LOS ANGELES - Esther Williams, the swimming champion turned actress who starred in glittering and aquatic Technicolor musicals of the 1940s and 1950s, has died. She was 91.
Williams died early Thursday in her sleep, according to her longtime publicist Harlan Boll.
Following in the footsteps of Sonja Henie, who went from skating champion to movie star, Williams became one of Hollywood's biggest moneymakers, appearing in spectacular swimsuit numbers that capitalized on her wholesome beauty and perfect figure.
Such films as "Easy to Wed," "Neptune's Daughter" and "Dangerous When Wet" followed the same formula: romance, music, a bit of comedy and a flimsy plot that provided excuses to get Esther into the water.
The extravaganzas dazzled a second generation via television and the compilation films "That's Entertainment." Williams' co-stars included the pick of the MGM contract list, including Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Red Skelton, Ricardo Montalban and Howard Keel.
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With the end of big studios and costly musicals in the mid-'50s, Williams tried non-swimming roles with little success. After her 1962 marriage to Fernando Lamas, her co-star in "Dangerous When Wet," she retired from public life.
She explained in a 1984 interview: "A really terrific guy comes along and says, 'I wish you'd stay home and be my wife,' and that's the most logical thing in the world for a Latin. And I loved being a Latin wife - you get treated very well. There's a lot of attention in return for that sacrifice."
She came to films after winning 100-meter freestyle and other races at the 1939 national championships and appearing at the San Francisco World's Fair's swimming exhibition.
As with Judy Garland, Donna Reed and other stars, Williams was introduced in one of Mickey Rooney's Andy Hardy films, "Andy Hardy's Double Life" (1942).
She also played a small role in "A Guy Named Joe" before "Bathing Beauty" in 1944 began the string of immensely popular musical spectaculars.
Williams in a bathing suit became a favorite pinup of GI's in World War II, and her popularity continued afterward. She was a refreshing presence among MGM's stars - warm, breezy, with a frankness and self-deprecating humor that delighted interviewers.
When she published her autobiography in 1999, she titled it "The Million Dollar Mermaid."
Esther Jane Williams was born Aug. 8, 1921, in Inglewood, a suburb southwest of Los Angeles, one of five children. (Some references give a birth year of 1922 or 1923, but she told The Associated Press in 2004 that the correct date was 1921.)
A public pool was not far from the modest home where Williams was raised, and it was there that an older sister taught her to swim.
When she was in her teens, the Los Angeles Athletic Club offered to train her four hours a day, aiming for the 1940 Olympic Games at Helsinki. In 1939, she won the Women's Outdoor Nationals title in the 100-meter freestyle, set a record in the 100-meter breaststroke and was a part of several winning relay teams. But the outbreak of war in Europe that year canceled the 1940 Olympics, and Esther dropped out of competition to earn a living.
She was selling clothes in a Wilshire Boulevard department store when showman Billy Rose tapped her for a bathing-beauty job at the World's Fair in San Francisco.
While there, she was spotted by an MGM producer and an agent. She laughed at the suggestion she do films that would popularize swimming, as Henie had done with ice skating.
"Frankly I didn't get it," she recalled. "If they had asked me to do some swimming scenes for a star, that would have made sense to me. But to ask me to act was sheer insanity."
She finally agreed to visit MGM boss Louis B. Mayer, and recalled that she took the job after her mother told her: "No one can avoid a challenge in life without breeding regret, and regret is the arsenic of life."
On StarNet: See more photos of Esther Williams during her heyday, azstarnet.com/gallery
