| Net Worth: | $35 Million |
|---|---|
| Profession: | Professional Actress |
| Date of Birth: | August 8, 1921 |
| Country: | United States of America |
| Height: | 5′ 8″ |
About Esther Williams
Williams made her film debut in MGM’s popular Andy Hardy series in 1942 with the film Andy Hardy’s Double Life, when she was introduced to audiences as one of the studio’s many lovely young actresses. Her first of several swimming-themed musicals, 1944’s Bathing Beauty was a breakout role for Williams. Williams and a host of other bathing beauties performed intricately choreographed swimming, diving, waterskiing shows and underwater ballet routines in these bouncy Technicolor extravaganzas in place of the customary musical dance numbers.
On August 8, 1921, in Inglewood, California, Esther Jane Williams entered the world.
She was the youngest of five kids born to Louis Stanton Williams and Bula Myrtle. During their nine-year courtship, the couple farmed adjacent plots of land in Kansas until finally deciding to run away together on June 1, 1908. Unfortunately, they were forced to settle in Salt Lake City, Utah, after running out of money. In the southwestern part of town, Louis Williams bought a tiny plot of land and had a modest home constructed on it. Until Louis Williams could construct bedrooms, Esther and her family gave birth and slept there. The colon ruptured in 1929, claiming the life of Stanton Williams. To put it simply, he was just 16.
As a young woman, she competed in and won three different swimming national championships in the United States. Williams’s childhood passion was swimming. At the age of sixteen, she had already won national titles in swimming in both Seattle, Washington, and Miami, Florida, and set a world record in the 100-meter breaststroke. She qualified for the U.S. Olympic squad in 1940, but the games in Helsinki, Finland, were postponed due to the onset of World War II. In 1940, Williams co-starred with Johnny Weissmuller in Billy Rose’s San Francisco Aquacade after temporarily working as a model.
At a Los Angeles department shop, she was discovered by a talent scout from MGM. Hollywood talent scouts from MGM first noticed Williams performing at Aquacade. Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM, was looking for a female sports star to compete with Fox and its figure skating star Sonja Henie. In 1941, Williams signed up with MGM.
MGM’s Andy Hardy: The Double Life of Andy Hardy was her first feature (1942). During the course of the film, she played Sheila Brooks, Mickey Rooney’s on-screen love interest. This film was the beginning of a meteoric rise to fame. MGM even devised a subgenre of musicals just for her, dubbed “Aqua Musicals” In “Bathing Beauty,” she made her acting debut in the water (1944). The One Piece Bathing Suit (1952), in which she starred alongside Victor Mature and Walter Pidgeon, was a far more complex film than this one.
On November 25, 1945, she wed singer/actor Ben Gage, with whom she had three children: Benjamin Stanton, Kimball Austin, and Susan Tenney (born October 1, 1953). While writing her autobiography, she painted Gage as an alcoholic parasite who frittered away $10 million of her fortune. Both Gage and Williams filed for divorce in April 1959 after their separation in 1952.
Cary Grant revealed to Look magazine in that same year that he had tried LSD under medical supervision, and that it had profoundly altered his perspective on life. Grant claimed that he “found that [he] had a tough inner core of strength” after using LSD. After reading the essay, Esther immediately phoned Grant to ask about getting some LSD for herself. They scheduled an appointment with his physician after he placed the call. According to Williams, taking LSD is like getting an instant psychoanalysis.
Williams writes in her autobiography that filming Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949) was “pure misery.” Williams played the owner of a baseball team in the 1940s musical “King of Broadway,” in which Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra starred. She said Kelly and co-writer Stanley Donen made jokes about her and treated her with disdain. The film was a commercial and critical triumph, grossing $3.4 million in rentals to place it as the year’s eleventh highest-earning film.
Her contract stipulated that she would be given a guest card to The Beverly Hills Hotel so that she could use their pool on a daily basis and that she would not appear on camera for nine months so that she could take voice, dance, and diction classes. Williams, a veteran of the film industry for 15 years, was threatened with contract suspension from MGM when she turned down the lead part in The Opposite Sex (released in 1956), a musical adaptation of the 1939 film The Women.
Williams forfeited over $3 million in deferred contract payments, which had been withheld from her wages over the preceding 14 years and set aside as both a nest egg and a tax deferral. However, she was still eligible to receive the $50,000 signing bonus that had been promised to her at the time of the original contract’s signing.
Attempting dramatic roles with the demise of the highly profitable MGM aqua musical. One film that exhibits this newfound assurance in the dramatic arts is The Unguarded Moment (1956). John Saxon and George Nader also starred in it. Also, The Big Show (1961), co-starring Cliff Robertson and Robert Vaughn was another dramatic role.
Overall, Esther’s acting skills were limited and, as a musical star in the audience’s eyes, she was unsuccessful. Williams saw herself more as a swimmer than an actress, and her attempts at pure dramatic roles were forgettable. She resigned from the movie industry in the 1960s, returning as a celebrity guest in That’s Entertainment! III (1994) addressing her presence in MGM films. She has an extremely successful bikini business in addition to her fame for providing joy, escape, and entertainment on the big screen. Occasional television work explaining her contribution to the film industry is a pleasure for her followers from time to time.
Williams also excelled in the business world. She diversified her holdings by purchasing a gas station, a metal products business, a bathing suit manufacturer, several pieces of real estate, and the Trails restaurant chain before calling it quits as an actress. She was a commentator for synchronized swimming at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and has since donated her name to a brand of swimming pools, vintage swimwear, and children’s instructional swimming movies.
Summing-Up
Williams had at least one feature in the top 20 grossing films of every year from 1945 to 1949. Although she saw herself more as a swimmer than an actress and many people wrote her off as a failure, her films were financially successful. In Million Dollar Mermaid (1952), Williams played Australian swimming star Annette Kellerman; the role earned her the nickname “Million Dollar Mermaid” during her time at MGM. Williams departed MGM in 1956 and acted in a couple of unsuccessful feature pictures, followed by many immensely popular water-themed network television specials, including one from Cypress Gardens, Florida.
