Movie Biography: Million Dollar Mermaid

1952 Biography

From Metro Goldwyn Mayer

Directed by Mervyn LeRoy

Starring

Esther Williams

Victor Mature

Walter Pidgeon

David Brian

Jesse White

Donna Corcoran

Maria Tallchief

Once, a very long time ago in a land called Hollywood (actually Culver City), there was a studio named Metro Golden Mayer.  It was the glamor studio and usually led the way.  Nonetheless, its eagle eyes were always watching competitors and if the other guy looked to be getting ahead in some ways, MGMers got to work doing what needed to be done to outshine them.   It never had a problem facing down the opposition and they never ran out of dreams.

Case in point.  Just up the road from MGM was 20th Century Fox which was making a fortune off Swedish ice skater Sonya Henie's movies, who, in turn, was living the high life.

Enter Esther Williams.  She was already a bright swimming star in the L.A. area.  She'd not considered an acting career but she became awfully glad someone else had.  MGM refurbished their Tarzan lake and installed an Olympic-size swimming pool in its place and gave her more control over her films than most actresses got. 

She was far better looking than Henie and somehow her MGM-colorful aquacades were far more appealing than Henie's black and white spins and jumps.  In short order, Williams became the highest-paid actress on the lot.  

She would make 21 movies for Leo the lion before she and her films became passe but they were generally outrageously popular with the public.  Featured were a number of swimming scenes, often with her male costar, and always at least one water spectacular that left audiences dizzy with excitement.  The truth is, however, almost without exception, the plots of her films were not very good. 

Williams and the studio's writers were trying to iron out something more substantive for their wet moneymaker beyond the fluff of her other movies.  She knew of Australian swimming star Annette Kellermann's story and asked MGM to buy the rights to her life story.  They did so, doused it with a fair amount of fiction, titled it Million Dollar Mermaid and it became Esther's best movie.  It's the only Esther Williams swimming movie that will be showcased in these pages.  Trust me.

As Annette Kellermann (1887-1975) became more and more proficient, she put on swimming and diving exhibitions.  Australia was too small to hold her talent so she moseyed on over to Europe and America and became a vaudeville star, movie star and writer.  Along the way she was also one of the first women to wear a one-piece bathing suit (shocking!) and one of the first to attempt to swim the English Channel.  She also helped popularize synchronized swimming.

The real Annette Kellermann

In 1916 she became the first woman to appear nude in a movie, A Daughter of the Gods.  Billed as Australia's perfect woman, she performed her own stunts in movies, most notably diving from 92 feet into the sea and 60 feet into a pool of crocodiles.  Her time as a movie star and after are not part of the MGM screenplay.

The film opens with Donna Corcoran as the young Annette in Sydney,  dreaming of becoming a ballerina but suffering with polio.  In an effort to strengthen her legs she swims.  She is so good at it and does it so often that she shakes off her braces and decides to enter swimming contests which she wins.  Her father (Pidgeon) has been eyeing a music conservatorship in London and father and daughter (Williams at this point) move there.

On the ship she runs into promotor Jimmy Sullivan (Mature) always hustling for a new act to shove down the throats of a gullible public.  He and his partner Doc (White) are currently representing a boxing kangaroo who's on board and creating havoc outside his cage.  It looks like love at first sight for both (Kellermann would one day marry Sullivan) but when her dad overhears the wooing, he quickly rushes his daughter away, yelling back at Sullivan that she is going to study ballet.

Pidgeon, Williams and Mature

As they fall in love, in full view is his audacity, slickness, the big smile, the bragging, the arm around the shoulder, the promise of some paychecks for all.  The one thing that is without artifice is his love for the Australian Mermaid.  That's what she'll be called when he plans out her ascent.  He's fun to watch as played by Mature whose wry humor keeps the screenplay moving along.

Annette/Williams would likely give it all up before it even starts for home and hearth and a couple of kids with Jimmy/Mature but she knows he wants her to succeed and in her doing so, he will as well.

He comes up with a six-mile swim on the Thames with him and Doc in a rowboat.  Let's give 'em something worth their time, she says. I'll swim 26.  It worked in that it gave her some name recognition beyond Australia.  

Jimmy manages to get them to Boston for a swimming event at Revere Beach.  As he and Annette are walking through the crowds on the beach, there are great gasps over her one-piece swimming suit (she's wearing an open robe over it).  By the time she makes it to the water's edge, a cop is there to arrest her.  This was the most outrageous event since the Tea Party.

The happy couple ends up in a squabble over two things.  One is that Annette finds out Jimmy staged the arrest and resultant publicity and she is upset that he has gone too far.  Secondly her new popularity has resulted in an offer to do a lecture tour where she will discuss the new freedoms for women and Jimmy is now upset because she plans to do it without his consent.  The pair breaks up. 

As it happens, Annette is contacted by Alfred Harper (Davd Brian), who runs the Hippodrome and who previously declined to hire her, and now he wants her to star in a behemoth water spectacular on his famous stage.  When Jimmy hears of it, he feels more alienated.  Before long Harper has fallen in love with her.  The few times she sees Jimmy, it's apparent they still have feelings for one another but his snide remarks keep the relationship from moving forward.

All of the film's water sequences (minus the Thames swim... or, er, um, Esther's MGM pool) come after the Hippodrome.  The two big spectaculars, titled Fountain and Smoke, are presented almost back-to-back and of course are the highlights of the movie.  Smoke is hands down the best water sequence Williams would ever do.  It featured a galaxy of swimmers & divers, women and men, who perform a water ballet, shoot down long slides on their feet into the water and come out of billows of colorful smoke on 12 trapezes in rotating groups, diving into the water.  More on the Fountain number shortly.

Annette breaks her neck in a benefit show.  One of the aquarium's glass panels shatters and the water pours in torrents into the auditorium, Annette comes spilling out along with various set pieces.  They say she may never swim again but when Jimmy shows up at her hospital bed, we're just sure she will rally.  (In real life, Annette and Jimmy would be married 63 happy years and she would die five days after he did in 1975.)

 

Esther does it with a smile.  There's that big, toothy smile as she slides underwater and there it is again as she comes back up.  Every hair is always in place (via Vaseline?).  Tall and statuesque, she is downright regal when standing on her tiptoes.  She must have the best breath control in the business.  She could seemingly stay underwater forever... engaged in ballets, comedy, kissing scenes, whatever imaginative things that occurred to them.  Esther was always game.  Worth noting is the fact that she didn't always do her own diving due to the pain caused by punctured eardrums.

In the Fountain number, she should have said no to something and it did occur to her as she began her dive but it was too late.  What she realized was that a gold turban with a crown attached to it on her head was too heavy and she hit the water with such an impact that she felt a pop.  She had fractured three vertebrae and was hospitalized and off the film for around six months.  Production had to be shut down.  There was little that could be done without the star.

It's amazing that Williams maintained such a high regard for the film considering such a serious accident.  But one imagines that along with a better screenplay than she'd ever known there was her romance with Victor Mature.  She's very candid about it in her autobiography.  It lasted from the start of the shoot until her accident.  Afterwards, they still remained warm friends.

A lovely romance she would purr

Both were unhappily married and would be divorcing their spouses.  Old Vic was always willing to be of service to his female costars.  Hiring him had been Esther's idea.  She managed to get MGM to borrow him from 20th Century Fox.  She always had a say-so in who would be swimming opposite her.  She likely expected he would be looking his muscly best having just buffed up for Samson and Delilah.  There's no way she hadn't heard of Mature's attentiveness to his leading ladies.  I'm guessing our million dollar mermaid was looking to do a deep dive with the accommodating Samson.   

She said it was not difficult to tell by watching their love scenes that they'd done some extra rehearsing.  It's pretty obvious... especially that kiss at the dressing room door.  I have a feeling someone yelling cut was ignored.

Both of them give performances that are perfect for the film.  Both had played these kinds of roles before and knew their ways around all the sentiment.  I always thought she was a better actress than she'd perhaps been given credit for and never particularly understood why her later dramatic turn didn't gain any momentum.  

Pidgeon isn't giving a lot to do but his presence always provided a little more interest in the characters he was portraying.  I loved his calming voice and honored his stateliness.

Mervyn LeRoy asked the bosses for an easy assignment after the arduous shooting on Quo Vadis.  That response became Mermaid.  Williams knew and liked him from seeing him around the studio but ultimately she said she didn't know what he did.  She thought he took it easy alright.  

She was glad that during negotiations she insisted that the studio asked terror extraordinaire and choreography genius Busby Berkeley to stage the water extravaganzas.  His signature work is apparent which, in turn, is why these numbers are so brilliantly staged.  Swimming caps off to Audrene Brier who did the underwater photography.  

Kellermann, Berkeley & Williams 

In the above photo, Williams is wearing the infamous crown.  She asked the studio to invite Kellermann to watch the filming.  She enjoyed meeting Williams although she thought she was much too beautiful to be playing her.  She also wished she'd be played by an Australian.  

The film, thoroughly entertaining, colorful, lightweight fare, was a rollicking financial success and was not particularly butchered by the critics.  Its biographical nature undoubtedly softened Williams's harsher critics.  Hollywood would forever after refer to her as the Million Dollar Mermaid and it caught on with the international press.  And Williams, of course, liked her new moniker well enough to use it as the title of her 1999 autobiography.