Esther Williams Biography - Learning To Swim, A Career Change, Chronology, Becomes A Movie Star, Awards And Accomplishments - CONTACT INFORMATION, SELECTED WRITINGS BY WILLIAMS:

Esther Williams - Learning To Swim

Williams was born in a tiny house in southwestern Los Angeles, California, on August 8, 1922. She was the youngest of Louis Stanton Williams and Bula Myrtle Gilpin Williams's five children, and the only one of the bunch to have been born in California. The family had moved there after their oldest child, Stanton, became an actor at the age of six. The boy used to sneak into the theater in S…

Esther Williams - A Career Change

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…

Esther Williams - Chronology

Esther Williams - Becomes A Movie Star

Williams's first screen role was in Andy Hardy's Double Life. The Andy Hardy movies were lighthearted fare about a teenage boy and his family. The series, although formulaic, had already proved to be a major success for MGM, and the studio often used roles in these films as tests for up-and-coming starlets. Williams passed with flying colors. Audiences loves the scene where she kisse…

Esther Williams - Awards And Accomplishments

Esther Williams - Related Biography: Swimmer Annette Kellerman

If Esther Williams was the mother of synchronized swimming, Annette Kellerman was its grandmother. Williams was aware of this, and she had great respect for Kellerman, even titling her autobiography Million Dollar Mermaid after the movie she made about Kellerman's life. Kellerman's career paralleled Williams's in many ways. Like Williams, Kellerman began as a swimmer, became a…

Esther Williams - Box Office Hits

In her next few movies, Williams played roles as varied as a rich young lady suing a newspaper for libel (Easy to Wed), a woman who breaks into bullfighting by pretending to be her brother (Fiesta), a movie star (On an Island with You), and a swimsuit designer (Neptune's Daughter), but all of them were variations on the same romantic theme. The films were not all critical successes, but by …

Esther Williams - Personal Problems

This was not the first disaster or near-disaster Williams had undergone while working on a movie. While filming Pagan Love Song, she had almost been dashed to pieces against some coral while filming a scene on an outrigger canoe, and she filmed the second half of On an Island with You on crutches after she sprained her ankle falling into a hole. The script called for her to fall in, but the set de…

Esther Williams - Where Is She Now?

Esther Williams - Williams The Swimsuit Designer

At the time that Williams first became a star, women's swimsuit design was still in its infancy. Lycra and other stretchable materials had not yet been invented, and wool was still a common swimsuit component. The costume designers at MGM had had little practice in designing swimwear for films, and their results, although creative, were often highly impractical, with sometimes disastrous re…

Esther Williams - Godmother To A Sport

Esther Williams - Further Information

Bawden, Liz-Ann, editor. The Oxford Companion to Film. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976. Contemporary Authors, Detroit: Gale, 2000. Halliwell, Leslie. Halliwell's Filmgoer's Companion, Ninth Edition. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1988. Williams, Esther, and Digby Diehl. Million Dollar Mermaid. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999. Agins, Teri. "Can Esther…