Frank Thomas

Notable Sports Figures
Esther Williams
some live shows, which had some success; one live
show, in London, was sold out during its entire run.
Williams was also having problems in her personal
life. Gage had mismanaged the couple’s money, losing
most of it and getting them into deep trouble with the
Internal Revenue Service. The two eventually divorced
in 1957. Williams later married the movie star Fernando
Lamas, who had starred opposite her in the 1953 film
Dangerous When Wet. The two met again in 1960, while
Williams was producing the television special Esther
Williams at Cypress Gardens, in which Lamas also
swam. This special, which aired on Williams’s birthday,
was a huge hit: fifty-two percent of the televisions in the
United States that were in use were tuned into it that
night. Williams appeared in two more films in the early
1960s, but by the end of the decade she had settled down
to be Fernando Lamas’s wife and had disappeared from
the public eye.
Williams the Swimsuit Designer
At the time that Williams first became a star,
women’s swimsuit design was still in its infancy. Lycra
and other stretchable materials had not yet been invented,
and wool was still a common swimsuit component.
The costume designers at MGM had had little practice
in designing swimwear for films, and their results, al-
Williams
though creative, were often highly impractical, with
sometimes disastrous results. Williams’s seventh film,
This Time for Keeps, was set on Mackinac Island in
northern Michigan, and in keeping with the woodsy
theme, Williams’s costumer created a swimming suit out
of plaid flannel. Flannel, being made of cotton, absorbs
tremendous amounts of water, and the saturated swimsuit
nearly dragged Williams to the bottom of the pool.
In desperation she unzipped the suit and let it fall. Her
costume designer, who luckily was poolside, had to cut
a hole in the middle of a towel and drape it over
Williams’s head so she could get out of the pool without
exposing herself to the crowds of tourists who had come
to watch the filming. After that debacle, Williams participated
much more actively in the design process.
In 1948, Williams was asked by designer Cole of
California to endorse one of their swimsuits. This suit,
one of the first ever to be made with latex, was revolutionary:
the stretchable material meant that a zipper was
no longer necessary. It also meant that the suit fit better
and was more suitable for maneuvering in the water.
Cole approached Williams independently of MGM and
asked her to endorse the suit. At that time, celebrity endorsements
were unheard of: while celebrity images
were often used in advertisements, such uses were strictly
controlled by the studio, and all profits went to the
studio as well. After Williams won her fight with MGM
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