Let’s go swimming: one book, one movie

When I picked up Vicki Valosik’s SWIMMING PRETTY: The Untold Story of Women in Water at the library I wondered if it would be too specialized to keep me interested. As it turns out, no, it was fascinating.

Part of that is learning how esoteric a skill swimming used to be. In colonial America there were no community pools and even in areas with rivers or lakes, few people swum. Benjamin Franklin, one of the exceptions, was known as “the swimming American” in Europe because he could perform a lot of the stunts that would later be associated with synchronized swimming.

A handful of men did teach swimming and some of them had daughters who took up the skill as “natationists” (later names included aquabells and “artistic swimmers.”). Lots of women began to take it up: swimming offered them a chance at physical exercise while looking graceful compared to working out on land. Swimwear for women wasn’t very practical but Annette Kellerman, a swimming legend a century ago, shook things up by introducing a one piece swimsuit modeled on men’s swimming wear.

Women’s swimming in the 20th century would become a popular entertainment — impresario Billy Rose’s water shows, Esther Williams musicals, the Weeki Wachi mermaids — while struggling to prove itself as a sport, eventually succeeding (with one old-guard misogynist losing his sway at the IOCC, synchronized swimming made it into the Olympics). Overall a fascinating look at women’s sports, the history of swimming and the many ways Americans have found to entertain themselves.

Esther Williams was the iconic star of women’s swimming in the 1950s — a former athlete and aquabelle who starred in a string of wildly popular aquamusicals stuffed with spectacular underwater spectacles. To get a break from the formula she convinced MGM to let her film MILLION-DOLLAR MERMAID (1952) a biopic of her predecessor, Annette Kellerman. After reading Swimming Pretty I couldn’t resist giving it a look.

We meet Kellerman as a child who overcomes her weak legs by learning to swim (a true detail), then goes on to become (as Williams) a swimming entertainer in carnivals and traveling shows before engaging in bigger, better spectacles at New York’s Hippodrome. But can she resolve her feelings for her former promoter, Victor Mature?

Billy Rose staged some spectacular stunts for this film (one of them put Williams in the hospital for several months) and they’re entertaining to watch. Overall though, this is bland — Williams isn’t much of an actor and I can’t say Mature impresses me either; Walter Pidgeon as Annette’s father/mentor and a young Jesse White as Mature’s sidekick are more entertaining. “In your hands lies the power to rip the shackles of prudery and free the feminine sex from the armor of convention.”

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