1h 55min | Biography, Drama, Musical | 4 December 1952
Director: Mervyn LeRoy
Stars: Esther Williams, Victor Mature, Walter Pidgeon, Jesse White.
Busby Berkeley ... choreographer
Audrene Brier ... choreographer
Annette Kellerman ... technical advisor (uncredited)
So here's the weird part: this is a musical? No one performs music onscreen; no one sings or dances. In her other films we got songs performed, not just swimming. Here we get EW swimming to music:
- ch16. Hippodrome fountain number
- ch18. Goddess of the Sea montage (looks like footage from prior films) and some new footage of an onstage tank with glass wall for audience to see her perform underwater to music
- ch20. Hippodrome smoke number
- ch25. (briefly) movie set accident
These numbers finally rival the aquacade in her first swim film, Bathing Beauty ('44). The smoke number is especially spectacular. But BB still has the prettiest number.
I was engaged by the story, despite having VM as a love interest again. But his brash persona is a good match for the promoter he played. AK was quite the pioneer, being a champion swimmer and breaking the swimsuit barrier (to wear something sleek enough to actually swim.) And when her father died in the story, I thought about her being alone in the world (she was not yet married, and her romance with VM was on the outs).
The movie set accident really happened to AK (with another person in the tank); she was not seriously injured, but the other person was cut up quite a bit. So the big drama of a spinal injury was bunk, and she lived to a ripe old age (88). She was married to James Sullivan 1912-75.
MGM, dir. LeRoy; 8-
