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Ann-Margret was born Ann-Margret Olsson in Stockholm, Sweden in 1941. She later said her first few years were spent in a small town "of lumberjacks and farmers high up near the Arctic Circle". When she was five, her family moved to a suburb of Chicago. As a teen she took dance lessons and appeared on some "Amateur Hour" TV shows. She was in stage shows in school and in a singing group during college. The group went to California to perform, and George Burns saw her, and put her in his holiday show, and he became her mentor. In 1961, she released a solo record album, which had moderate success. Also that year, she was signed to a 7 year contract by 20th Century Fox. After one small part, she was given a major role in the remake of State Fair, playing the "bad girl" (she was just too sexy to play the "good girl"!). Her next role, as the teenage girl in Bye Bye Birdie, made her a star. She was so popular that a new character, "Ann-Margrock", was added to one episode of the hit TV series, The Flintstones! The studio capitalized on her popularity by rushing her into as many movies as possible. She made 10 movies in 1964, 1965 and 1966 alone, and the best of these were Viva Las Vegas, opposite Elvis Presley, and The Cincinnati Kid, opposite Steve McQueen. That year, 1965, she met actor Roger Smith, nine years older than her, married, and a father of three. Her parents naturally didn't like him, but he got divorced, and two years later they married, and they have been married ever since! Her movies became less frequent and more forgettable, although she made a wonderful "comeback" in Carnal Knowledge in 1971. In 1972, she fell 22 feet from a stage at Lake Tahoe, but recovered completely. She worked steadily in the 1970s and 1980s, and stayed as beautiful as ever (she was able to believably have a romance with "teenager" C. Thomas Howell in 1987's A Tiger's Tale, when she was 46!). In 1993, she co-starred in the surprise hit, Grumpy Old Men. Many people think of Ann-Margret as a sexy lady who could not act very well, but actually she has won five Golden Globe Awards, and been nominated for two Academy Awards, two Grammy Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and five Emmy Awards! Also, she is one of the most famous redheads of all time, and yet she does not have red hair (it was given to her by the same stylist who gave Lucille Ball her red hair)! AND Kirk Douglas was born in New York in 1916. He was born Issur Danielovitch Demsky, to Russian Jews who had emigrated to New York, and he changed his name and began acting and later became a superstar. After some minor Broadway roles, he served in the Navy in WWII, and after the war, his first film was a leading role in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers in 1946. He followed that up with an important role in Out of the Past, the classic film noir, and then I Walk Alone, where he again had a supporting role, this time with Burt Lancaster, with whom he would appear many times. Champion in 1949 made him a major star, and for the next years he played lots of lead roles in important movies, often playing someone mentally unstable, as he had in Champion. In 1957 he used his star power to see that Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory was made (he was the producer and star, and it likely would never been made but for Douglas, and it is to mind in the three or four finest movies ever made). He is well remembered for his starring role in Kubrick's Spartacus, as well as in Lonely are the Brave, and many others. As he grew older he took major supporting roles, opposite such stars as Lancaster (they made 7 movies together) and John Wayne. In 1963 he bought the rights to Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and he starred as McMurphy in a Broadway production. But he was heartbroken when he could not get a major studio to make a film version with him in the lead, and he gave the rights to his son Michael, who was finally able to get it filmed in 1975 (and while Nicholson was perfect, one can't help but wonder how the elder Douglas would have been!). Douglas is pretty indestructible! He survived a helicoptor crash and a major stroke, and I saw him at a retrospective a couple of years ago, and he looked better than ever. But I was struck when I read his fine autobiography "The Ragman's Son" just how haunted he was, and how he never escaped his difficult childhood. All through my growing up I heard that Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster were best friends. Apparently this was not at all true, and they mostly only had a professional relationship, and even that was strained. Lancaster was quoted as saying "Kirk would be the first to admit that he's difficult to work with - and I would be the second"! Few actors have ever given us nearly as many wonderful performances as Kirk Douglas (and his film selection was second to none), and yet he never won an acting Academy Award, a sad commentary on the method by which the Oscars are chosen.

Important Added Info: Note that this still has been personally autographed (signed) by BOTH Ann-Margret AND Kirk Douglas! Our consignor had trouble getting an autographed photo from Ann-Margret because she refused to sign anything that was "too sexy", and he was afraid she would not sign this still, but fortunately she did, and he also obtained Kirk Douglas' signature on it separately (both were obtained in 1988). Note that this item was consigned to us by a man who had made a hobby of corresponding with famous celebrities starting in the late 1980s and continuing into the middle 1990s. He developed friendships with many of the stars, and he would always enclose one or more photos for them to sign. We are certain that this signature is authentic!

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