Not since David Niven wrote the bestselling The Moon's a Balloon and its sequel Bring on the Empty Horses has one of Hollywood's great stars written with such genuine wit and candor about
* what it was like to work in the movie factories where actors were pampered and coddled, yet expected to work without complaint for long, hard hours
* what it was like to be young and sexy and to be turned into an object of desire for millions of moviegoers
* what it was like to live in a world of almost total unreality, yet be expected to go about the business of finding a mate and raising a family, and avoiding personal scandal at all costs.
Now, for the hundreds of thousands of people who read and loved both of Niven's books, comes Esther Williams's wonderfully witty, fresh, and frank autobiography, all about an eighteen-year-old girl who reluctantly answers the siren call of MGM -- at the time, the most powerful and prestigious movie studio in the world -- and who soon finds herself launched on a career that will last more than twenty years, during which time she will help to create a genre of film that seems almost unimaginable today, yet which still holds all its original freshness and fascination, and who becomes during those years one of the world's top box office stars.
Williams calls MGM her "university," and the education she got there was one in how to project glamour and femininity, how to make yourself desirable while always, always playing the lady. No one who went through that university has ever written with such absolute candor about what it was really like -- the affairs, the gossip, the tricks of the trade, the competition, the deals, the fights, and the methods studios used to keep their stars in line.
With a sharp mind and rapier wit, Esther Williams brings those times and those bigger-than-life people to life, telling her stories with respect, yet with clear-eyed candor. Filled with behind-the-scenes gossip and real-life tales from a fantasy world, The Million Dollar Mermaid is the book legions of film fans have been waiting for.
Williams' as-told-to autobiography sparkles with snappy wit and showbiz flair from the opening chapter's ringing endorsement of LSD to her concluding realization of what a darned fine life it has been. The sparkle persists even during descriptions of being raped at age 13; the post-MGM years, when parts (sets and costumes, too) became more modest and infrequent; and the ins and outs of four marriages. Williams interacted memorably with Red Skelton, George Burns, Busby Berkeley, Louella Parsons, and King Juan Carlos of Spain. She reports getting on Joan Crawford's "shit list for life" --not a particularly difficult accomplishment--and her thoughts on Carole Landis' suicide and Rex Harrison's involvement with it. Her LSD connection came when, in a sad state after divorce from husband number two and some related financial reverses, Williams read about Cary Grant's successful psychotherapeutic experience with the hallucinogen. Grant was reluctant to refer Williams, though, because LSD was then "only being used on an experimental basis. You'd have to be as desperate as [Grant] was to try it." After he flashed "his glittering `Cary Grant smile,'" however, and she responded with her "own `Esther Williams' smile," the referral was a done deed. Williams' therapy succeeded, but she points out that her acid-dropping was "before [LSD] was declared illegal" and used by "children who had no understanding of the power or potential value and danger of the drug." Movie stars, of course, know more than such "kids" do. This is an exemplary star autobio, especially suitable for readers who remember the days of MGM musicals, when LSD was legal. Mike Tribby
From Kirkus Reviews
Film star Williams reveals all, including how every hair and eyelash remained in place during the spectacular water ballets that were the core of most of her movies. The 194050 Williams's films, like Neptune's Daughter, Thrill of a Romance, and Million Dollar Mermaid, are featured on cable television's movie channels, so a younger generation of viewers is familiar with the signature splashing fountains, corps de bathing beauty, and spectacular Esther Williams smile. Here's a description of how those effects were achieved (oil and Vaseline for the hair; the smile was her own), as well as tales about the star's four marriages, several affairs, three children, and coming of age as a contract player in the MGM ``finishing school,'' along with Lana Turner, Katharine Hepburn, June Allyson, and Judy Garland. The Esther Williams films, as bland and predictable as the plots were, were big moneymakers. Only 18 years old when she signed with MGM, she had already been in the Olympics, where she swam fast, and a star of Billy Rose's Aquacade, where she swam ``pretty.'' Straightforward and unpretentious, she understood that it was the wet Williams that drew people to her films. She developed increasingly complicated routines (precursors of synchronized swimming) and did her own sometimes dangerous stunts; she once broke three neck vertebrae in a diving sequence. As her career tapered off in the mid-50s, she found that her second husband had lost or gambled away virtually all the money she'd earned in the water. Unhappy and confused, she took LSD (overseen by a doctor); it was like ``instant psychoanalysis'' and enabled her next marriage, to actor Fernando Lamas, although uneven, to last for 22 years until his death. Now happily married to husband number four, she heads a bathing suit firm. With the help of L.A. media critic Diehl, this is written with humor and a sense of proportion that leaven the usual movie star bio. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
...[an] interesting and engaging account of her life, and of the Hollywood she knew. -- The New York Times Book Review, Robert Gottlieb
About the Author
Esther Williams retired from the screen in the 1960s and has continued to live in California, where she runs a business that sells and promotes her own line of bathing suits and licenses her name to swimming pools and swimwear. She was also involved in the inauguration of synchronized swimming as a competitive event at the Olympics. She is married and lives in Beverly Hills.
