Ann-Margret Profile

Ann-Margret

	(Ann Margret Olsson)
28 April 41	is born in Stockholm, Sweden, to electrician Gustav Olsson and his wife Anna. Her mother is 18 years her husband’s junior.
?	is raised in Valsjobyn in northern Sweden
?	her father moves from Stockholm to Fox Lake, Illinois
46	she and her mother follow to the States
?	the Olssons settle in Fox Lake, Illinois
?	enrols in a dance school run by Marjorie Young
?	attends grade schools in Fox Lake and Wilmette
?	attends New Trier High School in Winnetka
c. 54	appears on “The Morris B. Sack Amateur Hour” on a local Chicago TV station, winning first prize of $75 for singing “Make Love to Me”
c. 56	sings on Don McNeill’s “Breakfast Club” show
c. 57	sings on Ted Mack’s “Amateur Hour”
c. 58	sings with a band at the Hotel Muehlbach in Kansas City for $98 a week. Her mother works as a receptionist in a mortuary.
c. 60	attends Northwestern University for a year
?	is on stage at the Dunes in Las Vegas with a small combo, The Suttletones
?	performs in Balboa, California
Summer 60	the Suttletones are booked at the Villa Marina in Newport Beach, California. She’s paid $139 a week.
	the Suttletones work Elko and Reno
?	is discovered by Pierre Cossette and Bobby Roberts, who will become her managers
?	auditions for George Burns in Los Angeles
December 60	George Burns puts her in his Las Vegas show
?	records for RCA Victor
c. March 61	is signed to a screen contract by 20th-Century Fox for $300 a week
September 61	columnist Earl Wilson thinks she’s “been alternating between Gardner McKay and Ty Hardin…”
October 61	columnist Dorothy Kilgallen tells: ”singer Ann-Margret is being credited with breaking the tie that bound Gardner McKay and Dolores Hawkins…”
	the Mirisch Corporation asks her to play opposite Elvis Presley in Kid Galahad
c. February 62	is engaged to businessman Burt Sugarman, who puts a three-and-a-half carat diamond ring on her finger. He’s 23; she’s 21.
6 March 62	is presented with the International Recognition Award by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association
13 March 62	20th-Century Fox announces the end of her engagement to Sugarman while she’s in New York to publicize State Fair
April 62	Wilson reports that she “bought an inexpensive copy of her engagement ring and wears that”
c. June 62	dates Robert “Bo” Belinski, a pitcher with the Los Angeles Angels
July 62	is scheduled to play opposite Mickey Callan in the remake of Cover Girl
	columnist Hedda Hopper reports: “Ann-Margret had a second look at the bullfights in Tijuana over the weekend, and being with Eddie Fisher didn’t help. She says: ‘I guess I’m just a softie. I always wind up in tears over those poor bulls…’”
August 62	she and her parents are ringside when Eddie Fisher opens at Frank Sinatra’s nightclub in Crystal Bay, Nevada
Mid-August 62	Wilson writes: “Ann-Margret’s friends are claiming they know she’s going to be the third Mrs. Eddie Fisher – and very soon, too!...”
27 August 62	she and Fisher attend Sam Goldwyn’s 60th birthday party at the Beverly Hilton
October 62	is noted with Eddie Fisher ringsiding at the Copacabana
December 62	Wilson thinks that she “will marry Jack Gilardi, “one of the young geniuses with General Artists Corporation talent agency”
c. 63	her salary for Bye Bye Birdie is $35,000
February 63	throws a birthday party for her mother at the Kowloon. Her date is Jack Gilardi.
March 63	is noted with song publisher Lou Adler at the Myron Cohen-Frankie Avalon show at the Copacabana
July 63	Wilson reports: “Now about that Edie Adams-Eddie Fisher ‘romance’ – hear this: When Ann Margret arrives shortly for the Bye, Bye Birdie hoopla, Eddie Baby will manage to be in New York most of the time, too…”
8 April 63	her escort to the Academy Awards party held at the Beverly Hilton is Eddie Fisher
May 63	entertains President John F. Kennedy at his 45th birthday party at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel singing “Baby, Won’t You Please Come Home”
June 63	Wilson reports: “Walking along Broadway in front of the Old Shanghai, I came upon Ann-Margret strolling, not with Eddie Fisher, who’s in town, but with agent Lou Adler, another suitor…”
July 63	records a lullaby and a rock and roll number for her first “Flintstones” show
	resides with her parents in Beverly Hills. She tells: “I don’t smoke and I don’t drink and I hate going to cocktail parties here because all they do is to sit around and tell each other how great they are.”
August 63	columnist Bob Thomas says it looks like she and Elvis Presley are having a romance. She and Presley met for the first time at MGM’s music department introduced by director George Sidney.
	admits she goes “steady with three people: Lou Adler, a music publisher; Jack Gilardi, a good-looking agent; and Eddie Fisher, her most constant companion when he is in town…”
Summer 63	signs with MGM for two films for a total price of $275,000
November 63	columnist Louella Parsons lets it be known: “’Everything’s groovy’ cables Ann-Margret from London where she met Prince Philip at a party before the premiere of Bye Bye Birdie. Things weren’t so groovy in Paris where she got a ticket for speeding her rented scooter…”
August 64	columnist Bob Thomas quotes her: “I think every girl should live by herself as a transition between the time of being with her parents and of getting married. It is better for everyone if she does.”
?	gifts her parents with a $63,000 home in Beverly Hills
December 64	lives alone in a one-bedroom, $320-a-month apartment overlooking Sunset Boulevard. The press reports she has dated Eddie Fisher, Frankie Avalon, Ty Hardin, Elvis Presley, Peter Mann, Vince Edwards and Bert Sugarman.
	earned $200,000 in 1963 and will earn $500,000 in 1964
January 65	ranks 8th in the annual poll of motion picture exhibitors measuring Hollywood stars in their ability to make money. Her asking price is $250,000 a picture plus a percentage of the profits.
	attends the late afternoon distinguished ladies reception, which starts the festivities of the Lyndon B. Johnson inauguration
February 65	has contracts with five studios to do 15 movies
23 March 65	20th Century-Fox files suit in Superior Court to stop her from appearing in any film that would delay her from reporting to the studio by June 25. The studio fears that filming of MGM’s Made in Paris will run into the shooting of Stagecoach.
April 65	is expected to marry TV actor Roger Smith when his divorce from actress Victoria Shaw becomes final. Smith and Shaw have three kids: Tracy, 7; Jordan, 6; and Thomas, 3. She and Smith met for the first time in the lobby of the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, where she was making a movie and he was at the hungry i.
	columnist Louella Parsons hints that “Ann may have use for a wedding dress pretty soon, Roger Smith, you know…”
September 65	is named "Top Actress of the Year" by the Theatre Owners of America
March 66	will entertain the troops in South Vietnam for two weeks, giving two to three shows a day
c. June 66	announces her engagement to Smith
June 66	receives 8,000 fan letters a month
February 67	is off to Rome, Italy, to film Il Tigre opposite Vittorio Gassman. Smith is with her.
c. March 67	she and Smith break their engagement for reasons she won’t disclose
8 May 67	marries Smith in a civil ceremony at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. He’s 32/34; she’s 26. It’s his second and her first marriage. The couple is unattended; two hotel executives witness the double-ring ceremony.
24 June 68	attends Svenskarnas Dag (Day of the Swedes) celebration in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and listens to Vice President Hubert Humphrey
23 December 68	performs with Bob Hope before 20,000 GIs at Long Binh, South Vietnam, during Hope’s annual Christmas concert for servicemen overseas. Her husband is with her.
June 69	she and Smith reside on a seven-acre estate in Beverly Hills. The house once belonged to Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.
January 70	she and Smith have a Rolls Royce to take them as far as the airport
September 70	the press reports that her nude scene with Joe Namath in the upcoming C.C. and Company was her husband’s idea
September 72	tumbles 22/40 feet from a scaffold prior to her late-night show at the Sahara Tahoe Hotel in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. She is hospitalized at Barton Memorial Hospital in South Lake Tahoe in satisfactory condition with a concussion, five facial fractures, a broken jaw and a broken left arm.
?	suffers months of operations on her face and plastic surgery
March 73	the press tells she will take her first vacation in ten years
11 July 73	attends the unveiling of her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
75	plans to take her elaborate nightclub show on tour throughout the States
11 March 75	she and Smith attend the premiere of Tommy in New York
16 May 75	attends a White House white-tie state dinner given by President and Mrs. Ford honouring His Imperial Highness The Shah of Iran and his wife Empress Farah
10 August 82	starts her first tour of the United States in Atlanta, Georgia
21 August 83	she and Smith attend the opening of La Cage Aux Folles at the Palace Theater in New York
August 93	she, Smith, and her mother are pictured with their pets at their home in Beverly Hills
December 95	attends the premiere of Grumpier Old Men in Westwood, Los Angeles
16 December 99	attends the Los Angeles premiere of Any Given Sunday
15 June 05	at the Palms Casino Resort, she is presented the 2005 CineVegas Film Festival Centennial Award in celebration for her contribution to Vegas cinema

Sources: Parade, The Abilene Reporter News, Albert Lee Tribune, Tucson Daily Citizen, Daily Times, The Evening Observer, Corpus Christi Caller, The Lowell Sun, The Evening Standard, The Pampa Daily News, Appleton Post-Crescent, The Lima News, The Galveston News, Delaware County Daily Times, Amarillo Globe-Times, Family Weekly, The Morning Herald, Daily Tribune, San Antonio Light, The Sun, Anderson Sunday Herald, Long Beach Press-Telegram, The Victoria Advocate, The Valley Independent, Delaware County Daily Times, Press-Telegram, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, pro.Corbis.com
Recommended Books: Ann-Margret: My Story Ann-Margret: A Photo Extravaganza and Memoir by Neal Peters and David Smith
Links: Filmography Official Site