Esther Williams and Digby Diehl: The Million Dollar Mermaid

Simon & Schuster

$29.95

Review: Susan Budd*

As one Hollywood wit once said, "Wet she's a star, dry she ain't." Though Esther Williams' watery movies were huge box-office successes in the 1950s, she does not merit a mention in the Index of Stars in Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide. Hard as she tried to reach dry land, she made a bigger splash in her natural element.

Trained as a competitive swimmer, Williams was prevented by the outbreak of the Second World War from competing in the Olympic Games.

Stardom was her consolation prize, though the obstacles she had to surmount were greater than any Olympic athlete had to face.

Men were her biggest problem. They ranged from Johnny Weismuller, Olympic swimming champion and screen Tarzan, who stripped naked and groped the 17-year-old after each of their swimming duets, to the middle-aged Hollywood producer who two years later relentlessly pursued the starlet, to the husband who drank and gambled away her considerable earnings. The strangest aspect of her story is that she stood up to them all, but then became a doormat to her husband of 22 years, that incredibly vain and macho Latin lover of the silver screen Ricardo Montalban.

He did not like children, so all three were packed off to Esther's alcoholic former husband.

She visited them every day, bearing food and helping with homework, before rushing back home, freshly lipsticked and high-heeled, to greet Montalban. The deal was that she stop being Esther Williams and become Mrs Montalban.

The popularity of her movies was waning and the sight of a 50ish Joan Crawford on a sound stage imploring an imaginary audience not to desert her stood as a warning not to hang around the set for too long, so it seemed a fair exchange.

The story has a happy ending. After Montalban's death, Williams hit her straps again and became the grandmother of synchronised swimming, now an Olympic sport based on the routines used in her movies, and found a great husband 10 years her junior. The book is spiced with deliciously salacious Hollywood gossip, along with some flaky New Age philosophy a la Shirley MacLaine, but is primarily the fascinating story of a talented and energetic woman's drive for success and happiness.

* Susan Budd is the Herald theatre reviewer.