Ann-Margret

I guess the first time I noticed this Swedish beauty was when I saw the movie "Viva Las vegas" that she was in with Elvis Presley. This woman had it all, beauty, acting and singing, and dance too.

In 1961, at nineteen, she filmed a screen test at 20th Century Fox and was signed to a seven-year contract. Ann-Margret made her film début 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

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Then came a successful 1962 remake of Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical State Fair playing the "bad girl" role of Emily opposite 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.

The two roles mimicked her real-life personality--shy and reserved off stage but wildly exuberant and sensuous on stage. 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

During a lull in her film career in the late 1960s, she performed live in Las Vegas, with her husband Smith (whom she had married in 1967) taking over as her manager after that engagement. Elvis and his entourage came to see her during the show's five-week run and to celebrate backstage.

She followed up with a television special on December 1, 1968 starring Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Danny Thomas and Carol Burnett. Then she went back to Saigon as part of Hope's Christmas show. A second television special followed with Dean Martin and Lucille Ball. She returned to films with R.P.M. and C.C. and Company (featuring her first nude scenes).