General Chat

Dear All

Hello

Hope you are okay.


Another Hollywood legend passes away and a piece of cinema history goes with them.


Rest in peace, Miss Esther Williams.

Take gentle care all
Sincere wishes
EOS
xx

I saw some of her films with underwater sequences when I was a child in the early fifties. I thought they were really magical!

ah I'm sad to hear this as she was one of my favourites .......and swimming when very young I used to imagine myself as Esther.

Have read her autobiography and she had a colourful life with some handsome fellas,well she was a beautiful lady.

r.i.p. Esther

Oh how sad. I remember loving her films and wanted to be just like her.

loved her films

A good age , to be honest I thought she was much older and probably went ages ago . I remember seeing her in films when I was young!

Actress Esther Williams dies at 91

Williams was known for her roles in underwater ballets
US swimming champion-turned-movie star Esther Williams has died in Los Angeles aged 91.

Her spokesman said she died peacefully in her sleep. She had been in declining health due to old age.

A national swimming champion by the time she was 16, her success led to a career in Hollywood "aqua-musicals" designed just for her, in the 1940s.

She became known as Hollywood's Mermaid, starring in films including Dangerous When Wet and Easy to Wed.

Williams became one of cinema's biggest box-office stars in the 1940s and 1950s, famously appearing in spectacular swimsuits that capitalised on her physical beauty.

Her films were typically lavish song and dance affairs, following the same formula of romance, music and comedy - held together by a lightweight plot that provided infinite excuses for the actress to get into the water.

Finales usually featured Williams diving into a pool or lagoon and surfacing to a crescendo of music, with water glistening on her beaming face.

Her string of successful films included Thrill of a Romance, Fiesta, On an Island With You and Duchess of Idaho.

Co-stars included Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Red Skelton, Ricardo Montalban and Howard Keel.


Esther Williams appeared on the BBC's Parkinson show in 2000.
In the 1950s she attempted to branch out into non-swimming roles, but met with little success.

"I guess what MGM found was that my audience wanted that bathing suit," she said, when her autobiography was released in 1999.

"And you know, when Cinemascope came in and you've got that water all wrapped around you and they'd do big close-ups of me... I think it had too much pleasure connected with it for them to change it."

She retired from the movies in 1962, following her marriage to Hollywood playboy Fernando Lamas.

In her later years she hosted swimming events for ABC-TV's coverage of the 1984 Olympic Games and turned her attention to business, launching her own line of swimwear.