The Million Dollar Mermaid: An Autobiography | 
 enlarge | Author: Esther Williams
Publisher: Harvest Books
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
Buy New: $1.98
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Avg. Customer Rating:  62 reviews
Sales Rank: 82261
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 416
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.2
ISBN: 0156011352
Dewey Decimal Number: 791.43028092
EAN: 9780156011358
ASIN: 0156011352
Publication Date: September 14, 2000
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Her big movies are hard to find these days, and her name doesn't evoke the fan recognition awarded fellow MGM grads Lana Turner and Ava Gardner, yet for more than a decade during Hollywood's age d'or Esther Williams was one of the studio's most bankable leading ladies. An American beauty and swimming champ, she was hired at MGM in 1941 at age 18, and from then on starred in two or three thinly plotted "swimming musicals" a year--movies with titles like Neptune's Daughter, Million Dollar Mermaid, Easy to Love, and Take Me Out to the Ball Game. Her inevitable role was the pinup you could pin up at home, and it seems to have reflected her offstage personality too. Her long (400 pages) memoir is not always a miracle of narrative, but it includes a wealth of juicy gossip: Louis B. Mayer's rolling-on-the-floor tantrums; Gene Kelly's verbal cruelty on the set of Take Me Out to the Ball Game; her three failed marriages, including a long, draining one to Fernando Lamas; Lana Turner's name for Mayer ("Daddy"); Johnny Weismuller's backstage pursuit of her (naked); her own heat for Victor Mature ("unleashed"); and the LSD she tried in 1959 on Cary Grant's recommendation. Like so many other as-told-to books, the memories often feel self-serving, and there are plywood sentences even Lana Turner would choke on delivering. Disappointingly, Williams rarely shares what went on behind her lowered eyes and those buoyant cheekbones. --Lyall Bush
Product Description
During Hollywood's heyday, big studios battled over the next box-office attraction. While Gene Kelly danced and Judy Garland sang, Esther Williams swam into the heart of America with her dazzling smile, stunning aquabatics, and whole-some appeal. Hand-picked for stardom by movie mogul Louis B. Mayer, Esther shed her wide-eyed innocence at what she affectionately calls University MGM, a unique educational institution where sex appeal and glamour were taught, a school where idols were born. Once a national swimming champion and struggling salesgirl, overnight she became one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood. And though fame came quickly, Esther's personal life was often less than joyous. Through troubled marriages, cross-dressing lovers, financial bankruptcy, she shares the ups and downs of her extraordinary career in The Million Dollar Mermaid, a wildly entertaining behind-the-scenes account of one of Tinseltown's classic dream factories.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 57 more reviews...
 Who knew? April 5, 2008
For more than a decade the splashy, aquatic escapist entertainment of MGM's Esther Williams' films delighted devoted fans, and kept MGM "afloat." This wonderfully gossipy autobiography proves that Williams was just as sassy, smart and independent off-screen as on. Her memoirs of romances with Jeff Chandler, Victor Mature and Fernando Lamas keep the pages turning and the night lights on! And, wait until she pulls back the loin-cloth of Johnny Weissmuller's to reveal a whole news aspect of filmdom's "Tarzan!"
 A Fun Read. March 20, 2007
I was looking for something to read while traveling, and remembered hearing some positive comments about this book. It was a really great to read about Hollywood back in it's golden age, with it's "larger than life" productions and actors.
A Good Read September 9, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I found this book fascinating from cover to cover. The glimpse into the world of MGM at its grandest is wonderful, and Esther herself is never dull. A page turner for movie fans. I agree with other reviews that Esther can come off badly in her "Do you know who I am?" attitude--it reads like she got really full of herself somewhere down the road. Plus, what kind of person stays married to a man who won't allow you to have a relationship with your own children? Sorry--there's no excuse. But this is a review of the book itself, not of the person, and it's a good read.
 Ultimately a Dissapointment June 12, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I started out in admiration of how tough Esther Williams was. But I kept waiting for her to start having a decent personal life. At first, I thought how sad it was that people were unfeeling and cruel with her. (How is it that every single man she meets, btw, with a few barely mentioned exceptions, are cold, heartless and entirely self-absorbed? An LA thing?) But by the time she started having affairs of her own and marrying the domineering Lamas (she knew what she was getting herself into) I lost all respect or sympathy for her. Even so, I can't help liking her somehow and wishing things had been different. She seems like a friend that lets you down and yet you still want to like her.
In a way, it seems like something is missing...almost like you never completely can know or understand her.
I did find it very interesting to hear stories about life within MGM.
A psychological mystery November 27, 2005
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
This would be a good book for student psychiatrists to study and write papers on. Neither Williams nor her ghostwriter Digby Diehl put the pieces of her psyche together. They take the easy road, that everything Williams became was driven by her need to replace her dead brother as the financial savior of her family, and yet not much of the book after the beginning mentions her family. No doubt, her brother's death was an element, but so was an early and shocking two years of sexual abuse at the hands of a teenage boarder. And more shocking, her family was so fond of the boy, they weren't appalled at what he had done. He wasn't reported to the authorities. Esther says she was disappointed with her family's reaction, got the boy to move out herself, and yet continued to support her family and doesn't mention the event again in the book.
Although she is able to control her career and resist being sexually used by studio bosses and co-stars who don't appeal to her, she turns around and tolerates the most horrible of husbands for years and years. One, who routinely embarrasses her, spends all her money and leaves her in debt, another, the famous Fernando Lamas, makes her literally a slave for 22 years. Yet she was loyal to a decision she made to make up to him for the early loss of his mother. What's going on here?
The combination of early sexual abuse and having to be the family breadwinner made Esther demand perfection of herself in everything she did, from swimming to movies to being a wife. And sometimes the requirement of perfection becomes irrational, and yet she doesn't perceive it. It is most obvious when she talks about neglecting her children because Fernando doesn't want children -- hers or his -- around. Some of the reviewers here blast her for this, but they forget that all during their lives, they were essentially raised by a nanny. Esther's idea of motherhood was dropping in from time to time, or controlling things from a distance, and she continued to do this, farming the kids out with relatives, when she was with Fernando.
At no point during this book does Esther turn on herself and see any flaws or faults, which is consistent with the denial one goes into after a horrific childhood. She strove for perfection, achieved it in many areas, and is quite content. At this point, she might as well -- if she is still alive at this writing -- continue on with the illusion. No point in undergoing any psychiatric treatment when you've managed this far. I know of people in my own life who are trying to be "perfect" to compensate for some messed up stuff when they were younger and who are in extraordinary denial about reality, so it was interesting to see another example of it here.
As many reviewers have commented, the book does seem very arrogant and then wildly perplexing when you get to the whole Fernando bondage years, but it's a textbook psycho case.
After seeing her do a long interview on Turner Classic Movies and hinting at some of the wilder sexual escapades in this book -- and she does dish the dirt on how wild men can be about their packages -- I was intrigued and able to buy it for a penny on Amazon.com, so it was well worth it.
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