For the hundreds of thousands of who have seen and loved Esther Williams' movies, comes a wonderfully witty, fresh, and frank autobiography, all about an eighteen-year-old championship swimmer who reluctantly answers the siren call of MGM. Launched on a career that will last more than twenty years, she will help to create a genre of film that seems unimaginable today, and become during those years one of the world's top box office stars. With a sharp mind and a rapier wit, Esther Williams brings to life those times and ...
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For the hundreds of thousands of who have seen and loved Esther Williams' movies, comes a wonderfully witty, fresh, and frank autobiography, all about an eighteen-year-old championship swimmer who reluctantly answers the siren call of MGM. Launched on a career that will last more than twenty years, she will help to create a genre of film that seems unimaginable today, and become during those years one of the world's top box office stars. With a sharp mind and a rapier wit, Esther Williams brings to life those times and those bigger-than-life people in the book legions of film fans have been waiting for.
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Add this copy of The Million Dollar Mermaid to cart. $666.67, good condition, Sold by BookDrop rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Phoenix, AZ, UNITED STATES, published 2001 by Thorndike Pr.
Add this copy of The Million Dollar Mermaid to cart. $29.32, fair condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Reno rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Reno, NV, UNITED STATES, published 2000 by Thorndike Press.
Add this copy of The Million Dollar Mermaid: an Autobiography (Biography to cart. $29.95, fair condition, Sold by J.E. Miles, A Bookseller rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from OCEANSIDE, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2000 by Thorndike Press.
Add this copy of The Million Dollar Mermaid to cart. $18.00, very good condition, Sold by Between the Covers-Rare Books rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Gloucester City, NJ, UNITED STATES, published 1999 by Simon & Schuster.
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Add this copy of The Million Dollar Mermaid to cart. $29.95, good condition, Sold by J.E. Miles, A Bookseller rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from OCEANSIDE, CA, UNITED STATES, published 1999 by Simon & Schuster.
Esther Williams hardly has a good word to say about her first three husbands, Leonard Kovner, Ben Gage and Fernando Lamas, which makes for an interesting reading because the reader invariably gets to address the balance. She also finds fault with her lovers, such as Johnny Weissmuller and Jeff Chandler (she lets on that he was a cross-dresser), but she has no fault to find with her last husband, Edward Bell a professor, maybe because he was current during the writing of the book. And she did like Van Johnson, that wonderful freckle-faced star of the 40's.
There is no doubt that Esther Williams has had an interesting and unusual life. Catapulted through her swimming skills into a life in films under the umbrella of MGM, her natural all-American girl looks allow her to enter the hearts of film fans the world over. Who can forget those breath-taking Busby Berkeley swimming ballets; who can forget her costumes, one golden with a crown which as it turns out, could have killed her? And she tells her story with apparent frankness and charm and with constant stings in the tail. There is a telling repartee between Deborah Kerr and Esther (p.183) when Esther gives the English actress the perfect 'put-down' and Deborah gracefully takes it. And isn't this why we read memoirs?
There is a star's lack of self-esteem when she suspects that her films are regarded as 'fluff' and near-bitterness at the treatment of some of her directors. There is the practical joke against Joan Crawford (p.256/257) which goes wrong mainly because Esther does not recognise the 'cattiness' in the apparent joke.
Yes, it's worth reading by those of us who remember what a star she was, and also by those of us who remember MGM in all its glory and glamour and who like a jolly good story.
