Today's Bombshell for the Ages made waves in Hollywood as the first lady of the aqua-musical. Esther Williams rose to fame in the forties and fifties through a series of films which featured her either performing in a wide variety of synchronized swimming routines or underwater ballet sequences, swimming the English channel, or even taking part in the odd water skiing number; essentially any sort of aquatic spectacle creative brass at MGM could come up with. There was no other actress in Hollywood did what she did. Let's take a closer look MGM's Million Dollar Mermaid.
Esther Williams was born in Inglewood California in 1922 to Louis and Bula Williams. She was the youngest of five children. As a young girl her older sister took her to the beach and swimming pools where she discovered her love for the water. When she got older she began working as a towel counter at the pool in exchange for the five cent entry fee. There she began taking lessons from the male lifeguard in proper stroke technique. In those days strokes like Breaststroke and the Butterfly were only taught to men, however young Esther convinced the lifeguard to impart his knowledge on these strokes. Before long Esther was setting national records in freestyle an breaststroke. She set the national AAU record in the 100m freestyle in 1939 and would have competed in the 1940 Olympics, had the second world war not broken out.
Once she graduated high school, Esther began attending Los Angeles Community college and working at a department store where she started as a stock girl, and eventually moved into modelling for the store. While working at the department store she was contacted by an agent about appearing in the Billy Rose's Aquacade show (basically a big synchronized swimming extravaganza). While performing with the Aquacade Esther was spotted by MGM scouts who were looking for a female athlete to mould into the next Sonja Henie (a 1930s Olympic figure skater turned Hollywood star). She signed with MGM in exchange for a guarantee that she could swim in the Beverly Hills Hotel pool everyday. She took part in studio training to mould her into a singing, dancing, and acting superstar. As with most burgeoning starlets of the era much of her early time with the studio involved taking plenty of pin-up photos and visiting wounded soldiers in army hospitals as a part of the war effort.
Esther's first film role was opposite Mickey Rooney's eponymous character in
Andy Hardy's Double Life (1942). Her first aquatic role would occur two years later in
Bathing Beauty (1944). She went on star in several other aquatic themed films, each with a bigger better aquatic set piece to outdo the last. Among her most popular include
The Thrill of Romance (1945),
Take Me Out to the Ballgame (1949),
Neptune's Daughter (1949),
Million Dollar Mermaid (1952),
Easy to Love (1953), and
Dangerous When Wet (1953). In spite of her athleticism and skill in the water the underwater feats performed by Esther in her films often took their toll on this aquatic bombshell. She almost drowned on more than one occasions, once due to improper swimming attire (a heavy flannel bathing suit that became so heavy that it dragged Esther to the bottom of the pool) and from not being able to find the trap door to exit an enclosed water tank. She also ruptured her eardrums on several occasions and even broke her neck after attempting an 115 ft drive for the movie
Million Dollar Mermaid (1952). This spinal injury left her in a body cast of 7 months. By the mid-fifties she had fallen out of favour with MGM and left the studio. She signed with Universal International, and made a few non-musical dramatic films. None of the Universal films came close to the success that her films with MGM, and by the sixties she retired from acting.
In the years since her retirement, Ms. Williams has been anything but idle. She is the namesake of both a retro swimwear company and pool manufacturer. She has also created a series of Mom and Tot swimming instructional videos. She currently lives in Beverly Hills with her fourth husband of 16 years.
Here's a little taste of an Esther Williams aqua-musical:
