engagements were obtained. Rather than resuming her sophomore year she withdrew from university to advance her professional path while her classmates returned to campus. She secured her first recording agreement with Warner Bros. Records, which issued two singles and the album It’s the Most Happy Sound credited to Ann-Margret & the Ja-Da Quartet, although the releases failed to achieve commercial traction. While appearing in a lounge at the Dunes Hotel in Las Vegas she auditioned for comedian George Burns, who incorporated her into his Christmas program at the Sahara. The resulting visibility led to a recording contract with RCA Victor and a motion-picture agreement with 20th Century-Fox, which immediately arranged a loan-out to Paramount for her debut feature, Pocketful of Miracles, director Frank Capra’s remake of his 1934 production Lady for a Day starring Bette Davis.
Ann-Margret’s first RCA single, “Lost Love,” failed to register on charts. She next released “I Just Don’t Understand,” a blues-inflected rocking selection co-produced by Chet Atkins and incorporating Elvis Presley’s backup vocalists the Jordanaires, which entered the Billboard Hot 100 in July 1961 and advanced into the Top 20. Her inaugural RCA album, And Here She Is…Ann-Margret, appeared in October. A third single, “It Do Me So Good,” registered only a minimal chart entry in November. That same month Pocketful of Miracles reached theaters to favorable commentary, and she received the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year — Female. RCA directed her toward an assortment of pop, country, and rock material for the subsequent long-player On the Way Up. Issued in March 1962, the collection contained her interpretations of contrasting pieces including the pop composition “Moon River” and Presley’s blues-rock staple “Heartbreak Hotel,” together with the expansive ballad “What Am I Supposed to Do,” which maintained a five-week presence near the lower reaches of the Hot 100 and registered on easy-listening surveys. Also in March 1962 came her second motion picture, a remake of the musical State Fair that likewise featured Pat Boone and Bobby Darin. She had originally tested for the principal part of Margy; studio executives reassigned her to the glamorous, Broadway-oriented Emily, thereby enabling an energized reading of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Isn’t It Kinda Fun?” and a duet with Boone on the newly composed Rodgers ballad “Willing and Eager.” The soundtrack album attained the Top 20.
On April 9, 1962, Ann-Margret performed on the Academy Awards broadcast to deliver one of the year’s nominated songs, the title theme from Bachelor in Paradise. RCA sought to capitalize on her memorable appearance by returning her to the studio and labeling the resulting album The Vivacious One, yet the release did not succeed commercially. Greater fortune arrived on the screen, where she was selected for the cinematic adaptation of the stage musical Bye Bye Birdie, a satirical portrayal of Elvis Presley, in which she assumed the role of a Midwestern teenager granted the opportunity to bestow “one last kiss” upon a Presley-like teen idol prior to his induction into the Army. Her part received substantial expansion from its Broadway origins, as she opened and closed the film singing a newly written title song, performed another solo on “How Lovely to Be a Woman,” and joined additional cast members on six further numbers. Bye Bye Birdie proved successful upon its April 1963 premiere, and its soundtrack album climbed to number two while remaining on charts for more than twelve months. She earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress — Musical or Comedy.
Later in 1963 RCA issued the Ann-Margret solo album Bachelors’ Paradise in a delayed attempt to exploit her Academy Awards exposure from a year and a half earlier. Despite her cinematic achievements the album did not chart. Concurrently she attained a measure of lasting recognition by supplying the voice of Ann-Margrock for the popular prime-time animated series The Flintstones. In January 1964 RCA returned her to the Top 100 on album charts by pairing her with trumpeter Al Hirt on the long-player Beauty and the Beard. Following her work with an Elvis Presley imitator in Bye Bye Birdie she next joined the actual performer, co-starring in the Presley film Viva Las Vegas, which premiered in May 1964. She also contributed vocals to several numbers, delivering solos on Leiber & Stoller’s “Appreciation” and “My Rival” while sharing duets with Presley on “C’mon Everybody,” “The Lady Loves Me,” and the title song composed by Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman. An additional duet with Presley, “You’re the Boss,” was omitted from the completed picture. She had committed studio versions of it, “The Lady Loves Me,” and “Today, Tomorrow and Forever” (a Presley solo in the film) as duets with Presley, yet those recordings remained unreleased at the time, and no soundtrack album materialized, only an EP of Presley solo selections. Consequently purchasers were unable to obtain copies of several of her most notable musical performances.
RCA (which also held Elvis Presley under contract) instead paired her with vocalist John Gary on the duet album David Merrick Presents Hits from His Broadway Shows. Released in October 1964, the set remained on charts for four weeks. After three consecutive movie musicals her screen career encountered a misstep with the unfavorably received melodrama Kitten with a Whip, also issued in October 1964. Two months later she returned to theaters and record outlets with The Pleasure Seekers, a musical remake of Three Coins in the Fountain accompanied by a soundtrack album on which she appeared.
The issuance of three films within the single calendar year 1964 signaled Ann-Margret’s primary emphasis on her motion-picture work, although she remained willing to sing within her pictures and satisfy the conditions of her recording agreement. RCA elected not to produce an album for her in 1965, limiting activity to a single single while she appeared in three additional non-musical features: Bus Riley’s Back in Town in March, Once a Thief in August, and The Cincinnati Kid in October. The subsequent year yielded four film releases. She starred in the comedy Made in Paris in February 1966 and took a supporting part in the all-star remake of Stagecoach issued in May. She performed vocally in The Swinger in November, prompting the release of her final RCA long-player, Songs from “The Swinger” (And Other Swingin’ Songs), and appeared opposite Dean Martin in his second Matt Helm spy parody Murderers’ Row in December.
As with certain other entertainers, Ann-Margret encountered the cultural shifts of the 1960s, and by the conclusion of 1966 her career trajectory had begun to wane. Still only twenty-five years of age, she shared the same birth year as Bob Dylan yet had prepared herself for a mode of show business that appeared to be receding. RCA issued one further single before allowing her contract to expire in 1967. In May of that year she married television performer Roger Smith (77 Sunset Strip), who withdrew from acting to assume management responsibilities, and Ann-Margret undertook measures to redirect her professional direction. In June 1967 she made her debut as a Las Vegas headliner at the Riviera Hotel. In December 1968 she headlined her first television special, The Ann-Margret Show. Meanwhile motion-picture offers continued to arrive from abroad, and her subsequent several features were produced in Europe, South America, and the Middle East. (In one of them, Rebus, she performed a pair of songs; a soundtrack album eventually appeared in Italy in 2001.)
Ann-Margret resumed recording activity in 1969 with The Cowboy & the Lady, a duo album alongside Lee Hazlewood for LHI Records. (The album, which cultivated a dedicated following, received reissue in 2017.) A second television special, From Hollywood with Love, aired in December. Her initial American film role in several years arrived with R.P.M., released in September 1970, and the following month she appeared in C.C. and Company, written and produced by her husband. (A soundtrack album followed containing her recording of “Today,” composed by score creator Lenny Stack and also issued as a single.) Yet the part that restored her visibility and conferred credibility as a serious actress was her featured role in director Mike Nichols’ Carnal Knowledge, starring Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel, which opened in June 1971. The performance earned Ann-Margret her first Academy Award nomination for supporting actress and secured another Golden Globe. On November 15, 1971, she participated in a television production of the musical Dames at Sea, resulting in a soundtrack album.
Throughout this period Ann-Margret sustained stage performances in Nevada venues. In September 1972 she sustained serious injuries after falling from a defective platform during her engagement at the Sahara Hotel in Lake Tahoe. Surgery and rehabilitation ensued, yet she resumed performing ten weeks later. Setting that incident aside, she had effectively reconstructed her career by the mid-1970s, alternating screen roles (in 1973 the Western The Train Robbers with John Wayne and the French crime thriller The Outside Man) with television specials and stage engagements. In March 1975 she returned to movie musicals on a substantial and unexpected scale in director Ken Russell’s unconventional cinematic rendering of the Who’s concept album Tommy, assuming the role of Tommy’s mother. She was then thirty-three years old. Who lead singer Roger Daltrey, who portrayed Tommy, reached thirty-one shortly before the picture’s release. She contributed vocals to more than a dozen selections in the all-singing film, including two duets with Daltrey, “Champagne” and “Mother and Son,” newly created for the production. The double-LP soundtrack album reached number two and attained gold status. She received a nomination for her second Academy Award, this time for Best Actress, and captured her third Golden Globe, for Best Actress — Musical or Comedy.
During the latter half of the 1970s Ann-Margret maintained a steady schedule of film appearances, earning an additional Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress for 1977’s Joseph Andrews while also producing television specials and presenting her stage act in Nevada and beyond. The emergence of disco provided a further avenue into the music industry, and in October 1979 her single “Love Rush,” issued on Ocean Records and subsequently acquired by MCA, entered Billboard’s disco/dance charts en route to a peak at number eight. MCA supported a five-track EP released in 1980 as Ann-Margret, from which “Midnight Message” entered the dance charts in March and reached number twelve. Although disco was waning by 1980, she secured one additional chart placement beginning in October 1981 with “Everybody Needs Somebody Sometimes” on First American Records, which climbed to number twenty-two.
Ann-Margret encountered a private difficulty in 1980 when her husband received a diagnosis of myasthenia gravis, a neuromuscular disorder. She allocated greater attention to family matters, assisting with care for her husband and three stepchildren, yet as the primary earner she persisted in her professional endeavors. She accepted additional film roles in the early 1980s while reducing stage performances, ceasing them entirely by the end of 1983. Although she had previously avoided television films, her first such project, the sentimental drama Who Will Love My Children? (concerning a mother of ten facing a terminal condition), aired on February 14, 1983, and brought her an Emmy nomination. In 1984 she delivered a more distinguished television performance in an adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, embodying Blanche DuBois. The portrayal earned her a fourth Golden Globe, for Best Actress — Mini-Series or Television Movie.
She resumed stage appearances in October 1988 with her first engagement at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas in five years. She toured extensively over the ensuing three years, culminating in her initial performance at New York’s Radio City Music Hall in October 1991. In 1992 she appeared in Newsies, a children’s musical produced by Walt Disney that achieved modest commercial results yet yielded a soundtrack album that spent one week on charts. For the balance of the 1990s she maintained consistent activity in feature films (including Grumpy Old Men [1993] and Grumpier Old Men [1995]) and television movies (including the mini-series Scarlett, a sequel to Gone with the Wind [1994], and Life of the Party: The Pamela Harriman Story [1998], which garnered an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Actress in a Miniseries or TV Movie) while continuing to present her stage act. She issued a commercially successful autobiography, Ann-Margret: My Story (composed with Todd Gold), in 1994.
Ann-Margret sustained steady professional output into the twenty-first century. For the 2000 film The Flintstones in Rock Vegas she evoked her 1963 animated appearance by performing “Viva Rock Vegas” for the soundtrack (and the accompanying album). In February 2001 she ventured into musical theater for the first occasion (and returned to live performance after seven years’ absence), headlining a national touring production of the Broadway success The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and documenting a cast album. In a somewhat unexpected turn, 2001 also saw the release of her initial gospel album, God Is Love: The Gospel Sessions, supported by the Jordanaires (who had appeared on her earliest recordings four decades previously) and the Light Crust Doughboys with James Blackwood. The album secured her first Grammy nomination, for Best Southern, Country, or Bluegrass Gospel Album. Following an eighteen-month period on the road with The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas she assembled a new stage presentation by early 2003 and initiated her first solo tour in ten years. She maintained a recurring role on the Showtime series Ray Donovan in 2014, and in July 2016 RCA/Legacy compiled a digital anthology of selections and rarities from her RCA Victor tenure under the title The Essential Ann-Margret. In March 2017 the same collection received a physical edition from Real Gone Music under the designation The Definitive Collection. Her husband of fifty years, Roger Smith, passed away in June of that year.
While accepting occasional film and television assignments, in 2018 she appeared on Netflix’s The Kominsky Method and participated in an ensemble cast that included Frankie Avalon for the theatrical release Papa. She co-starred with Ellen Burstyn, James Caan, and others in 2021’s Queen Bees and surfaced on Cleopatra Records several months later with a newly recorded rendering of “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” featuring Sonny Landreth; the vinyl 7-inch followed a year afterward. Participants on the subsequent covers album Born to Be Wild additionally encompassed Mickey Gilley, Pete Townshend, and Cliff Richard, among further contributors. It appeared on Cleopatra in April of 2023.
Albums
The Cowboy & The Lady
2017
And Here She Is...(Expanded)
2016
The Essential Ann-Margret
2016
The Pleasure Seekers (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
2015
God Is Love: The Gospel Sessions 2
2011
Ann-Margret's Christmas Carol Collection
2004
The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas (2001 National Tour Cast Recording)
2001
Let Me Entertain You
1996
Carnal Love
1971
Songs from "The Swinger" and Other Swingin' Songs
1966
Bachelors' Paradise
1963
On the Way Up
1962
Singles
