Ann-Margret eventually did see a videotape of the show and found herself mesmerised by the musical. There was an added inducement. Carol Hall, the musical's composer and lyricist, wrote a new song for her - A Friend to Me, to be sung to the sheriff, Mona's love interest in the show, played by Gary Sandy, who's probably still best remembered as the program director on WKRP in Cincinnati. And I am one of those disciplinarians - you do it again and again and again. You don't really have to dance in this show, but because the star is who she is, we are going to want to do more than in the original.
Age is just a natural progression.
That career has taken her from her native Sweden at age five to her teen years in the Chicago suburbs to Las Vegas where she was discovered by George Burns and put into his club act. In 1962, Ann-Margret sang the title song from Bachelor in Paradise on the Oscar telecast. The song didn't win, but the audience noticed her provocative interpretation and although she had already done two movies, it landed her the film version of Bye Bye Birdie, another attention-getter. Hit Broadway musicals usually get reworked for the movies, but it's not often a supporting character in the stage version graduates to star status in the film. It happened here, though, when Ann-Margret, playing the world's most fully developed teenager, got to kiss a rock 'n' roll idol being drafted into the Army.