Purr, comrade. The Commissar and the Sex Kitten

 
Bella Donna: an Italian term meaning both "beautiful lady" and a plant with red, bell shaped flowers and roots that yield a fatal poison.  Both meanings apply to Ann-Margret, whose lifelong devotion to Communist causes eventually led to the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Born in 1941 in an ardently anti-Nazi, pro-Soviet family, Ann-Margret Ollson immigrated to the United States to escape the ravages of post World War II Europe.  Her father, who had Young Ann-Margretpreceded the family to the States, met her and her mother on a New York, NY pier on 29 November 1946.  Intending to immerse their daughter in American culture, she was taken straight from the ship to Radio City Music Hall, where she saw her first moving picture, "The Jazz Signer".  Between the end of the film and the performance of the Rockettes she was allowed to go to the concession stand by herself to purchase ju-ju beans.  While there she met a friendly, debonair stranger who was to influence her throughout her life:  Aleksandr Semyonovich Feklisov, KGB officer in the New York Soviet Consulate.  Already famous in KGB circles for having recruited Julius Rosenberg and having delivered the secrets of the atomic bomb to his Soviet masters, Feklisov could see in the personable, lovely five year old Ann-Margret the fiery soul of a future operative.  Ingratiating himself with her family, Feklisov positioned himself to develop Ann-Margret as the most successful Soviet mole yet known.

Although privately demure, from an early age Ann-Margret projected a public persona of confidence and sultry appeal.  By the time she entered high school she was already an accomplished performer, appearing both on her school's stage and on local television programs.  By the time she was sixteen she had her own performing group, "The Suttletones", and was entertaining at locations far from home.  Feklisov was instrumental in arranging performing dates for her, and in return received a steady flow of information about her performance venues, which often included U.S. military installations.

In August of 1957 Ann-Margret and her group were performing at the Muelbach Hotel in Kansas City, MO when she met two traveling gamblers from New Orleans, LA:  Clay L. Shaw and David William Ferrie.  Through them she was introduced to New Orleans Mafia kingpin Carlos Marcello, who would help her develop connections with the American underworld.

Quitting college to devote herself to her signing career, Ann-Margret and her group were booked for an engagement at The Nevada Club in Las Vegas, NV.  During this Marilyn Monroe: Soviet Spy.engagement in September of 1959 she would meet two more individuals central to her history:  Howard Robard Hughes, who would pay the same degree of attention to the nineteen year old beauty that he had to the more jaded movie starlets of his younger years, and Lee Harvey Oswald, whom she would convince to defect from the United States to the Soviet Union.  Using her established friendship with Shaw, Ferrie, and Marcello she helped Oswald leave the country that same month.

But her greatest coup as a Communist recruiter occurred in July of 1960 in Reno, NV.  While performing at the Riverside Hotel she met the famous American playwright and Soviet sympathizer, Arthur Miller, who was in town with his wife, Marilyn Monroe, for the filming of "The Misfits".  Miller, worn from playing nursemaid to his neurotic, drug dependent wife, thought that the sultry teenager might make a perfect companion for Monroe.  Arranging a meeting on the set of the film, Monroe and Ann-Margret became fast friends, and gave Ann-Margret another opportunity to infiltrate Hollywood with her Leninist dogma.  The drug hazed Monroe was an easy target for the wily Ann-Margret, and yet another Soviet spy was born.  Ann-Margret was especially interested in Monroe's "special friend", then Senator John F. Kennedy, and as a result was able to provide Feklisov with reams of information about the future President.Could any heterosexual male resist this face?  Huh?

In May of 1961 Ann-Margret was contracted to record her first signing album by RCA in Nashville, TN.  While in the Volunteer State she was able to meet Elvis Presley.  Although he was taken by her obvious charms, Elvis was obsessed by his hatred for U.S. Maj. Gen. Edwin Anderson Walker, who had humiliated Elvis during his Army service in Germany.  Disappointed by not making an impression on "The King", Ann-Margret made an off-hand suggestion that he hire a hit man and do away with his nemesis.  This blithe comment would later be central point in the plot to kill JFK.

Ann-Margret's greatest disappointment was the apparent suicide of her protégée Monroe on 5 August 1962.  She reluctantly reported the suicide of her most promising operative to Feklisov, who had been promoted to KGB chief in Washington, DC.  But one disappointment was not enough to keep this Mata Hari down for long.  Her performing career was skyrocketing, and she had established herself as a rising movie star.  But more importantly, the connections she had made throughout her life were coming to fruition.  In January of 1963 her friend, Elvis, contacted her to discuss the assassination of Walker.  She suggested contacting another veteran, the now repatriated Oswald, and discussing the attack with him.  Regardless of her best intentions, Oswald botched the job.  That May she was invited to perform in Washington, DC at Kennedy's annual birthday party.  During her stay she consulted with Feklisov.  Central to their discussions was the future of Oswald, who had become an embarrassment to them both.

June 1963 found her back in Las Vegas, preparing for her co-starring rôle with Elvis in Ann-Margret in Cossack boots"Viva Las Vegas".  Again meeting with Hughes, she learned from him that Monroe's suicide was, in fact, a murder conducted by Robert Francis Kennedy and Peter Sydney Lawford at the request of JFK.  Enraged, Ann-Margret began formulating her revenge.  After completion of the film, she seduced and blackmailed Elvis into cooperating with the assassination of the President.  Fearful that his involvement in the aborted Walker assassination would come to light, Elvis agreed to her plans.  Seeing the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, she recommended that Elvis enlist Oswald into the plot, and set him up to take the blame.

Knowledgeable of, but not directly involved in, the assassination plans, Ann-Margret watched from afar as Kennedy was killed in Dallas.  Anticipating that Oswald would contact her for help after his arrest, Ann-Margret had arranged in advance to have an associate of her friend Marcello, Jacob "Jack Ruby" Rubinstein, ready to silence Oswald.  On 24 November 1963 Ruby killed Oswald, eliminating the last loose thread in exposing Ann-Margret's involvement in the assassination plot.


 
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"Can't Help Falling In Love" by Hugo Peretti, Luigi Creatore, & George David Weiss
First recorded by Elvis on "Blue Hawaii" 23 March 1960