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Sunday, January 20, 2013

Ann-Margret : Sexy with a six shooter

Ann-Margret : Sexy with a six shooter


Ann-Margret Olsson (born April 28, 1941) 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). She has won five Golden Globe Awards and been nominated for two Academy Awards, two Grammy Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and six Emmy Awards. In 2010, she won her first Emmy Award for her guest appearance on Law & Order: SVU. . 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.[7] 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.[8] 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: 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."[9]

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 (1964). 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), and two TV specials with Ann-Margret.[11] Ann-Margret was Winters's dance student at the time and Winters credits Ann-Margret as being 'that special person who changes your life'.[12] Winters was nominated for the 1970 Emmy Award for 'Outstanding Achievement in Choreography' for his CBS Television Special: "Ann-Margret: From Hollywood with Love" (1969) -Wikipedia