Esther Jane Williams (born August 8,
1921) is a United States swimmer and movie star famous for her musical films that featured
elaborate performances with swimming and diving.
Esther Williams was born in Inglewood, California, and was enthusistic about
swimming from her youth. She qualified to be in the United States swim team in the 1940
Olympics, but the games were canceled due to World War II. Williams instead went to Hollywood,
and quickly became a popular star of the 1940s and 1950s.
Many of her films, such as Million Dollar Mermaid and Jupiter's Darling, contained elaborately
staged swimming scenes, obtained not without physical cost to the performer. She broke her
neck filming a 50-foot dive off a tower during a climactic musical number for the 1952 release
Million Dollar Mermaid which landed her in a body cast for six months (she subsequently
recovered though she still suffers headaches as a result of the accident). Her many hours
spent submerged resulted in her rupturing her eardrums numerous times. In her autobiography,
Williams details several other occasions in which she nearly drowned shooting her
oxygen-defying stunts but she often used a stunt double.
Her love life was a source of media interest. From 1945 to 1958 she was married to
singer/actor Ben Gage, with whom she had three children. She would later, in her autobiography,
portray him as an alcoholic parasite who had squandered her earnings. She was romantically
linked with Jeff Chandler, and has been married four times. Her third husband was actor
Fernando Lamas. Her brother, Stanton Williams, also had a brief acting career during the 1920s
before his death while still a teenager.
Esther Williams retired from acting in the early 1960s and lives with her current husband,
Edward Bell, in Beverly Hills. She lends her name to a stylish line of women's swimwear.
Filmography:
Personalities (1942) (short subject)
Inflation (1942) (short subject)
Andy Hardy's Double Life (1942)
A Guy Named Joe (1943)
Bathing Beauty (1944)
Thrill of a Romance (1945)
Ziegfeld Follies (1946
)
The Hoodlum Saint (1946)
Easy to Wed (1946)
Till the Clouds Roll By (1946) (Cameo)
Fiesta (1947)
This Time for Keeps (1947)
On an Island with You (1948)
Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949)
Neptune's Daughter (1949)
Screen Actors (1950) (short subject)
Duchess of Idaho (1950)
Pagan Love Song (1950)
Texas Carnival (1951)
Callaway Went Thataway (1951) (Cameo)
Skirts Ahoy! (1952)
Million Dollar Mermaid (1952)
Dangerous When Wet (1953)
Easy to Love (1953)
1955 Motion Picture Theatre Celebration (1955) (short subject)
Jupiter's Darling (1955)
Screen Snapshots: Hollywood, City of Stars (1956) (short subject)
The Unguarded Moment (1956)
Raw Wind in Eden (1958)
The Big Show (1961)
The Magic Fountain (1963)
That's Entertainment! III (1994) (narrator)
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wiki/Esther_Williams
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