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Roger Smith

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The First Time (1969)

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Interviews

Interview with Ann-Margret (1983)

The walls of Roger Smith's office are covered with pictures of Ann-Margret. Here she is as a sex kitten, on the cover of Life. There's a cover from Entertainment World, a forgotten show business magazine. All in a row are three recent covers of People. And here are an oil painting of Ann-Margret, and a lot of cartoonist's caricatures, and some framed ads and telegrams and the usual backstage memorabilia. In one corner, almost hidden behind a file cabinet, is Roger Smith's only souvenir of his own career: A framed ad for his stage appearance as a folk singer at the "hungry i" nightclub in San Francisco, in 1964.

Interviews

Interview with Ann-Margret

There are lots of things to ask Ann-Margret about "Tommy," I kept thinking. About being directed by Ken Russell, and about what she thought the meaning of the original rock opera was, and about what Roger Daltrey was like, and . . . somehow I kept drifting back to the baked beans.

Interviews

Ann-Margret: Still cracking that whip

LAKE GENEVA, WI -- There is just no keeping up with all the new Ann-Margrets. Last year's new Ann-Margret abandoned her image, as the press releases say, to play a committed graduate student in "R.P.M." Her quandary: Should she still shack up with Anthony Quinn after he stops being a radical professor and becomes a moderate administrator? That's a dicey quandary, believe me, because Ann-Margret was playing a liberated woman even if she didn't have her own motorcycle and had to ride on the back of Anthony Quinn's.