Esther Williams

Williams's three gold medals should have guaranteed her a place at the 1940 Pan American games in Buenos Aires, Argentina, but she waited for her invitation in vain. A few weeks after the games, at the 1940 U.S. National championships, Williams learned from another athlete that she had indeed been invited. A stunned Williams confronted the LAAC coach, Aileen Allen, and discovered that Allen had received her invitation but had kept it hidden, fearing that Williams would spend her time in Buenos Aires partying and meeting boys and not training. Furious, Williams quit the LAAC team, forfeiting her chance to defend her titles.

Williams still had a chance to make the 1940 Olympic team, but the outbreak of World War II forced the cancellation of those games. Williams even lost her chance to compete in swimming at the collegiate level when she got a D in her high school algebra class, which made her lose her swimming scholarship to the University of Southern California. Although Williams made up the class at Los Angeles City College, her career in the water had been indefinitely postponed, and she took a job as a stock girl at the upscale I. Magnin department store.

A month after Williams took that job, she received a call from the Aquacade, a swimming and diving show put on by producer Billy Rose at the New York World's Fair. The San Francisco World's Fair had now asked Rose to organize a similar show there. Olympic swimming champion Johnny Weismuller, who had starred in the New York version of the show, would be coming to San Francisco, but Rose needed to find a new female lead to swim opposite him. Rose, who had seen Williams in Life magazine, was in California auditioning swimmers, and he wanted Williams to be the lead. On her lunch break that day, in a swimsuit given to her as a gift from her supervisor at I. Magnin, Williams auditioned for Billy Rose. The next day, Williams left Los Angeles for San Francisco. She was now, before she had even turned eighteen, a professional swimmer.

Williams swam with the Aquacade the entire summer of 1940. She faced sexual harassment from many of the men, old and young, who were involved with the show—not an uncommon fate for female stars at that time, especially single ones. She was also cheated out of much of her salary by her agent. Frustrated at her powerlessness to remedy either situation, Williams agreed to marry a young medical student, Leonard Kovner, whom she had met while attending Los Angeles City College. The two were married between shows on June 27, 1940, shortly before Williams turned 18. Kovner returned to school, and when the Aquacade closed on September 29, 1940, Williams returned to Los Angeles to join him.

The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) studio had sent representatives to the Aquacade to try to recruit her, but Williams turned them down. She went back to her job at I. Magnin and settled into her new life as a wife and soon, she hoped, a mother. However, MGM was not accustomed to people refusing them, and additionally, Williams's marriage to Kovner soon turned rocky. Nearly a year after the end of the Aquacade, Williams finally agreed to meet with the head of MGM, Louis B. Mayer. Kovner and Williams separated over her decision to sign a contract with MGM, but by October of 1941, Williams was ensconced in her own dressing room, earning $350 a week and learning to be an actress.