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George Burns gave her a spot in his show. United Artists found a part in Frank Capra's A Pocketful of Miracles, and in State Fair her dark brown hair showed up as a cornea-shattering shade of red. A star, she drove up to her old high school in a yellow Cadillac convertible and strolled through the halls in a mink coat. But four years later, the bottom fell out. Her managers, in her version of it, were merely exploiting her sex appeal—and ineptly. With puppylike trust, Ann-Margret did as she was told. At 25, after a descending spiral of bike operas and drive-in fillers, she was a has-been and a joke to the industry. But in 1967, she married Roger Smith, a TV actor who had played in 77 Sunset Strip, and Smith and an agent named Allan Carr took over Ann-Margret's career.
Instant Improvement. In two Ann-Margret TV specials and a role in Stanley Kramer's R.P.M., her screen personality seemed quieter, sweeter, more womanly. She had lost the twippet look. Her breasts with suspicious suddenness had taken on melony dimensions. Had she seen the silicone man? Ann-Margret said no. "When I put on weight, I put it on there." Lucky for her. Melony dimensions were required for the role of Bobbie in Carnal Knowledge.
Mike Nichols had spent six months looking for the right girl to play the part. He had considered and rejected Raquel Welch, Jane Fonda, Dyan Cannon, Natalie Wood. One night Critic Kenneth Tynan's wife suggested Ann-Margret. Nichols smiled, but a screen test convinced him.
Nerves and Viruses. It did not convince Ann-Margret. "It was hell," she said. "Every minute I worked on that movie was hell." Terrified of failure, imagining the final collapse of her career, she gave herself desperately to the role. "I knew I had the emotion. That's all I am, emotion. But I couldn't do Bobbie by myself. Mike had to mold me. And he did. I lived Bobbie day and night. I turned into the slob Bobbie is. Between takes I just sat in my dressing room and stared at the wall. When I got back to the hotel at night, I put on my bathrobe and walked back and forth in the bathroom. I felt depressed, all the time depressed. So vulnerable, so betrayed. Mike and Jack kept me going. One day I couldn't cry when I should have and Jack said horrible things about Bobbie until I burst into tears."
When the shooting stopped, Ann-Margret's anguish did not. Stone pro that she is, she went ahead with a four-week run in Las Vegas. Pain lent a darker resonance to her voice and presence, even in moments of razzmatazz. Pain came through wild and pure in her song about Marilyn Monroe: Does Anybody Out There Love Me? At the end of the run, nerves shot and viruses acting up, she was rushed to a hospital.
"I was scared bad," she recalled. "I still am. I've always had this endless energy. Lying there, I thought about having a baby. I think that kind of giving would calm me down. Peace is what I lack. I got into all this too fast, too young. If I could just be Ann-Margret Olsson again, maybe I'd get over this feeling that my nerves are on top of my skin."