OVP: Million Dollar Mermaid (1952)

Film: Million Dollar Mermaid
Stars: Esther Williams, Victor Mature, Walter Pidgeon, David Brian, Jesse White, (and a cameo by prima ballerina Maria Tallchief)
Director: Mervyn LeRoy
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Cinematography)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Esther Williams-click here to learn more about Ms. Williams (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Esther Williams would continue on past 1952 in the movies, and might be the first actress in this series whose career ended up having too many chapters for us to investigate them properly in just one month.  MGM kept putting her in movies until the mid-50's, even though her aquacade musicals were no longer the guaranteed blockbusters they were in the 1940's, until she refused to take the June Allyson role in The Opposite Sex, and as a result she left the studio.  Williams would go on to make a few more films after 1956, though her husband Lorenzo Lamas preferred she stay home and be a homemaker.  Though she'd flirt with returning to movie stardom (she was wanted for the Shelley Winters role in The Poseidon Adventure, a role that won Winters an Oscar nomination, a distinction that Williams never achieved), she'd have a more successful second act to her career as a businesswoman, selling swimwear & swimming pools, and even served as a commentator as the 1984 Olympics.  As you can tell, there's more to talk about with Esther Williams, but we're going to end our monthlong look at her with what would become her most iconic role, and one that she had wanted to do in Hollywood since the moment she signed with MGM: Annette Kellerman, famed swimmer & actress, in Million Dollar Mermaid.

(Spoilers Ahead) For those unfamiliar, Annette Kellerman (Williams) was a star of the Hippodrome in the early-1910's, having come over from Australia.  In the film, we see her start as a young girl who has weak legs, but uses swimming to strengthen them and in the process becomes a champion swimmer.  However, she and her father (Pidgeon) fall on hard times, and have to sell her trophies just to make rent.  Kellerman meets Jimmy Sullivan (Mature) and his assistant Doc (White), who are relatively successful grifters who have a kangaroo-boxing act, but think that Kellerman could be a major attraction.  They first have her swim 26-miles through the Thames river, and then in Boston they have her wear a one-piece bathing suit to great scandal (and in the process, huge publicity).  Eventually Kellerman becomes a superstar, sharing the stage with prima ballerina Anna Pavlova (played in the film by the first American prima ballerina Maria Tallchief, who is mesmerizing in a grandiose performance as "the dying swan").  However, she longs for Jimmy, who left her when she joined the Hippodrome, and is participating in a series of crazy stunts.  After a freak accident with a giant glass tank (while she was filming a movie), Kellerman is hospitalized, though those that love her predict she'll walk again (real-life spoiler alert since it's not in the movie-she did, and had a very long life), and reunites with Jimmy, a happy ending on the film.

The movie is, well, glossy is about the best adjective I could come up with.  The film is billed as a musical, but it's really more a biopic with a few musical sequences, and unlike some of the sprier investments we had from Williams this month, it tends to drag.  Mature & Williams were having an on-set affair at the time (if you believe her memoirs, which are famously juicy but likely a bit exaggerated), but that charisma isn't really there onscreen.  Esther does her best here, but Mature is such an indulgent actor that he doesn't pair with the subtle Williams, and the supporting cast isn't game enough (or given enough to do) to really warrant much credit.

But it's the musical numbers that are the reason to see this film.  Williams does a gorgeous underwater ballet with a clam shell and a gigantic & fantastic number where she's in a long one-piece metallic gold swimsuit among a cascade of streaming water jets where she does a mesmerizing high-dive.  Best of all is this number with Williams surrounded by pillars of red & yellow smoke and a couple of dozen synchronized swimmers literally diving from swings into a pool, with Williams hanging on for dear life on a ring suspended above them in a circle.  Williams was injured badly in one of these stunts (in the books/articles I read prepping for this month's star, it's hard to tell which of the three numbers it was in), but you can see why this is the film that was synonymous with her legend-these rank among the most impressive sequences that MGM ever put into a musical (and that's saying a lot).  The film's sole nomination for Best Cinematography is no accident-shooting these difficult stunts in such glorious Technicolor must have been a challenge.  As a result, I'm going to give this three-stars, even if the story that tags along with it is middling & doesn't deserve such an endorsement, as you simply have to see these musical numbers.

Williams has been a bit of a conundrum for me this month.  It's clear that she usually played the same role, and wasn't as great of an actress as someone like Linda Darnell or Ann Sheridan, other women we've profiled in this series.  However, she's emerged as one of my favorites, if only because her movies are so distinctive & fun, and she has an effortless grace in her aquatic performances.  Williams was the rare movie star of Classical Hollywood who was genuinely respected for their offscreen talents, not asked to leave them at the studio gate, and it showed onscreen.  Next month we'll take a look at a woman whom the studio simply wanted to be a pretty face, but she (and history) had different plans entirely.