The movie Tommy debuted on March 19, 1975, in Us. Premiered in UK the 25th. Ken Russell transformed the Who’s 1969 rock opera into one of cinema’s all-time most audacious and incendiary trips.
Ann-Magret played a major role in the film version of Tommy. Subsequently, Pete Townshend discussed why he initially thought her casting in the movie was a bad idea.
Townshend discussed producer Robert Stigwood’s input into Tommy. For context, Stigwood is most known for producing Saturday Night Fever and Grease. “Stiggy set about casting the film with (director) Ken Russell, and I began to interfere,” Townshend wrote.
“I disagreed with them on the inclusion of veteran actor Oliver Reed (playing Tommy’s stepfather), as well as the more Hollywood choices of Ann-Margret and Jack Nicholson,” Townshend continued. “Stiggy’s explanation of the Hollywood star system was succinct and persuasive: ‘We-Have-To-Have-Them.'”
Townshend took issue with Ann-Margret as a singer. “Ann-Margret I knew nothing about, and I thought her voice was too musical theater for Tommy,” he said. “But she convinced me the moment we started to record.”
Townshend appreciated Ann-Margret’s theatricality. “She displayed real passion, a sense of the absurd and an ability to make the songs her own; she sang in a drawling theatrical way — more Ethel Merman than Tina Turner — but it worked well,” he wrote. “And of course she’d been in a movie with Elvis. The Who were small beer in comparison, yet she was respectful, and an amazingly hard worker in the studio.”
For her performance in the movie, Ann-Margret was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She lost to Louise Fletcher for her role as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Townshend eventually embraced Ann-Margret’s casting in Tommy and so did the Academy.
The Who’s other major rock opera, 1973’s Quadrophenia, differs from the fantastical surrealism of Tommy in that it tells the straightforward story of a restless and depressed young man in 1964 London at the time of the Mods vs. Rockers unrest.
The movie versions of each record follow suit: whereas Tommy is all Ken Russell’s brilliant visual fireworks and electrifying musical performances, Quadrophenia, directed by Franc Roddam, is cold, hard, and realistic, and, to be sure, no one breaks into song.
