Frank Thomas

Notable Sports Figures
Awards and Accomplishments
1939 U.S. Nationals 100 meter freestyle, 400 meter relay, 300 meter
medley
1953 Received Golden Globe award for Million Dollar Mermaid
1966 Inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame
1993 Received Femme Award from the Dallas Fashion Awards for
contributions to the swimsuit industry
1997 Received Lifetime achievement award from the Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Academy Foundation,
and the Museum of Modern Art
A month after Williams took that job, she received
a call from the Aquacade, a swimming and diving
show put on by producer Billy Rose at the New York
World’s Fair. The San Francisco World’s Fair had now
asked Rose to organize a similar show there. Olympic
swimming champion Johnny Weismuller, who had
starred in the New York version of the show, would be
coming to San Francisco, but Rose needed to find a
new female lead to swim opposite him. Rose, who had
seen Williams in Life magazine, was in California auditioning
swimmers, and he wanted Williams to be the
lead. On her lunch break that day, in a swimsuit given
to her as a gift from her supervisor at I. Magnin,
Williams auditioned for Billy Rose. The next day,
Williams left Los Angeles for San Francisco. She was
now, before she had even turned eighteen, a professional
swimmer.
Williams swam with the Aquacade the entire summer
of 1940. She faced sexual harassment from many
of the men, old and young, who were involved with the
show—not an uncommon fate for female stars at that
time, especially single ones. She was also cheated out
of much of her salary by her agent. Frustrated at her
powerlessness to remedy either situation, Williams
agreed to marry a young medical student, Leonard
Kovner, whom she had met while attending Los Angeles
City College. The two were married between shows
on June 27, 1940, shortly before Williams turned 18.
Kovner returned to school, and when the Aquacade
closed on September 29, 1940, Williams returned to
Los Angeles to join him.
The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) studio had sent
representatives to the Aquacade to try to recruit her, but
Williams turned them down. She went back to her job at
I. Magnin and settled into her new life as a wife and
soon, she hoped, a mother. However, MGM was not accustomed
to people refusing them, and additionally,
Williams’s marriage to Kovner soon turned rocky. Nearly
a year after the end of the Aquacade, Williams finally
agreed to meet with the head of MGM, Louis B. Mayer.
Kovner and Williams separated over her decision to sign
a contract with MGM, but by October of 1941, Williams
was ensconced in her own dressing room, earning $350
a week and learning to be an actress.
Related Biography: Swimmer Annette Kellerman
Williams
If Esther Williams was the mother of synchronized swimming, Annette
Kellerman was its grandmother. Williams was aware of this, and she
had great respect for Kellerman, even titling her autobiography Million Dollar
Mermaid after the movie she made about Kellerman’s life.
Kellerman’s career paralleled Williams’s in many ways. Like Williams,
Kellerman began as a swimmer, became a star of live water shows, and
later became an actress.
Annette Marie Sarah Kellerman was born July 6, 1887 (some
sources say 1888), in Sydney, Australia. As a child, she suffered from polio,
which left her with weak, bowed legs, and she took up swimming to try to
strengthen them. She was soon walking without leg braces, and by age ten
she was a champion swimmer.
Kellerman excelled in distance swimming. After her family moved to
England when she was fourteen, she swam the twenty-six mile length of the
Thames River, from Putney to Blackwall, amid much media fanfare. It was
unprecedented for anyone, let alone a teenage girl, to complete such a feat.
Kellerman received many lucrative sponsorships for her long-distance
swims, including her two failed attempts to become the first woman to
swim the English Channel. Later, Kellerman parlayed this fame into a career
in vaudeville, and she also made appearances at the London Hippodrome.
In 1907, Kellerman came to the United States, where she toured the
country with a swimming and high-diving show. That summer, while performing
in Boston, Kellerman achieved international notoriety by being arrested
for indecent exposure. Her crime? She appeared on the city’s Revere
Beach wearing a unitard swimsuit which left her neck, all of her arms and
much of her legs exposed. At that time, proper women “swam” as best they
could in full, loose skirts and long-sleeve blouses.
Kellerman appeared in several silent films, starting in 1909 with three
films in one year: The Bride of Lammermoor, Jepthah’s Daughter: A Biblical
Tragedy, and The Gift of Youth. She caused another moral scandal with the
skinny-dipping scenes in her next film, Neptune’s Daughter (1914), but she
went on to star in several more movies, including Daughter of the Gods
(1916), Queen of the Sea (1918) The Art of Diving and What Women Love,
both 1920, and her final film, Venus of the South Seas, in 1924. After she
married and retired from film, Kellerman opened a health food store in the
Pacific Palisades.
Becomes a Movie Star
Williams’s first screen role was in Andy Hardy’s
Double Life. The Andy Hardy movies were lighthearted
fare about a teenage boy and his family. The series, although
formulaic, had already proved to be a major success
for MGM, and the studio often used roles in these
films as tests for up-and-coming starlets. Williams
passed with flying colors. Audiences loves the scene
where she kissed Andy Hardy underwater, and the twopiece
swimsuit that she wore in the movie became a
fashion must-have.
Williams was soon cast in another romantic film. She
played a swimming instructor at a girls’ college, where
Red Skelton’s character tried to enroll to be able to woo
her. The film was originally titled Mr. Coed, but after
preview audiences raved over the aquatic finale, the title
was changed to Bathing Beauty.
The finale of Bathing Beauty is often credited with inventing
synchronized swimming as we know it today. In
a brand new, ninety by ninety foot pool with $250,000
worth of special-effects rigging, scores of swimmers
practiced for ten weeks to create elaborate patterns, lines,
1767