Splish-Splash: The Esther Williams Interview

The always lovely (even when damp) Esther Williams was the Star of the Month on Turner Classic Movies for May (we say was because, well, the month’s almost over, and her movies were being featured on Thursdays, of which we’ll see no more before the arrival of the hot and sticky month of June).

So we thought it an apt time to share with the Cladrite community an interview we did with the divine Ms. Williams some years ago on the occasion of the publication of her memoir, The Million Dollar Mermaid: An Autobiography.

Enjoy! But wait at least an hour after eating before beginning this Q&A.

An Interview with Esther Williams

In the 1940s and ’50s, Esther Williams was one of the brightest stars in MGM’s galaxy and she’s still going strong today. Her movies, with their memorable Busby Berkeley-choreographed aquatic extravaganzas, remain hugely popular today in revival houses and on cable television. And now, with the publication of her autobiography, Williams shares candid tales of her life as Hollywood’s “Million Dollar Mermaid.” We chatted with Ms. Williams about a wide range of topics, from her husband Fernando Lamas‘s sometimes philandering ways to cross-dressing in Hollywood. It was a conversation as lively and open as her book, The Million Dollar Mermaid: An Autobiography.

As we read your book, it struck us that you’ve have had a life filled with extreme highs and lows. There have been so many wonderful chapters in your life, but so many sad and tragic events as well.

It’s the idea that you’re smiling underwater—doing the impossible!—and then going home to a life that’s unraveling around you…I was struck with it, too. You know, writing your autobiography is therapy. You get in tune with a lot of things you thought you’d forgotten.

Fernando [Lamas] had asked me years ago not to be in the movies or television or do interviews anymore; as I say in my book, he asked, “Can you stop being Esther Williams?” And I said, “Well, that’s an interesting idea; I’ve been her for a lot of years. Let’s see how I do without her.”

And when Fernando died in 1982, the thing I noticed about the death of a life partner, especially one as difficult as Fernando was—when they go, you’re out of a job! The first person that called me after he died was Shirley Maclaine, who is my friend, and she said, “Well, Esther, you can finally get out of the house.” And I thought, Oh, Shirley, you tell it like it is. I’m so very fond of her.

And then Barbara Walters called. And I said, “Oh, Barbara, I haven’t been photographed in 20 years!” The one thing that Katharine Hepburn said that really made sense to me is that good thing about the talk shows is that people get to watch you rot. And I said, “I’ve been rotting in private!” And she said, “I’ve seen you at parties and you don’t look like you’re rotting to me. I want you to come and do one of my specials.” I said, “I’m not going to look good next to Jane Fonda or Sally Field.” And she said, “I won’t put you next to Jane Fonda and Sally Field; I’ll put you in the middle segment—we’ll put Mr. T before you and Howard Cosell after you, two of the ugliest men in the world.” And I said, “Oh, then I’ll do the show—of course!” [laughs]

Early in the book you detail a clinical experience with LSD. Later, you reveal that you were the victim of a rape at the hands of a family friend when you were a young woman, that your older brother died a tragic death when he was just in his teens. Was the book a form of catharsis for you?

You know, we seem to acquire, as we age and deal with various diminished capacities, an ability to articulate our feelings. To say, “No, no, you don’t understand. It wasn’t that way; it was this way.” And what happened to me is that, when I would go through the problems of day-to-day living, it was always wonderful to go to the studio and dive into that wonderful water. The water was very healing for me, and it remains so even today. I’m in my 70s. I had a knee replaced not so long ago and was going through physical therapy, and it hurt, you know? They’ve got to bring the muscles along, and it hurts.

So I said to Mark, my physical therapist—he came to my house to work with me, and he didn’t know how to swim—I said, “You’re $60 an hour, Mark. And you hurt. I don’t want to be hurting anymore; I’m going to get in the pool. And I tell you what we’ll do—we’ll call the $60 a push, because that’s what I’ll charge you for your swimming lesson. And I got him swimming, and he loved it.

What an opportunity for him, to receive a swimming lesson from Esther Williams! That’s a rare treat.

I thought it was worth the $60! Candy Bergen rang my doorbell one day and said, “I want [her daughter] Chloe to learn to swim.” And I said, “If you wanted her to learn to play piano, would you ring Artur Rubenstein‘s door?” And she said, “I don’t care if she plays piano, but she’s got to learn to swim.” And I said, “Yes, that’s true. Because that can save her life. Piano won’t ever save her life.”

Are you pleased—or perhaps surprised—by the rise of women’s athletics? Would you ever have imagined the sort of attention that’s been lavished on the U.S. women’s soccer team or the Olympic basketball players and gymnasts?

And synchronized swimming! It’s an Olympic sport now. Yes, it’s very exciting.
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Mirror Images: Guinn Williams and George W. Bush

If we told you the picture on the right was George W. Bush in Ronald Reagan drag, you’d almost believe it, wouldn’t you?

It certainly looks like Dubya, only with the Gipper’s hair.

But it’s not—it’s character actor Guinn Williams, often called “Big Boy,” whose career began in 1919 and lasted until the 1960s.

Big Boy and Dubya share more than just facial features. They’re both Texans, though Williams was the genuine article, born and raised in the Lone Star State. They both shared a name with their fathers. And they both were sons of politicians, though Williams’ dad began his career as a rancher (and we’re guessing he did more than clear brush) and a banker before first becoming county clerk of Wise County, Texas, from 1898 to 1902, serving as a member of the State senate from 1920 to 1922, and then serving in the House of Representatives from 1922-1933.

Oh, and the senior Williams was a Democrat, another key difference.

Rep. Williams’ son Guinn was given the nickname “Big Boy” by none other than Will Rogers. Guinn stood 6 feet, 2 inches tall and was muscular, so the handle was an apt one.

Though he acted in many other types of pictures, Williams was perhaps best known for his work in westerns, in which he generally portrayed a dim but likable second banana to the picture’s rootin’-tootin’ hero.

We’ve never seen a Guinn Williams picture without being reminded of Dubya; we find the resemblance striking. Watch the clip below, taken from Rafter Romance (1933) and also featuring Robert Benchley and Ginger Rogers, and see if you don’t agree.

Watching the stars come out

We have a grand time when we visit Los Angeles (pronounce it “Angle-eez,” with the hard G, if you please). As movie buffs, we get a kick out of just driving around the various neighborhoods and imagining who once lived in the bungalows we’re passing. Lucille Ball, f’rinstance.

Then there are the more substantial residences that the familiar stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood moved into, once they’d hit it big.

In our several trips to Tinsel Town, we’ve never taken one of the commercial tours of the stars’ homes, but we suspect they tend to focus on the abodes of contemporary stars—Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Justin Bieber—at the expense of the former residences of your Humphrey Bogarts, your Bette Davises, your Una Merkels. And who can blame them? It’s always good policy to give the people what they want, and we who are more interested in seeing where and how the stars of yesteryear lived are undeniably in the minority.

There are guidebooks that provide pointers that allow us to catch a glimpse of where Bogart, Davis, and Merkel lived, worked, and played, of course (we’re partial to Richard Alleman’s Hollywood: The Movie Lover’s Guide: The Ultimate Insider Tour of Movie L.A.), but what if one doesn’t have the wherewithal (or accrued vacation days) to to arrange a Southern California sojorn?

In that case, one turns, as one tends to do these days, to the internet—specifically to Image-Archeology.com and their collection of vintage linen postcards that depict the residences of those performers who made our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents laugh, cry and tap their toes (though not simultaneously).

Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks’ home, Pickfair	Jean Harlow’s Beverily Hills residence	Claudette Colbert’s hilltop residence in Hollywood

At this delightful site, one can gaze upon a palatial Hancock Park home while imagining Buster Keaton stepping out to pick up the morning paper, compare contrast two of Groucho Marx‘s Beverly HIlls homes, and kill two birds with one stone as you assess the love nest once blissfully shared by a pair of stars who were married once upon a time, Dick Powell and Joan Blondell.

And the list goes on—Myrna Loy, Harold Lloyd, Ginger Rogers, Barbara Stanwyck; one could grow breathless reciting them. All the cards, from A to Z (well, A to Y—Loretta Young is the last star on the list) are in terrific shape and lovingly presented. We encourage all our readers to experience a little California sunshine by spending some time there.

Goodbye to another glorious gal

It’s a sign of the fleeting nature of fame that her name probably doesn’t ring a bell with many people today, but “Baby” Marie Osborne, the first child star in the history of American movies, died on November 11 at the age of 99.

“Baby” Marie was very popular indeed during the First World War—her movies were so successful that her adoptive parents started their own production company to produce her pictures, and she had a merchandising deal with a toy company in New York that produced Baby Marie dolls—but her stardom, which began when she was just three years old, was at end before she reached the age of ten.

Not that she stopped working in Hollywood. Though she retired for a while, in the 1930s, she returned to work as a stand-in for such stars as Ginger Rogers and Betty Hutton.

She later moved into costume work, first for the Western Costume Company and later at Twentieth Century Fox, where she worked her way up to the position of costume supervisor, a job she held until 1976. Osborne’s costume work found her working with an impressive range of performers, from Marlon Brando to John Wayne, Rita Hayworth and Robert Redford.

This was a woman who experienced Hollywood history firsthand.

Osborne, who once described herself as “the first of Hollywood’s washed-up child stars” not only experienced the highs of Hollywood stardom, she knew the lows: She never saw any of the money she’d earned as a huge star in her childhood. “I was earning $300 a week when the average American was making less than $1,000 per year,” Osborne once said, but her parents saw to it that she never saw the money.

“There was a trust fund, but I never seemed to have received anything from it,” Osborne recalled. “My foster parents lived a gilded life.”

But Osborne’s second marriage was a long happy one, she had a daughter she loved dearly, and she was content with her lot in life.

As Osborne’s friend, author Jean-Jacques Jura, wrote in a remembrance he wrote after her passing, “Baby Marie always savored the moment, exhibiting a kind and responsible tenderness toward those around her: family, friends, and all living things, including her special appreciation of the animal world. In order of importance, Marie was most grateful for her Roman Catholicism, for her excellent health throughout her full and interesting life, for her cherished daughter, Joan, and for the beauty of nature.”

Rest in peace, Baby Marie.

In Your Hat, pt. 8

Here’s Chapter 8 of In Your Hat, the 1933 tell-all memoir by Hat Check Girl to the Stars, Renee Carroll, in which she shares tales of by the many celebrities she encountered while working at Sardi’s, among them George Burns and Gracie Allen, Eddie Cantor, George Jessel, Norma Talmadge, George Raft, Wallace Reid, Ginger Rogers, Douglas Fairbanks, and many more.

     A STOOGE, in Broadway parlance, is the assist in the act. If you do an accordion routine and a heckler is paid by you to annoy your act from the box, then you’re probably Phil Baker and your stooge eventually becomes as famous as you are. Witness Sid Silvers of Take a Chance fame.
     Broadway is full of stooges, both in real life and on the stage. It may sound strange to you but the jester in the king’s court from the time of The Erl King (I don’t know why they insist on spelling Oil as Erl) has been brought down the years until now he is labeled “stooge.” His job is to take he hard knocks, furnish the opportunity for the gag to be sprung, and appear the perfect fool.
     When Phil Baker, who pumps a mean accordion, opened in a show in New York and had a stooge in the box doing the regular routine, Al Boasberg, the gagman who writes funny lines for a dozen or more comedians, wired Baker:

LIKED YOUR ACT STOP THE OLD GENT WITH THE ACCORDION WAS GOOD TOO.

     Gracie Allen, of the famous team of Burns and Allen, is the stooge of the act, even though it is she who pulls all the funny lines. Recently she gave George Burns cause to laugh when she came to him with an idea.
     ”Georgie, dear,” Gracie said. “I have an idea.”
     ”Well, let’s forget it,” George answered characteristically, knowing it would bring on the usual headache.
     ”I’ve thought of a line for our act,” she continued.
     ”All right,” gave in George. “What is it?”
     ”I can’t tell you until I’ve gotten a prop.”
     ”What sort of a prop?”
     ”A muff.”
     ”What’s a muff?” George wanted to know.
     ”It’s one of those things women used to carry around so that they could hold hands with themselves.”
     ”All right, Gracie, get yourself a muff and let’s have the gag.”
     She went to the best furrier on the Avenue and ordered a muff made. It has to be matched sables, four skins, exquisitely sewn. The muff cost $250 and she charged it to Geroge Burns, her husband. She brought it to him one day.
     ”Here’s the muff, George.”
     He examined it carefully. He approved.
     ”I got it at a bargain, George.”
     George immediately became suspicious.
     ”How much, Gracie? How much?” he pleaded.
     ”Well—er—two hundred and—er—fifty dollars.”
     George felt around for support.
     ”Two hundred and fifty smackers for that thing? Gracie, you’ll ruin me!”
     ”But it’s a bargain, George, and the furrier let me have it at that price because there are two holes in it!”
     And she held up the muff to show him the holes in which one is supposed to insert one’s hands. Burns was nonplused.
     ”But what about the gag?” he wanted to know. “Is the gag worth $250?”
     ”Why, George,” giggled the she-stooge, “I just did it. You see, I come on with this muff and you ask me how much I paid for it and I say: ‘I got it at a bargain because it had two holes in it.”
     With which Mr. Burns fainted dead away. And that’s how jokes are born in case you’re interested.
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