Ann-Margret: still kicking up her spurs at 60
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Many mature adults can't relate to what kittenish young pop stars like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera are up to. But Ann-Margret can.
Oozing nubile sensuality, as well as girl-next-door wholesomeness, this Swedish-American star caused quite a stir as a hot young thing torching up the screen in such hit flicks as "Bye Bye Birdie," "Kitten With a Whip" and (opposite Elvis) "Viva Las Vegas."
"That's a part of me," she says of her come-hither, va-va-voom image in the 1960s. "Everyone has that in some way or another, that animal thing, men and women.
"And I think it's great that these kids today are showing their emotions. And also that they can show different sides of their talent. 'Cause when I started out you were put on one side or the other — you were a musical performer, or a dramatic actress. But you didn't dare step across that line."
Not all show-biz kitties get nine lives. But largely because she kept crossing the line, A-M (as the media dubbed her) has had at least as many phases in her career.
At 60, she is touring the country in a spangly road version of the 1978 Broadway musical, "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas," which comes to the Paramount Theatre on Tuesday. A-M also has earned her spurs as a dramatic actress (winning an Oscar nomination for "Carnal Knowledge" and one of her six Emmy noms in "A Streetcar Named Desire"), and as an electric nightclub headliner, and a sexy comic foil to Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon in two "Grumpy Old Men" films. Recently, she recorded a gospel-music album.
In fact, Ann-Margret has been at it nonstop for a good 40 years — sidelined only by injuries from a bad 1971 stage fall in Tahoe.
In a phone chat from San Francisco, where "Best Little Whorehouse" got some negative reviews but did brisk business, Ann-Margret seems a little shy and distracted, but very personable and accommodating. Hearing her famously breathy voice and throaty laugh, one instantly conjures her red-haired beauty and essential niceness.
Clearly, A-M is an ace trouper. Since January 2001, she's logged more than 300 performances in 30 cities in "Best Little Whorehouse," and may well extend her contract.
Why? "First of all, the show's dialogue is wonderful," she declares, "and it has all sorts of comedy, intrigue and slapstick. In the end, there's even a very dramatic, gut-wrenching moment for me and Gary Sandy." (Sandy, an alum of TV's "WKRP in Cincinnati," co-stars as Mona's longtime sheriff pal, Ed Earl Dodd.)
"I get to sing and dance, and wear wonderful Bob Mackie costumes," she goes on. "And (composer-lyricist Carol Hall) wrote me a new song called 'A Friend to Me.' It's about unrequited love."
Ann-Margret also is intrigued by the real-life Mona Stangley, proprietor of the Chicken Ranch brothel in Gilbert, Texas. "Whorehouse" co-writers Larry L. King and Peter Masterson based their Broadway hit on Mona's saga.
"She was really somethin'," says A-M twangily. "She and the local sheriff had this relationship for years. What's so cute is how he thought folks didn't know about it.
"I've seen pictures of the two of them, bless them both. Mona was so adorable, just sitting there with her hands in her lap, wearing a little blue pleated dress and a little Peter Pan lace color, with this very prim look on her face. And this woman was making $500,000 a year from her brothel, in 1973!"
Ann-Margret suspects some fans may quail at a show with a madam for a hero. "Some of my own relatives wouldn't have come to see it, if I wasn't in it! I warned them — there's a lot of cussin'."
Yet despite her salty role, early vixen image, reported '60s romances with Elvis and other celebs and unabated love for Harley motorbikes (she broke her arm in a recent cycle crash), Ann-Margret seems pretty square by Hollywood glamour-puss standards.
She's had one 34-year marriage, to actor-producer Roger Smith. He's her manager, and she's supported him through a long bout with the neuromuscular disease myasthenia gravis.
"He travels with me," A-M reports. "I don't know how people can be married and in separate places. Before this tour, I didn't want to commit to anything long. I didn't wish to leave my family, my home in L.A., my animals. But Roger is having a ball on the road! He's got his computer, and we brought our Maltese, Missy."
Though very upbeat, A-M harbors no illusions about the Hollywood dream factory, or how it treats aging female stars.
"It's a rough business, especially for women. TV is a really cruel, cruel sector of entertainment. I had a TV series that lasted two weeks. (1998's 'Four Corners'). They put it up against a long-running hit.
"Someone once told me that producers don't know what to do with a woman between 55 years old and 65 years old. Before 55, you play wives and 'other women,' and after 65, you play grandparents."
But A-M is among today's resilient older stars who refuse to go quietly into obscurity. "We're living longer, taking care of ourselves through diet and exercise," she notes. "And I really have been blessed with good genes. My father skied up until the end, and my folks had a great outlook on life. I hope I've inherited their strength and stamina. And I'm trying to live up to them in every way."
Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com
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