Ann-Margret, 85, Honored by USO Just Weeks After Breaking Elbow
One day after celebrating her 85th birthday on April 28, the legendary actress Ann-Margret attended a USO ceremony to receive a rare honor for her decades of service. The Bye Bye Birdie star has toured three times with the USO in Southeast Asia.
"I have always had such a great time doing these tours," Ann-Margret told Deadline at the April 29 event. "And then to see my guys since then come up to me and say 'I saw you in Vietnam and Da Nang.' And then to say, 'Well I liked you in Bye Bye Birdie and Viva Las Vegas.'"
"Those tours and all my guys mean the world to me," she added. "I remember all of them, all of them."
Ann-Margret became the second-ever recipient of the USO Challenge Coin, joining famed USO entertainer Bob Hope.
The ceremony came just weeks after she revealed she had broken her right elbow in a fall at her Beverly Hills home. "I fell the other day and so now my right elbow is broken," she told Parade earlier this month. "That's okay … I have fallen so many times. I don't intend to, but I do! What can I say?"
Despite the injury, the Tommy actress remains optimistic about her recovery. "I am. I sure am!" she said.
Ann-Margret also reflected on a more serious fall from a 22-foot-high platform in 1972, which left her with multiple facial fractures, a broken jaw, and a broken arm. "I have always learned from my parents that you just get up," she said. "You just start all over again."
Remarkably, she returned to the stage less than 10 weeks after that accident.