The Million Dollar Mermaid (Thorndike Biography) [Large Print] [Hardcover]

Esther Williams (Author), Digby Diehl (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2000 | ISBN-10: 078622360X | ISBN-13: 978-0786223602

During Hollywood's heyday, big studios battled over the next box-office attraction. While Gene Kelly danced and Judy Garland sang, Esther Williams swam into the heart of America with her dazzling smile, stunning aquabatics, and whole-some appeal. Hand-picked for stardom by movie mogul Louis B. Mayer, Esther shed her wide-eyed innocence at what she affectionately calls University MGM, a unique educational institution where sex appeal and glamour were taught, a school where idols were born. Once a national swimming champion and struggling salesgirl, overnight she became one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood. And though fame came quickly, Esther's personal life was often less than joyous. Through troubled marriages, cross-dressing lovers, financial bankruptcy, she shares the ups and downs of her extraordinary career in The Million Dollar Mermaid, a wildly entertaining behind-the-scenes account of one of Tinseltown's classic dream factories.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Her big movies are hard to find these days, and her name doesn't evoke the fan recognition awarded fellow MGM grads Lana Turner and Ava Gardner, yet for more than a decade during Hollywood's age d'or Esther Williams was one of the studio's most bankable leading ladies. An American beauty and swimming champ, she was hired at MGM in 1941 at age 18, and from then on starred in two or three thinly plotted "swimming musicals" a year--movies with titles like Neptune's Daughter, Million Dollar Mermaid, Easy to Love, and Take Me Out to the Ball Game. Her inevitable role was the pinup you could pin up at home, and it seems to have reflected her offstage personality too. Her long (400 pages) memoir is not always a miracle of narrative, but it includes a wealth of juicy gossip: Louis B. Mayer's rolling-on-the-floor tantrums; Gene Kelly's verbal cruelty on the set of Take Me Out to the Ball Game; her three failed marriages, including a long, draining one to Fernando Lamas; Lana Turner's name for Mayer ("Daddy"); Johnny Weismuller's backstage pursuit of her (naked); her own heat for Victor Mature ("unleashed"); and the LSD she tried in 1959 on Cary Grant's recommendation. Like so many other as-told-to books, the memories often feel self-serving, and there are plywood sentences even Lana Turner would choke on delivering. Disappointingly, Williams rarely shares what went on behind her lowered eyes and those buoyant cheekbones. --Lyall Bush --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

MGM swim-femme Williams delighted millions in choreographed aqua-movie-musicals during the 1940s and '50s: her unbuttoned autobiography examines both her splashy, sunny public image and the murky waters of her private life. Williams and Diehl (Tales from the Crypt) backstroke through a flood of memories, giving a fluid treatment to "hundreds of hours of conversations that are the basis for this book." Williams opens by describing the LSD trip she took in 1959 (Cary Grant helped her score the acid), then dives into her traumatic early life: a brother died at 16, and a boy the same age raped the young Williams repeatedly. Competing in swim meets at 15, Williams became a national champion in 1939, costarred in Billy Rose's Aquacade with the drunken, exhibitionistic Johnny Weissmuller and signed with MGM in 1944. Williams's movie years constitute the colorful core of the book, displaying life inside a major studio during Hollywood's Golden Age and showing screen legends with their pants downAsometimes literally. Williams had to deal with disastrous marriages, manipulative moguls and life-threatening water stunts. Her sparkling anecdotes alternate the scandalous, the charming and the ridiculous. When, during the rain-drenched filming of Pagan Love Song, Williams cables from Kauai to tell her studio head she's pregnant, the announcement reaches all the ham radio operators in California. Later chapters cover Williams's work for TV, her swimsuit licensing and her years with jet-setting, tyrannical third husband Fernando Lamas. Williams speaks of her own "zest for life"; she and collaborator Diehl demonstrate it many times over in this tremendously entertaining life story. First serial to Vanity Fair. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 717 pages
• Publisher: Thorndike Press (March 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 078622360X
• ISBN-13: 978-0786223602
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (81 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,849,106 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Juicy but ultimately disappointing, September 21, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Million Dollar Mermaid: An Autobiography (Hardcover)

I eagerly anticipated the release of this biography as I am a longstanding fan of the Golden Era of MGM Musicals. For gossip fans, Ms. Williams' book has it all -- juicy tidbits about her sexual history and the habits and flaws of such Hollywood titans as Louis B. Mayer, Joan Crawford, Victor Mature, Johnny Weismuller, etc. Such discussion was particularly enlightening given Ms. Williams' utterly wholesome screen persona. Although the book has a wealth of such star "secrets," it is ultimately disappointing. While Ms. Williams describes her life, she fails to reveal the reasons for her choices. Ultimately, she comes across as a vapid doormat -- used and abused by her parents, her adopted brother, her first agent, her swimming coach, her alcoholic husband Ben Gage. Most amazingly, she provides almost no explanation for her 22 year marriage to Fernando Lamas -- a marriage during which she was a self-proclaimed second class citizen who was forbidden to make her three prior children a part of her life with Lamas. This 22 year marriage, which comes after chapters detailing Ms. Williams' "take-charge moxie" (she details, with glee, her "tough talk" with, among others, her first agent, Louis B. Mayer, Sam Katz, the head of the Navy, etc.), does not make sense and Ms. Williams' self-serving explanations fail to provide any real insight into her personality.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A LOTTA GOSSIP, A LOTTA LIFE, A LOTTA FUN!, May 23, 2001

By 

Sean Orlosky (Yorktown, IN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Million Dollar Mermaid: An Autobiography (Paperback)

Esther Williams, the aptly titled "Million Dollar Mermaid" of the movies of Hollywood's Golden Era, tells the story of her life in the vivid text of her outstanding autobiography. Williams writes the story of a real person, a sparkling icon/ survivor story, and paints a picture of Hollywood bursting with gossip juicy enough to make Hedda and Louella green. Yet, Williams tells her story without sounding malicious, wicked, or saintly. She writes with great candor and honesty about the hardships of her life: a difficult childhood, near-death incidents doing stunts for movie extravanganzas, nightmarish marriages, and her now-happy life with her husband Edward, and reunited with happy relationships with her children.

Williams began swimming as a teen, and eventually swam in the famous Aquacade with Johnny Weissmuller, who, in between shows, would tear his trunks off and chase her in the pool. She was picked up by MGM Studios, and the fun never stops as Williams recounts and remembers some of the most famous names of entertainment with hilarious and shocking stories. She remembers Lucille Ball (who unjustly accused her of trying to steal Desi Arnaz from her), Ricardo Montalban (a cheerful Latin whom she became fast friends with), Gene Kelly (who fumed trying to create dances for a leading lady a head taller than he was), Frank Sinatra (who became a life-long friend who always let her sit with her elbow onstage during his concerts) and Clark Gable (the greatest kisser she'd ever kissed). And the stories don't stop there: She remembers Joan Crawford, hysterically begging an imaginary audience not to forget her in an empty auditorium, reducing paper tiger Louis B. Mayer to kicking and screaming on the floor of his office, and inquisitively listening to Lana Turner's bedroom exploits through a glass pressed against the wall. She also remembers amusing exploits, like being the first person to break the color barrier at the Sahara (when she passed off her black maid and her maid's boyfriend as Indian royalty!).

Not that Williams was the goody-two-shoes virginal girl she so often portrayed onscreen: She had several affairs with leading men. She gives black belts in the bedroom arts to a few leading men: the powerful, hulkish Victor Mature ("the one man I never had to teach anything to, not even how to swim!"), and the masculine Jeff Chandler. (In the most hilarious and juciest story in the book, she remembers how her affair with Chandler ended when she found him in a flowered chiffon dress, wig, high heels, and makeup!)

There are engrossing stories about the makings of Williams's underwater spectacles, and how the inricate photography and choreography of these films were achieved with movie magic. Williams remembers "that crazy old Busby Berkeley" and how he nearly killed her with spectacular stunts involving her diving from fifty-foot platforms, water-skiing when she was pregnant, etc.

But Williams also endured three stormy marriages: Her first, to the nasty Leonard Kovner, whom she married without knowing very well. Her second marriage was to the buffonish Ben Gage (with whom she had her three beloved children, Ben, Kim, and Susie), who drank and caused her endless embarrassment (one night, she left him passed out cold in Bette Davis's bathtub!). But her third husband was probably the worst: selfish, tyrannical Latino Fernando Lamas, who proved to be a husband from hell, who made Williams work and work to please him, was completely self-absorbed, and refused to let William's children into their home, which upset her desperately. When Lamas died, she was admittedly relieved, and she finally found the right guy: Edward Bell, who helps her run her business of selling swimwear today.

Through it all, Williams kept her head, and triumphed. She's had a colorful, extraordinary life, and it's all set before you in one of the most delicious biographies ever written!

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is entertainment, October 3, 1999

By 

D. Clancy (Portland, Or USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Million Dollar Mermaid: An Autobiography (Hardcover)

I remember the MGM movies of the 50's and going to many Esther Williams films. I thought they were great fun and her autobiography is one of the best "tell all" bios I have read in a very long time.There are a few sketchy things about her life...particularly why she stayed with Fernando Lamas. Outside of that, she dishes up a veritable poutpourri of insight in the running of MGM. She tells of Mayer's tantrums, Joan Crawford's confrontation, Mickey Rooney, Ava Gardner, Lana Turner, Arlene Dahl.The book is written with wit and a wonderful sense of humor. It makes you want to meet her. Highly recommended!!!