Last week I posted the opening credits to the sub-Bond spy film The Liquidator, featuring the amazing theme song composed and orchestrated by Lalo Schifrin and sung by Shirley Bassey. Here’s another favorite—and also very Sixties—title sequence and song, Ann-Margret’s va-va-voomy vamping that opens The Swinger.

In The Swinger, Ann-Margret plays “Kelly Olsson” (her actual last name) a would-be writer of racy stories for a men’s magazine. Annoyed that they won’t publish her work, innocent small town girl Kelly concocts a “swinging” public persona for herself that she then has to try to live up to, for instance, throwing a staged orgy that ends up with her covered in psychedelic paint (and then arrested).
 

 
I have no proof of this, but I would imagine that the term “sex kitten” was probably first coined to describe Ann-Margret. And if it wasn’t, well… it should have been.

If this clip reminds you of Bye Bye Birdie, there’s a good reason for that, it’s the same director, George Sidney (who also directed Ann-Margret and Elvis in Viva Las Vegas) and cinematographer, Joseph Biroc, who did her iconic pre-credits dance number in that film. Sidney took thousands of 35mm photographs for the montage sequences in The Swinger.