Million Dollar Mermaid ** (1952, Esther Williams, Victor Mature, Walter Pidgeon, David Brian) – Classic Movie Review 9373

Director Mervyn LeRoy’s 1952 MGM Technicolor musical Million Dollar Mermaid [The One Piece Bathing Suit] is a wet and washed-out biography of Annette Kellermann [Kellerman] (6 July 1887 – 6 November 1975), the turn-of-the-last-century champion long-distance Australian swimmer who became a silent movie star.

Esther Williams of course (who else?) plays Kellerman, and very tolerably well too, with Victor Mature more than adequate enough, if uncomfortable looking as the romantic interest, promoter James Sullivan, a carnival hustler and Kellerman’s lover. Busby Berkeley choreographs some spectacular and utterly kitsch aquatic scenes, which, along with Williams’s performance and the Technicolor cinematography by George J Folsey, more or less just about save the day.

Kellermann in Queen of the Sea.

Williams chose the movie’s title for her 1999 autobiography, The Million Dollar Mermaid. Williams recalled: ‘Vic [Victor Mature] was a big man: he had a great swagger. I liked him and I knew we’d be great together on screen. For once, swimming was really part of the story and it didn’t have to be shoehorned into the rest of the plot. It was a good script and I’d have some challenging scenes to play.’

Also in the cast are Walter Pidgeon, David Brian, Jesse White, Maria Tallchief, Donna Corcoran, Howard Freeman, Charles Watts, Wilton Graff, Frank Ferguson, James Bell, James Flavin, Willis Bouchey, Tom Dillon, Al Ferguson, Pat Flaherty, John Hamilton, Dabbs Greer, Bobby Hale, Queenie Leonard and George Wallace.

Annette Kellermann in a nude scene from A Daughter of the Gods.

In 1916, Kellermann became the first major actress to appear nude in a Hollywood film when she appeared fully naked in A Daughter of the Gods. Made by Fox Film Corporation, it was the first million-dollar movie. Alas, like many of Kellermann’s other films, it is now a lost film. However, Venus of the South Seas (1924) was restored by the Library of Congress in 2004 as the only feature film starring Kellermann known to exist in its complete form.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9373

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Kellermann in her one-piece bathing suit.