Ann-Margret Olsson (born 28 April 1941), credited as Ann-Margret, is an American actress, dancer, and singer with a career spanning seven decades. 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), Grumpier Old Men (1995), Any Given Sunday (1999), Taxi (2004), and Going in Style (2017). Her accolades include five Golden Globe Awards, two Laurel Awards, two Photoplay Awards, an Emmy Award, a Hollywood Walk of Fame Star, as well as two Academy Award nominations and two Grammy Award nominations. Born in Sweden, Ann-Margret immigrated to the United States as a child.
Ann-Margret Olsson was born on 28 April 1941, in Stockholm, Sweden, to Anna Regina (née Aronsson) and Carl Gustav Olsson, a native of Örnsköldsvik. The family moved to Valsjöbyn, Krokom Municipality, Jämtland County, Sweden in 1942. She described Valsjöbyn as a small town of "lumberjacks and farmers high up near the Arctic Circle". 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. In 1949, Ann-Margret became a naturalized American citizen.
Ann-Margret took her first dance lessons at the Marjorie Young School of Dance. She showed 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 after her husband suffered a severe injury on his job. 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, Illinois. Two fellow movie stars, Charlton Heston and Rock Hudson, had graduated from the school many years earlier. She then attended Northwestern University for a brief time; In a September 1959 advertisement for Sheaffer pens, she appears as "Ann Margret Olson, freshman, Northwestern University."
In January 1960, she was a member of "Joy Ride," a touring ensemble sponsored by the Chicago USO. Its twelve performers—current and recent Northwestern University students—spent four weeks entertaining U.S. military overseas in Iceland and Germany.
Later in 1960, she and three young men from Northwestern formed a singing group, the Suttletones. The group appeared at Chicago's Black Orchid and The Mist nightclubs, then in Nevada's Elko, Reno, and Las Vegas at the Dunes hotel and casino in Las Vegas. The Dunes 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".
Ann-Margret said she dropped her last name before moving out to California because when you are an entertainer, "mean things" can be written about you and she did not want her parents to be hurt by anything written about her.
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.
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; the song was later performed by the Beatles in 1963. In 1962, Ann-Margret was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best New Artist.
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.
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. 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. 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 14 April 2023, on vinyl, compact disc, and all streaming platforms. The album charted at number 93 on the Billboard Top Album Sales, the first time an Ann-Margret album had charted since Beauty and the Beard in 1964.
Rapid rise to Hollywood stardom (1961–1964)
In 1961, Ann-Margret filmed a screen test at 20th Century Fox and was signed to a seven-year contract. She made her film debut in a loan-out to United Artists alongside Bette Davis in Frank Capra's Pocketful of Miracles, 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.
In a 1962 remake of Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical State Fair, 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. 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.
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".
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". 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". A few months later, Ann-Margret voiced an animated version of herself, named "Ann-Margrock", on the television series The Flintstones. She sang the ballad "The Littlest Lamb" as a lullaby, as well as the rocker, "Ain't Gonna Be a Fool".