Ann-Margret’s wedding to Roger Smith draws nearer, according to current reports. Roger’s divorce from his first wife, actress Victoria Shaw, mother of his children, is final. Roger and Ann-Margret have been together constantly.
Basically, they have wanted to be sure, very sure, that this feeling they have for one another was one they could count on for keeps, forevermore, til Death did them part. Ann-Margret and Roger have gone about this business of love like two mature adults. They put their mutual feeling through every conceivable test; they tried “apart-ness” and together-ness”; they studied each other’s temperaments. Above all, they weathered – and successfully – the constant pryings of the press into the course of their romance.
They are, in their way, almost too cautious. They look for problems, internal and external, behind every bush.
Now, as her wedding date nears, Ann-Margret kneels in fervent supplication and prays, in all the sincerity of her storm-tossed young heart, “Please God be kind to me…”
Will all the careful preparation, the patient waiting, the providing for all contingencies, the meticulous plans pay off, she wonders? Her shrewd, logical Scandlnavian mind, nurtured by the fervent Lutheran faith of her forebears, turns over all the ifs and buts,analyzes all the question marks.
What are the things she worries about?
It has taken her a long time to get over this feelIng. She knows Roger, (and most understandably) has been cautious about entering into a second marriage. She knows he hates failures; she knows two strike outs in a row would wound his morale, and his self-image. She wanted to be sure as he himself came to be in time, concernin:g the permanency, the depth of the union they contemplated. Now, friends say, both are at last certain.
Or is she too mercurial, quicksilverish, intense and energetic to settle for a part-time acting career, like Joanne Woodward did, or abandon her career entirety?
If Roger Smith’s career really gets Into high gear, if he asks her to retire, chances are she loves him enough to do just that.
What would her studio say? What would the public think? Anyone who reasons at all rationally would wish her luck, would cheer her on, if domesticity were to be her choice.
There are other satisfactions than in stardom. Ann-Margret has had all the glamor and glitter for five years now.
And maybe that is what she secretly prays for when she kneels by her bed these nights and whispers, “Please, God, be kind to me…”