Hollywood screen icon Esther Williams hospitalized

Esther Williams

LOS ANGELES - Swimming champion turned Hollywood screen icon Esther Williams has been hospitalized for a viral infection but was responding well to treatment, her spokesman said yesterday.

Williams, 85, was taken to a hospital near her Beverly Hills home on Friday and was expected to remain there another three days, publicist Harlan Boll said.

"She's been responding beautifully to the treatment," Boll said. "In fact she was up just now listening to music in her room."

Boll said that the doctors were keeping Williams in the hospital during her treatment out of an abundance of caution because of her age.

A teenage swimming champion, Williams starred in a series of frothy and popular MGM swimming musicals in the 1940s and 50s, including "Bathing Beauty" in 1944 and "Neptune's Daughter" in 1949.

She retired from Hollywood in the 1960s and ran a successful swimming pool and fitness business.

- REUTERS