WHAT’S MORE
The two things most viewers recall about Million Dollar Mermaid, apart from the Berkeley spectacles, are Kellerman’s arrest for wearing a one-piece swimsuit, and her glass tank shattering while she shoots one of her movies. Both incidents were factual, even if MGM intensified their drama a bit. The arrest was in 1907, in Massachusetts, and the tank mishap occurred in 1914 while Kellerman was filming Neptune’s Daughter (not the Esther Williams version). Though she received lacerations, she was not as badly hurt as the film’s director, Herbert Brenon, who was in the tank with her.
Ms. Williams did not need to search far for a title for her 1999 autobiography: [The] Million Dollar Mermaid easily took care of that. A few revelations in the book were quite sensational, and some suspicions were validated when she later admitted that she had “heightened” a few details to boost sales. One tidbit that probably did not require augmenting was her account of a steamy affair with her Mermaid costar, Victor Mature. Their onscreen chemistry is quite evident, so it’s no surprise that little acting was involved.
MUSICALLY SPEAKING
The first of the two Busby Berkeley spectacles features Williams in a gold mesh body suit, wearing a small crown on her head. Pay special attention to the crown, which was made of inflexible aluminum. When she executed the fifty-foot dive off the pedestal, Williams landed hard on that crown, which caused her to break three vertebrae in her neck and spend months in a body cast. It was much later, in a wry tone, that Williams recalled of the demanding and sometimes erratic Berkeley that “Busby didn’t care whether you got killed or not.” For this hard-driving director, such sacrifices simply went with the territory.
Esther Williams and Charles Watts