A Bombshell for the Ages: Esther Williams

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:

A Bombshell for the Ages: Pam Grier - A Whole 'Lotta Bombshell

If you were to look up amazonian beauty in the dictionary, you would probably find a picture of Pam Grier.  The first lady of seventies blaxploitation films and one of cinema's all-time badasses, Ms. Grier has led a remarkable life and has left an indelible legacy on the world of film.

An army brat, born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina on May 26, 1949, Pamela Suzette Grier spent most of her childhood on the move, living in various locales in the United States and spending some time in England.  At the age of 6 she was raped by two boys while left unattended at her aunt's house.  She spent many years dealing with the pain and it could be argued that her anger this experience helped her to form the take no-prisoners attitude that many of the characters she would go on to play in her films exhibit.  Her family finally settled in Denver, Colorado during her high school years, and she spent much of this time taking part in various stage productions.  She also took part in a beauty pageant to help raise tuition money for college.

In 1967, Pam decided to try her luck in Hollywood.  She found a job as a receptionist at American International Pictures (AIP), a production company that focused primarily on the production of low budget drive-in movies, B-movies, and exploitation films.  While working for AIP, she was soon discovered by director Jack Hill, who cast Grier in his women-in-prison flicks, The Big Doll House (1971) and The Big Bird Cage (1972).  With the emergence of blaxploitation films, Ms. Grier soon became of staple of the genre.  Her larger-than-life statuesque beauty combined with her bold, assertive persona made her a natural for the titular role in Coffy (1973) where she played a vengeful nurse trying to take out a crew of drug dealers.  She would go on to play similar roles in Foxy Brown (1974), Friday Foster (1975), and Sheba Baby (1975).

With the demise of the blaxploitation genre in the second half of the seventies, Ms. Grier moved on to play a number of one-off character roles in various films (such as 1981's Fort Apache the Bronx, 1988's Above the Law, and 1991's Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure) and television series (The Cosby Show, Miami Vice, and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air to name a few).

It was Quentin Tarantino who launched Pam Grier back into the spotlight when he cast her as the lead in his low-key (for Tarantino) crime thriller Jackie Brown (1997).  Since this resurgence Ms. Grier has worked steadily in film and television.  Though she has had dalliances with many notable men including Kareem Abdul-Jabar and Richard Pryor, she never married and has no children.

A Bombshell for the Ages: Maureen O'Hara

Just in time for St. Patrick's Day we turn our eyes to the Emerald Isle to find a classic Irish bombshell: Ms. Maureen O'Hara.  Born Maureen FitzSimons in Dublin Ireland in 1920, Maureen always had aspirations towards the stage and screen.  As a child she trained in dance, drama, and music at the Abbey Theatre.  At the age of 10 she joined Rathmines Theatre Company for further training and took part in amateur theatre productions in evenings after her studies.  In spite of her determination to become a working actress her father insisted that she learn some practical skill in case her performing career did not take off, so she enrolled in business school and became a proficient typist and book keeper.  

Fortunately, her business school training turned out to be unnecessary when a London studio asked her to film a screen test.  Though the test was initially dismissed by studio heads, famed British actor Charles Laughton saw something in it and encouraged the studio to sign Maureen.  She was soon signed to a seven year contract, with her first screen appearance starring opposite Laughton in Alfred Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn (1938).  Laughton was so impressed by Maureen that they co-starred in a second picture, The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1939, which was filmed in Hollywood.  This and the outbreak of the second world war was the turning point in bringing and keeping her in the United States.  

Because it was unsafe to shoot films in London, Maureen's London contract was sold to RKO studios soon after shooting on the Hunchback was completed.  She spent her first few years in Hollywood starring in low budget films and would have kept doing so had she not caught the attention of director John Ford, who cast her in his Academy Award winning film, How Green Was My Valley (1941).  She would go on to partner with John Ford and one of his favourite actors John Wayne in Rio Grande (1950), The Quiet Man (1952), and The Wings of Eagles (1957).  Her chemistry with Wayne offscreen was indicative of the easy friendship between the two in real life.  While her work with Ford and Wayne were important milestones for Maureen, her two most recognizable roles playing firry independent mothers in family favourites Miracle on 34th Street (1947) and The Parent Trap (1961).  

Though best known for her acting, Ms. O'Hara has often said that singing is her first love, a talent she displayed in film and television appearances during the late fifties and sixties.  She has released two albums of music.  

She married three times, her third husband transatlantic aviator Charles F. Blair Jr. passing away in an air accident in 1978.  Though she retired a few years after her 1968 marriage to Blair, she made a small comeback in 1991's Only The Lonely, starring as John Candy's domineering mother.  She went on to make several small appearances in made-for-tv movies during the nineties.  She has since slowed down her acting again and now splits her time between homes in Arizona, The Virgin Islands, and Cork Ireland.  

A Bombshell for the Ages: Bettie Page

While on the subject of the pin-up, we certainly cannot forget the women whose name is synonymous with the art form - the inimitable Bettie Page.

Bettie Page was born in Nashville TN. on April 22, 1923, the second child of six in a family who wandered the United States in search of economic stability.  Bettie was often tasked with taking care of her younger siblings and performing household chores.  Once her parents divorced Bettie became the primary caretaker while her mother worked to make ends meet.  At the age of ten, the burden of family finances became too great and her mother was forced to leave Bettie and two of her sisters at an orphanage.

In spite of early hardships, Bettie was a bright, ambitious teenager who got good grades, volunteered with several school clubs including the school paper and student council.  She graduated at the top of her class, and as the class Salutatorian won a $100 scholarship from Peabody College, where she studied education and earned her Bachelor of Art degree in 1943.  That year, she also married her first husband, Billy Neal.  They soon moved to San Francisco, and over the next few years bounced around the country.   Bettie divorced Billy in 1947 and moved to New York where she dreamed of becoming an actress.

While walking the beaches of Coney Island in 1950 she met a cop/amateur photographer, Jerry Tibbs, who helped Bettie but together her first pin-up portfolio and introduced her to several other photographers, who all wanted to work with her.  Before long her pictures were appearing in all sorts of popular girlie magazines of the era.  Ms. Page won the title of "Miss Pinup Girl of the World" in 1955 and was the January centrefold of Playboy magazine that same year.

In addition to her pin-up photographs, the ever uninhibited Ms. Page modelled for fetish photographs wearing a wide array of bondage gear and posing in various scenes of dominance and submission.  She also appeared in several short fetish films that could be attained through mail order catalogues at the time.  It was her participation in such activities that led her to be named in a Senate investigation after a young man died during a bondage session.  The American Congress called Bettie to testify regarding the photographs that she appeared in.  As a result of these hearings, many of the pictures, and the negatives that produced them, featuring Bettie were destroyed.  Any negatives that remained were illegal to print for years after that.

Outside of her modelling career, Bettie made a few appearances as an actress in a couple of off Broadway productions and some television shows.  She decided to leave New York and modelling in 1957, moving to Florida where she eventually became a born-again Christian and faded into obscurity.  During the 80s and 90s she her photograph made a resurgence and she has since taken her rightful place as a pin-up legend.  Bettie Page passed away on December 8, 2008.

Here's a video of Bettie dancing:

Happy New Year!

We're already a couple of days into 2011- where does the time go?  Now that the holidays are over and we're all back to real life again, our commitment to providing Edmonton with a fresh alternative to average, boring photography is stronger than ever.

Whether it's a gift for that special someone (Valentine's Day is a little more than a month away, ladies), a fun way to commemorate a special event, or just as a treat for oneself, Bombshell Photography Inc. is here to blow all expectations out of the water.  For more detailed information about our photography services please visit our main site at www.photobombshell.com.

To all those who follow the blog, we will continue to write about the various topics that fascinate and inspire us.

At any rate, 2011 looks to be another exciting year!

Today is Rita Hayworth's 92nd Birthday!

That's right!  Were she alive today, the legendary Love Goddess, would be celebrating her 92nd birthday.  You'll be hearing a lot more about the great Ms. Hayworth in the future, but today let's all raise a glass for the woman whose picture was said to be glued to the atom bomb that was dropped on Bikini Atoll.

Cheers Rita!

A Bombshell for the Ages: Kim Novak

Marilyn Pauline Novak, more famously known as Kim Novak, has a rare indefinable beauty that enthralled audiences of the 1950s.  A combination of cool refinement and a sensuality that simmered just below the surface, she was known to many as the Lavender Blonde, mainly due to the studio mandated blue tone in her blond hair and her remote persona.  A persona that had never been seen in Hollywood and never been duplicated.  Unfortunately for Kim, her stunning beauty often obscured the fact that she was a very talented actress.

Born in Chicago, in 1933, to second generation Czech-immigrants, Ms. Novak began her career as a model, first modeling teen fashions and later touring the United States as Miss Deep Freeze, the spokesmodel for an appliance company.  She was discovered by Columbia Studios after moving to Los Angeles in 1953 and signed to a brief six-month contract, with hopes that she would become Columbia’s answer to Marilyn Monroe.  The studio’s first point of business was to change her name, so as not to be confused with Miss Monroe.  The studio’s original suggestion was Kit Marlowe, however Novak was adamant about keeping part of her name and they soon settled on the moniker Kim Novak. 

In her first couple of roles, Kim was cast as a sexpot femme fatale, which instantly caught audience’s attention and led to a remarkable amount of fan mail.  Columbia, then cast Kim in her breakthrough role as Madge Owens opposite William Holden and Rosalind Russell in 1955’s Picnic.  During the next couple of years Kim starred in several hits including The Man With The Golden Arm, Pal Joey (both opposite Frank Sinatra), and Jeanne Eagles.  Audiences couldn’t get enough of Kim’s enigmatic persona. 

Kim’s career would reach an apex in 1958, when she was cast in Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece, Vertigo, giving a performance that was maligned when the film was released, but would later be reassessed and branded brilliant by critics and fans alike.  She also earned the ire of director Alfred Hitchcock, who considered her habit of not wearing a bra vulgar, and detested her constant questions and input into his film. That same year she was cast as a seductive witch opposite her Vertigo co-star, the great James Stewart, in Bell, Book, and Candle.  Both Vertigo and Bell, Book, and Candle had lackluster box-office returns, marking a decline for Kim that continued throughout the rest of the fifties and early sixties. 

By 1965, Kim had grown restless in her role as a movie star, and decided to take a break from acting and focus on some of her other interests.  She made intermittent returns to the screen between the late sixties and early nineties, but her love of art (she is an accomplished painter, sculptress, and poet) and animals (she lives on a ranch with her veterinarian husband) have since ruled her life.   

Now 77, she still maintains that indefinable quality that makes her so compelling.  Most recently she made an appearance at the Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles last August for a special screening of Bell, Book, and Candle and to promote The Kim Novak Collection on DVD.  It’s an awesome collection that I would recommend to any Kim Novak enthusiast.

A Bombshell for the Ages: Ava Gardner

Few women made the kind of impression that Ava Gardner did on the world.  Born on Christmas Eve on 1922, Ava Lavinia Gardner rose to fame in 1946 with a career-making role as femme fatale Kitty Collins in Robert Siodmak’s noir classic The Killers.  From that moment on the skies were the limit for Ava, and with her extraordinary good looks and often overlooked talent she became one of the great Hollywood stars of the late forties and fifties.

Ava was discovered in 1941 when a picture of her displayed in the window of her brother-in-law’s photography studio led to her being signed to a seven-year contract with MGM.  Once in Hollywood the studio went to work grooming Ms. Gardner to be a star.  During this time she also caught the attention of Mickey Rooney, whom she married soon after her arrival.  A year later they divorced, and she became involved for a brief time with Howard Hughes and later married bandleader Artie Shaw.  While on contract to MGM in the early stages of her career she was cast in bit parts, and spent a great deal of time posing for cheesecake pin-up photos for the studio.  Although, Ava’s photos never found the popularity of the iconic Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth pictures, her stunning beauty made them something special. 

Once her career took off after The Killers, and her marriage to Artie Shaw ended, Ava had many affairs with some of her famous leading men.  However it was her legendary affair and marriage to Frank Sinatra that immortalized Ava Gardner in the annals of great Hollywood beauties.  Theirs was a relationship of great intensity, made up of passionate love and volatile fighting.  Ultimately their marriage ended in 1957 after their long history of violent blow-ups had taken their final toll.  It is said that Ava was the great love of Sinatra’s life and he carried a torch for her up until his death.  The same has been said for Ava, who never remarried.

After her break-up with Sinatra, Ava left Hollywood for Spain where she befriended Ernest Hemmingway, became an avid fan of bullfighting (and bullfighters), took to drinking and dancing all night with bands of Gypsies, and became known for a wide range of bad behavior.  By the early sixties she was appearing in fewer pictures, and once Spain had lost its appeal she moved to London where she lived until her death in 1990. 

Some of Ava’s most famous films include Showboat, Snows of Kilimanjaro, Night of the Iguana, and Mogambo, for which she earned her only Oscar nomination.  Those who knew her loved her for her warmth, quick wit and salty language.   She was truly a bombshell for the ages. 

The Alberta Film Society is currently holding an eight film retrospective for famed director John Ford.  His 1952 film, Mogombo, staring Ava Gardner will be featured on October 18, 2010.  For more information visit their site at http://www.royalalbertamuseum.ca/events/movies/movies.cfm.

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This is the more casual side of Bombshell Photography, where we talk about photography, retro icons, fashion, films, television, art or anything else that catches our fancy. The conversation may inevitably fall in to the realm of personal matters, and we may from time to time use the blog to showcase some of our recent photographs, or update you on what is going on in the Bombshell Photography universe. Whatever we come up with, we hope that you will enjoy it and visit the blog regularly!

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