Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1963)

ANN MARGRET Continued from page 64 then the singing. And she remembers Uncle Calle’s voice calling out to the others, a few minutes after she had begun. “Look at my niece. See how well she moves. Like Pavlova. And how she sings. Like Jenny Lind. See, see how well she performs.” “Hej!” she remembers someone else calling out then. “Stop. Stop everyone. Give the child some room. Let her sing and dance alone.” “Hej, hej, hej!” she remembers the others calling, then shouting, as they stood around her in a big circle and clapped their hands together in time with her steps and her song. First applause ■ . . “Hej!” — and the sound remains in her head today, the sound of the very first applause she ever received, that Christmas Eve when she was only two-and-ahalf. . . . There is, too, the awesome memory of the first time she ever heard of the glamI orous entertainment form which she would someday be involved in — the movies. She was nearly four years old now, and talking with her mother about Stockholm. “And how else is it different from Valsjobyn. Mamma?” she asked that day, as they talked. “You have told me about the palace where the king and his family live, and about the park where they keep the animals, and about the tall buildr ings so much taller than we have here. I Is there anything else different about Stockholm, Mamma?” “Well,” answered her mother, “let me j see. Let me think.” Then: “Ah, yes. The cinema, of course. There is much cinema in Stockholm. Something we most certainly don’t have here in Valsjobyn.” “Cinema, Mamma? What is that?” AnnMargret asked. And Anna Olson described the big dark theaters with their hundreds of seats where people went to see a play on a huge screen, a play about love or adventure or music, about things to make you laugh and to make you cry. “How wonderful it sounds,” said AnnMargret, wide-eyed with delight. “Do you think that one day. Mamma, I shall ever be able to go to a cinema?” To which her mother answered jokingly, “You keep singing and dancing as much as you do, and I think that perhaps you will end up being on the screen rather ! than in front of it!” There is, of course, the memory of the first boy Ann-Margret ever fell in love with. She was all of five by now. And he came one day from a region of Sweden even further north than Valsjobyn. He was tall and blond and very strong looking. He must have been seven years older maybe even eight. He came to Valsjobyn with his father, a dealer in reindeer hides, for only a few days. Ann-Margret first saw him when he and his father checked into the town’s single hotel. She smiled at him. He smiled at her. For the next few days everytime they saw one another they smiled. And then, suddenly, the boy was about to leave — his father having sold enough reindeer hides for them to be off to another town where they would do some more business. “Ann-Margret, child! What are you so flushed-looking about?” her grandmother asked that morning as the girl rushed into the bakeshop. “Grandma, oh Grandma, may I bake a cake — please?” Ann-Margret asked. “Bake a cake? A little thing like you?” “Hmmmmm,” her grandmother hmmmmmed, not understanding what this was all about — except that it was obviously important. “Well ... all right. But I must help.” A little while later, the special cake was baked . . a beautiful little thing. Then she clutched the package and ran to the hotel down the street. She got there just in time, as it turned out — just as the boy and his father were about to leave. “God dag” Ann-Margret said to the boy. “Hello.” “ God dag” he said back to her. She handed him the cake. “Adjo,” Ann-Margret then said to him. “Goodbye.” “Adjo,” said the boy. They stared at one another. “Come!” the boy’s father hollered suddenly, gruffly, “let’s be off from here.” And so the boy did as he was told, and he was gone. And so had Ann-Margret’s first romance begun and ended. . . . Of all the memories of those early days back in Valsjobyn, however, the ones AnnMargret remembers most concern the letters which she and her mother received from her father, Gustave Olson. They came, from America, every few weeks. They were long letters, filled with love and loneliness and hope for the future. They would be read aloud to AnnMargret by her mother, the moment they arrived . . . then read again a few times during the day . . . and, finally, read once , more when the little girl got into bed at night, and as she dozed off to sleep. Usually, just before the letters were read, Ann-Margret would ask her mother: “Where is my Poppa?” To which her mother would answer: “In a place called Chicago. In the nation of America.” “And why did he go away from us, Mamma?” “To find work, as an electrician, to make a better life for us.” “And why did he not come back, or send for us?” “Because of a war that now rages through the world, Ann-Margret. Because it is dangerous for us to even try to cross the ocean during a time like this.” “Is he young like you, Mamma?” “He is eighteen years older than I.” “Such an old man? Why did you marry him, Mamma?” “Because I loved him. Because he is fine and good. And because eighteen years — no years — make that much difference when there is love.” And she remembers — early in 1946, at no* 'SewontH'A®^CP‘N NAME LOVEL\ER^)jX__^_ l V fingernails -Plus enriched with vitamins 30 capsules 2.00 90 capsules 5.00 Scientific research proves that new vitamin-enriched Gelatin-Plus gelatin in capsules harden and strengthen nails. 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