Esther Jane Williams was an American competitive swimmer and actress.
70 Facts About Esther Williams
2.
Esther Williams set regional and national records in her late teens on the Los Angeles Athletic Club swim team.
3.
Every year from 1945 to 1949, Esther Williams had at least one film among the 20 highest-grossing films of the year.
4.
In 1952, Esther Williams appeared in her only biographical role, as Australian swimming star Annette Kellerman in Million Dollar Mermaid, which went on to become her nickname while she was at MGM.
5.
Esther Williams left MGM in 1956 and appeared in a handful of unsuccessful feature films, followed by several extremely popular water-themed network television specials, including one from Cypress Gardens, Florida.
6.
Esther Jane Williams was born on August 8,1921, in Inglewood, California.
7.
Esther Williams was the fifth and youngest child of Louis Stanton Williams and Bula Myrtle.
8.
Louis Esther Williams purchased a small piece of land in the southwest area of town and had a small house built there.
9.
Esther was born in the living room, which was where the family slept until Louis Williams was able to add bedrooms.
10.
In 1935, Bula Myrtle Esther Williams invited 16-year-old Buddy McClure to live with her family.
11.
Esther Williams was terrified to tell anyone about the incident and waited two years before finally revealing the truth to her parents.
12.
Esther Williams' mother seemed unsure about her story, claiming McClure was "sensitive" and felt sympathetic towards him when he admitted his guilt.
13.
McClure joined the United States Coast Guard, and Esther Williams never saw him again.
14.
Esther Williams took a job counting towels at the pool to pay the five-cent entry fee, and while there, had swimming lessons from the male lifeguards.
15.
Esther Williams graduated from Washington High School in Los Angeles, 1939, where she served as class vice president, and later president.
16.
Esther Williams enrolled in Los Angeles City College to retake the course.
17.
In 1939, Esther Williams expressed interest in pursuing a degree in physical education in order to teach it one day.
18.
The Aquacade was part of the Golden Gate International Exposition, and Esther Williams was partnered with Olympic swimmer and Tarzan star Johnny Weissmuller, who, Esther Williams wrote in her autobiography, repeatedly tried to seduce her.
19.
Esther Williams had planned to compete in the 1940 Summer Olympics, which were cancelled due to the outbreak of World War II.
20.
At this point, Esther Williams had achieved pin-up status because of the number of photographs of her in bathing suits.
21.
Esther Williams invited GIs to dance with her on stage and take part in mock screen tests.
22.
Three weeks after Esther Williams signed her contract, George Sidney directed her first screen test.
23.
Esther Williams screen tested with the leading man, Clark Gable, for the film Somewhere I'll Find You.
24.
Esther Williams had to help Johnson swim, and she placed her hand under his back to keep him afloat.
25.
The studio's publicity department tried to put the two together in public as much as possible in the hopes of encouraging a romance, even though Esther Williams was involved with Gage at the time.
26.
Esther Williams tried a more serious role in The Hoodlum Saint, with William Powell and Angela Lansbury.
27.
Esther Williams appeared in Easy to Wed, a remake of 1936's Libeled Lady, with Johnson and Lucille Ball.
28.
Audiences, and Esther Williams, thought the film was silly, as Esther Williams and Montalban had vastly different accents.
29.
Montalban was born in Mexico and was a native Spanish speaker while Esther Williams had a mid-western accent picked up from her Kansas-born parents.
30.
Esther Williams got into a fight with an employee of the cast's hotel, was arrested, and subsequently thrown out of the country.
31.
In 1948, Esther Williams signed a contract with swimwear company Cole of California to appear as their spokesperson, and Esther Williams and the other swimmers in her films wore Cole swimsuits.
32.
Esther Williams modeled a Cole swimsuit for the Secretary of the Navy and explained that the new swimsuits helped support women's figures.
33.
Esther Williams claimed that Kelly and co-writer Stanley Donen treated her with contempt and went out of their way to make jokes at her expense.
34.
Esther Williams made Neptune's Daughter around the same time with co-stars Ricardo Montalban, Red Skelton and Betty Garrett, who had been in Take Me Out to the Ball Game.
35.
Esther Williams made Duchess of Idaho, shot on location in Sun Valley, Idaho, co-starring Van Johnson and John Lund.
36.
In Million Dollar Mermaid, Esther Williams portrayed Annette Kellermann, a real-life Australian swimming and diving star.
37.
Esther Williams co-starred with Victor Mature, who played Kellermann's husband and manager, James Sullivan.
38.
Esther Williams often called this her favorite film and named her autobiography after it.
39.
Esther Williams was pregnant during shooting, but still performed all her own waterskiing stunts.
40.
Esther Williams's part had to be rewritten to persuade him to take part in the film.
41.
In 1953, Esther Williams had been on maternity leave for three months while pregnant with daughter Susan, and assumed she would go straight to work on the film Athena when she returned.
42.
Esther Williams subsequently recovered, although she continued to suffer headaches as a result of the accident.
43.
Esther Williams nearly drowned after not being able to find the trapdoor in the ceiling of a tank.
44.
Esther Williams was pulled out only because a member of the crew realized the door was not opening.
45.
Esther Williams redecorated her dressing room to accommodate returning star Grace Kelly, packed her terry cloth robes and swimsuits and drove off the studio lot.
46.
Esther Williams was still able to collect on the $50,000 signing bonus from when she first signed her contract.
47.
Esther Williams later admitted that husband Fernando Lamas preferred her not to continue in films.
48.
In 1966, Esther Williams was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame.
49.
Esther Williams retired from acting in the early 1960s and later turned down the role of Belle Rosen, a character with a crucial swimming scene, in The Poseidon Adventure.
50.
Esther Williams continued to lend her name to a line of retro women's swimwear.
51.
Esther Williams was the namesake of a company that manufactures swimming pools and swimming pool accessories.
52.
Esther Williams came out with a line of Swim, Baby, Swim videos, which helped parents teach their children how to swim.
53.
Esther Williams appeared as a commentator for synchronized swimming at the 1984 Summer Olympics.
54.
Esther Williams met her fourth husband as a result of his calling her to coordinate her appearance.
55.
Esther Williams co-wrote her autobiography, The Million Dollar Mermaid, with popular media critic and author Digby Diehl.
56.
In June 2008, Esther Williams was able to attend Cyd Charisse's funeral, albeit in a wheelchair.
57.
Esther Williams met her first husband, Leonard Kovner, while attending Los Angeles City College.
58.
Esther Williams loved me, or so he said, and even asked me to marry him.
59.
Gage and Esther Williams separated in 1952, and divorced in April 1959.
60.
Esther Williams disclosed in her autobiography that she had an affair with actor Victor Mature while they were working on Million Dollar Mermaid, citing that at the time her marriage was in trouble and, feeling lonely, she turned to Mature for love and affection, and he gave her all she wanted.
61.
The affair stopped while Esther Williams was recovering from her fall during the shooting of Million Dollar Mermaid.
62.
Esther Williams claims in her autobiography that Chandler was a cross-dresser and that she broke off the relationship.
63.
Esther Williams later claimed that for 13 years she lived in total submission to him.
64.
Esther Williams had to stop being "Esther Williams" and could not have her children live with her.
65.
Esther Williams resided in Beverly Hills with actor husband Edward Bell, whom she married on October 24,1994.
66.
Esther Williams called his doctor and made an appointment for her.
67.
Esther Williams died in her sleep on June 6,2013, from natural causes, in her Los Angeles home.
68.
Esther Williams was cremated, and her ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean.
69.
Esther Williams left her hand and footprints in front of the Grauman's Chinese Theatre on August 1,1944.
70.
Esther Williams donated her personal film archive, including twenty home movies, to the Academy Film Archive.