Esther Williams

• Born: August 8, 1921
• Birthplace: Inglewood, California
• Died: June 6, 2013
• Place of death: Los Angeles, California

Sport:Swimming

Early Life

Esther Jane Williams was born August 8, 1921, in Inglewood, a Los Angeles, California, suburb. Her father, Lou Williams, was a commercial artist and master sign painter. Her mother, Bula Williams, was a teacher and specialist in family relationships. The family had little money, but Mrs. Williams was intensely supportive of her daughter. Mrs. Williams also wanted the city to provide a swimming pool for their area, which was considered deprived. Working with the Parent Teacher Association, she was successful.

Earlier, Williams had been taught to swim by a sister. At the community pool, she took a job counting locker-room towels to pay for swimming time. At noon, when the pool was not much used, lifeguards taught Williams the techniques that were to make her famous, including the butterfly stroke, which was not usually taught to girls at that time.

The Road to Excellence

At the age of fifteen, Williams was asked to join the Los Angeles Athletic Club swimming team. If she swam for the club, she was not required to pay dues, which her family could not afford. Aileen Allen, swimming coach and athletic director for the club, assured Williams that, if she worked hard, she could become a champion. While training, she attended Los Angeles public schools. She later graduated from Los Angeles City College and attended the University of Southern California (USC).

In 1938, Williams's discipline was rewarded when she placed third in the 200-yard freestyle at the Women’s Senior Indoor Championships in Los Angeles and, in the same year, placed third in the 100-yard freestyle of the Women’s Senior Outdoor Swimming Championships. In May, 1939, in Los Angeles, she won a 50-yard breaststroke competition with a time of 33.1 seconds. Her most important swimming victories occurred in that year. She remained in competitive amateur swimming for only two years.

In an article for Parents’ Magazine, Williams's mother wrote that Esther won because she enjoyed it. Her mother also observed that her even temper and lack of moodiness were important to her success. These same qualities helped Williams in her rigorous training in speech, drama, singing, and dancing, in part responsible for her eventual worldwide success in films. As a disciplined athlete, she would be comfortable with the regimented life that major studios then imposed upon their stars.

The Emerging Champion

In 1939, at the National Senior Outdoor Championship competition in Des Moines, Iowa, Williams won the 100-meter freestyle and was on the winning 300-meter medley and 400-meter medley relay teams. In the relays, she helped her team to victory by introducing the butterfly stroke. Officials found that a woman could not be disqualified for using the stroke, although women had never used it before.

Normally, an athlete of Williams's skill would have gone on from these victories to the Olympic Games, but the Olympics were canceled in 1940 because of World War II. Although disappointed, Williams later advised young athletes not to be overwhelmed by such disappointments, because something good may be around the corner.

Williams was invited to join Billy Rose’s Aquacade for the 1940 San Francisco World’s Fair. She hesitated; at the time, a swimmer could not even take a job as a lifeguard without losing amateur status. Eventually Rose, whose show had been a New York success, convinced her that there would be no more Olympics for many years. Her Aquacade appearance led to a film offer, but again she hesitated. At this time, she was planning to be a department store sportswear buyer.

Louis B. Mayer, then head of MGM Studios, offered Williams a chance to invent a swimming musical. Just as Sonja Henie had popularized ice skating in films of the 1930s, Williams did the same for swimming. In addition, the synchronized swimming of her most famous films introduced dance routines; thus, swimming became a matter of grace and style as well as speed.

Williams appeared in Andy Hardy’s Double Life (1942) and, briefly, in A Guy Named Joe (1943) before her first starring swimming role in Bathing Beauty (1944), which turned her into an international star. Called “Hollywood’s Mermaid” and “The Queen of the Surf,” she became one of the top ten box-office attractions. By the end of her film career in 1961, she had appeared in twenty-four films.

Continuing the Story

Knowing in advance that a film star or athlete will peak early and must plan for years ahead, Williams invested her film earnings wisely in a variety of business enterprises. In 1958, she began a swimming-pool company that popularized backyard pools. When flying across the country, she said, she could recognize the distinctive styles of her pools across the landscape below.

After making her last film in 1961, Williams produced and starred in four television specials and appeared as special guest on other shows. She retired from public life during her marriage to actor Fernando Lamas. Until his death in 1982, she did not even give interviews. In 1988, she went back to work, designing swimsuits. Her collection first appeared in the spring and summer fashion lines for 1989. Williams remarried in 1994 and published a book, entitled The Million Dollar Mermaid: An Autobiography, in 1999.

Williams suffered a stroke in 2007, resulting in memory problems. However, she recovered and continued to be active in her business ventures and even to swim. She died of natural causes at the age of ninety-one in June 2013.

Summary

Esther Williams’s many successes illustrate a potential benefit of athletic success: the athlete learns to think like a champion. Once a person has become a champion, Williams herself noted, that person can become a champion at everything. Champions know, all their lives, that they are champions. When a problem or obstacle comes along, champions can look inside themselves and find the resources to carry on, and then can go on to succeed in completely new fields. Williams's life is a strong example of this philosophy. She built on her athletic prowess to become a movie star and a successful businessperson, earning a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and touching the lives of thousands of fans and customers.

Bibliography

Conn, Earl. “Different Strokes.” Saturday Evening Post 272, no. 6 (November/December, 2000): 72-73.

“Esther Williams.” Biography 7, no. 11 (November, 2003): 31.

Harmetz, Aljean. "Esther Williams, Swimming Champion Who Became a Movie Star, Dies at 91." The New York Times, 6 June 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/06/07/movies/esther-williams-who-swam-to-movie-fame-dies-at-91.html. Accessed 30 Oct. 2017.

Johnson, Harald. "About Esther." Esther Williams, 2014, esther-williams.com/about-esther/. Accessed 30 Oct. 2017.

Sherrow, Victoria, ed. Encyclopedia of Women and Sports. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio, 1996.

Williams, Esther, and Digby Diehl. The Million Dollar Mermaid: An Autobiography. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999.