Wet, she was a star. Esther Williams, famous for extravagant water-borne movie musicals of the 1940s and 50s, has died:
The water, Esther Williams once quipped, was her favorite costar.
With her beauty, sunny personality and background as a champion swimmer, Williams shot to stardom in the 1940s in the “aqua musical,” an odd sub-genre of films that became an enormous hit with the moviegoing mainstream, fanned popular interest in synchronized swimming and turned Williams into Hollywood’s Million Dollar Mermaid.
The MGM bathing beauty, whose underwater extravaganzas made her one of the most popular actresses of the era, an idol in competitive swimming and a fashion force, died in her sleep early Thursday in Beverly Hills, said her publicist, Harlan Boll. She was 91.
My wife tells me that her autobiography is very frank.
My dad used to say she was his favorite movie star. I think he admired her beauty, figure, and athleticism. There’s a wonderful, glamorous picture of her at the Entertainment Weekly site that should give you the general idea. She probably did more to popularize synchronized swimming than anybody including Annette Kellerman who first popularized it in 1907 and whom Ms. Williams portrayed in Million Dollar Mermaid. I doubt we’ll ever see anyone like her or her movies again.
As a man who likes women, I think that is a great picture.
That particular picture is a neat illustration of what a good glamour photographer can do. Esther Williams had broad, muscular shoulders as one might expect from a swimmer and her pose minimizes that, making her look a bit slimmer. She had a wonderful face and a great attitude and the lighting and angle capitalize on those.