Once upon a long time ago, I was a bored tweenager aimlessly channel-surfing when I was abruptly kicked in the skull by an atomic kablooey of sexiness. I’d stumbled on to the title sequence of Bye Bye Birdie, the 1963 musical satirising the teenybop hysteria incited by Elvis Presley’s army conscription. Melting my face off was the film’s star, Ann-Margret — a woman clearly engineered to induce puberty.
With her fiery hair, peachy skin, curvy bod and clingy dress, Ann-Margret was doing everything, all at once: wiggling/giggling/singing/flinging/sobbing/throbbing. She was way too much, and there was nothing to do but surrender to her rawr.
