Saturdays with the Stars: Esther Williams

Each month of 2019 we will be looking at the careers of leading ladies of Classical Hollywood who were never nominated for an Academy Award as part of our "Saturdays with the Stars" series.  Last month, our focus was on Ruth Roman, a forgotten Warner Brothers starlet most famous for her work in Strangers on a Train.  This month we turn to one of the oddest stars of Hollywood's Golden Age.  And I say odd not because she wasn't beautiful (she was) or talented (we'll find out), but because the sorts of films that Esther Williams made during her time as one of the principle stars at MGM didn't really exist before she came along, and certainly don't exist today.

Esther Williams likely never intended to be a film star.  She began her career not as an actress, but as a competitive swimmer, showing an aptitude for the sport at an early age.  While pondering a career as a gym teacher, she joined the Aquacade with Johnny Weismuller, who at that point was a major film star who had been playing Tarzan at MGM for almost a decade.  Williams had intended to compete at the Olympics, but World War II cancelled the event, and as a result she was free to sign her own contract with MGM, though she stipulated in her contract that she wanted 9 months before filming started to take acting and singing lessons, as the ambitious Williams didn't want to look a fool in front of the camera.  Louis B. Mayer, desperate to duplicate the success Fox had seen with Sonja Henie (a gold medalist figure skater turned Tinseltown leading woman), obliged and signed her.

Williams stayed in bit parts for a while (almost getting Lana Turner's role in Somewhere I'll Find You before Turner returned from her impromptu marriage to Artie Shaw to reclaim it), until she lucked into a part opposite Red Skelton in Bathing Beauty, a technicolor musical featuring Williams in a musical number in a pool.  The film was a HUGE hit, making Williams one of MGM's biggest stars overnight, and if anyone knew what to do when he'd stumbled upon an unlikely star, it was Louis B. Mayer.  Bathing Beauty would serve as a template for a number of future "swimming musicals," including Neptune's Daughter, Million Dollar Mermaid, and Dangerous When Wet, where Williams starred opposite her future-husband Fernando Lamas.  During this time she starred not only with Lamas, but also Van Johnson, Gene Kelly, William Powell, and (most frequently) Ricardo Montalban in a variety of musicals, dramas, and comedies.

Williams left MGM when she refused to take the lead role in The Opposite Sex (which eventually went to June Allyson), but it's likely her time in the sun had passed.  Her movies still made money, but her husband Fernando Lamas didn't like his wife working (he apparently was a very controlling husband, though they stayed together until his death).  She turned down the Shelley Winters role in The Poseidon Adventure (a role that would win Winters an Academy Award nomination, an honor that eluded Williams her entire career), but she didn't shy away from her history.  She continued to endorse swim-related equipment, and was (along with her Neptune's Daughter costar Betty Garrett) one of the first people to attend the annual TCM Classic Film Festival.  This month, we'll take a look at her successful (but unusual) path to stardom.