Sometimes I will just stumble upon a movie, intending to maybe give it 10 minutes of my attention then find myself hanging on to the end.
One of those movies is Million Dollar Mermaid, a 1952 movie starring Esther Williams. Since it stars Esther Williams, there will be a lot of swimming involved.
Esther Williams was an American competitive swimmer who set multiple national and regional swimming records in her late teens as part of the Los Angeles Athletic Club swim team. When she took up acting, her natural talents in the water made her a perfect match for any movie that involved her character swimming.
And perhaps no role was more apropos to Esther Williams' skill set that portraying Annette Kellerman, an Australian swimming star of the late 19th/early 20th century.
Annette Kellerman herself had her doubts about Esther Williams portraying her on screen; Annette thought Esther was too pretty.
Million Dollar Mermaid follows Annette's story from her polio-stricken childhood where swimming provided needed physical therapy to bolster her health and strength. Her father admires her aptitude for swimming but presses her to pursue a career in dance and music.
A move from Australia to England does not turn out that well for Annette and her father. Needing to bring in some money, Annette takes up an offer from an American promoter Jimmy Sullivan who has a carnival attraction involving a boxing kangaroo that just isn't selling tickets. To get some publicity for the act, Annette agrees to swim the Thames river for 26 miles.
It's soon clear the real draw is the swimming prowess of the beautiful Annette and no so much the boxing kangaroo.
Jimmy thinks they can make a fortune by getting Annette into a water ballet at the Hippodrome in New York City.
The Hippodrome says no so Annette goes to Boston for a highly publicized swim. The one piece bathing suit she wore in Australia and England gets her arrested in Boston for public indecency.
 |
| By the way, here is a photo of the real life Annette Kellerman posing with the compromise swimwear that allowed her to keep in swimming in Boston. |
The arrest and the subsequent trial leads Annette to a popular diving show at a Boston carnival. After a misunderstanding, Jimmy and Annette part ways.
Jimmy hitches his star to a daredevil stunt pilot but the pilot crashes and burns after only 2 days into their act.
The Hippodrome comes calling for Annette and she becomes a star attraction. Scenes of Annette's performances in New York are set to some brilliant choreography by Busby Berkeley.
Success in New York leads to offers to head west and make movies in Hollywood. However, an terrible accident involving a shattering water tank leaves Annette hospitalized, facing an uncertain future of whether she will walk again.
And this is where the movie ends.
Annette is hopeful. The same spirit that saw a young girl with polio become an expert swimmer will lead Annette to recovery from her injuries.
Annette's history almost repeated itself for Esther Williams who broke her neck upon impact while performing the film's signature high dive. She heard her neck pop when she hit the water. When she reached the surface, she could kick her legs, but her upper body was paralyzed and she had to be helped out of the pool. An x-ray revealed she had broken three vertebrae.
In the days before CGI, actors often put themselves at real risk for their roles. None more so, perhaps, than Esther Williams who spent an inordinate amount of time submerged underwater and making dives from enormous heights. It was a steep price to pay for art but one cannot deny the gorgeous work of Esther Williams' swimming expertise.
And Million Dollar Mermaid is an exemplary example of Esther Williams' talent and charm.
No comments:
Post a Comment