Book review – “Million Dollar Mermaid” by Esther Williams

Million dollar whiner, more likely. This bio of the famous star, a genuine box office giant for a few years after World War Two with her aquatic musicals (considered the second if not third tier of the classic MGM musicals) is fascinating – the mere concept of Esther Williams alone is fascinating – but also reveals Esther to be a real whiner.

She whines her family didn’t love her enough, she missed out on the Olympics, she was sexually harassed by Johnny Weismuller (sounds believable), sexually harassed by just about everyone , had a lousy job, joined MGM who gave her a hard time, made films which was really really hard, never got respect from Louis B Mayer but he was better than Dore Schary who was awful (because he gave Athena to Jane Powell and tried to get Stanley Donen to direct a film with her – how evil!), had lousy plots, got a hard time from Debroah Kerr about her films, married a dull doctor who didn’t want kids, then married an alcoholic gambler, then married a former film star who wouldn’t let her see her kids, had directors who didn’t care, had agents who didn’t care, etc, etc.

Williams goes on and on about having to do everything for herself, as if the world owed her a living – she achieved so much on her own but doesn’t seem to take much enjoyment out of it, except when she talks about swimming, for which she seems to have had a genuine love. This book could have used a few more laughs. Instead we get lots of bitching and talks about erections, particularly Fernando Lamas’.

I mean, I liked it, particularly evocation of MGM at the time, portraits of directors like I-don’t-care Mervyn Le Roy, just-shoot-it Richard Thorpe (who Esther tries to slag but he comes across quite engaging, hating actors and asking Esther not to be too cheerful in the morning) and boozing Busby Berkeley (the one filmmaker she seemed to really respect), plus producers like Sam Katz (who tried to get her in to bed all the time but actually did a lot of good for her career) and the bland leading men she was saddled with including Peter Lawford and Ricardo Montalban. I just wished she took a walk on the sunny side every now and then – no one made her marry three duds (she stuck with number two and three a long time), or lose all her money (she could have kept an eye on it). How about a few laughs?

What makes her a bitch in particular is her reaction when she discovered Jeff Chandler was a cross dresser – although they’d gone out for years, he was a lovely guy, etc, he liked to wear a dress and Esther freaked out, told him to see a therapist. What a cow. Aussies will find interesting the section on making Million Dollar Mermaid (Annette Kellerman met her and said she wished Esther was Australian – good on you, Annette)