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Cover image for The million dollar mermaid
Format:
Book
Title:
The million dollar mermaid
ISBN:
9780684852843
Publication Information:
New York : Simon & Schuster, ©1999.
Physical Description:
416 pages, 32 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 25 cm
General Note:
Includes index.
Contents:
Esther Williams, Cary Grant, and LSD -- The fifth child, 1922-1936 -- In full bloom, 1939 -- The birth of a professional mermaid, 1940 -- L.B. Mayer meets his match, 1940-1941 -- MGM University, 1941 -- The Andy Hardy test, 1942 -- Bathing beauty, 1943-1944 -- Hitting my stride, 1944-1945 -- Becoming a star, 1946 -- Fiesta, 1946 -- Name above the title, 1946-1947 -- Movies and motherhood, 1948-1949 -- Duchess of Idaho and Pagan love song, 1950 -- The end of an era, 1950-1951 -- Million dollar mermaid, 1952 -- Dangerous when wet, 1953 -- Easy to love, my quintessential MGM film, 1953-1955 -- Jupiter's darling and farewell MGM, 1953-1955 -- Going, going ..., 1955-1956 -- Gone, 1957-1959 -- The return of Fernando, 1960-1961 -- Esther Lamas, 1961-1964 -- Tethered, 1964-1982 -- The last journey, August-October 1982 -- Godmother to a sport [synchronized swimming], 1982-1984 -- Reflections and compensations.
Summary:
The author offers her perspective on life during Hollywood's Golden Age, chronicling her youthful idealism, her training to be a star, and her own tempestuous personal life.

Rarely has one of Hollywood's golden-age stars written with such genuine wit and candor about what it was like to work in the movie factories where actors were pampered and coddled, yet expected to work without complaint for long, hard hours; what it was like to be young and sexy and to be turned into an object of desire for millions of moviegoers; what it was like to live in a world of almost total unreality, yet be expected to go about the business of finding a mate and raising a family, and avoiding personal scandal at all costs. Here is Esther Williams' witty, fresh, and frank autobiography, all about an eighteen-year-old girl who reluctantly answers the siren call of MGM--at the time, the most powerful and prestigious movie studio in the world--and who soon finds herself launched on a career that will last more than twenty years, during which time she will help to create a genre of film that seems almost unimaginable today, yet which still holds all its original freshness and fascination, and who becomes during those years one of the world's top box-office stars. Williams calls MGM her "university," and the education she got there was one in how to project glamour and femininity, how to make yourself desirable while always, always playing the lady. No one who went through that university has ever written before with such absolute candor about what it was really like--the affairs, the gossip, the tricks of the trade, the competition, the deals. the fights; and the methods the studios had for keeping their stars in line. With a sharp mind and a rapier wit, Esther Williams brings to life those times and those bigger-than-life people, telling her stories with respect, yet with clear-eyed candor.--Adapted from dust jacket.
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