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Esther Jane Williams (born 8 August, 1922) is a
United States swimmer and film|movie star famous
for her musical films that featured elaborate
performances with swimming and diving.


Esther Williams was born in Inglewood, California,
and was enthusistic about swimming from her youth.
She qualified to be in the United States swim team
in the 1940 Olympics, but the games were canceled
due to World War II. Williams instead went to
Hollywood, and quickly became a popular star of
the 1940s and 1950s. 

Many of her films, such as Million Dollar Mermaid
and Jupiter's Darling, contained elaborately
staged swimming scenes, obtained not without
physical cost to the performer. She broke her neck
filming a 50-foot dive off a tower during a
climactic musical number for the 1952 release
Million Dollar Mermaid which landed her in a body
cast for six months (she subsequently recovered
though she still suffers headaches as a result of
the accident). Her many hours spent submerged
resulted in her rupturing her eardrums numerous
times. In her autobiography, Williams details
several other occasions in which she nearly
drowned shooting her oxygen-defying stunts but she
often used a stunt double.

Her love life was a source of media interest.  She
was romantically linked with Jeff Chandler
(actor)|Jeff Chandler, and has been married four
times.  Her third husband was actor Fernando
Lamas.  Her brother, Stanton Williams, also had a
brief acting career during the 1920s before his
death while still a teenager.

Esther Williams retired from acting in the early
1960s.

==Filmography==

*Personalities (1942) (short subject)
*Inflation (1942) (short subject)
*Andy Hardy's Double Life (1942)
*A Guy Named Joe (1943)
*Bathing Beauty (1944)
*Thrill of a Romance (1945)
*Ziegfeld Follies (1946)
*The Hoodlum Saint (1946)
*Easy to Wed (1946)
*Till the Clouds Roll By (1946) (cameo)
*Fiesta (1947)
*This Time for Keeps (1947)
*On an Island with You (1948)
*Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949)
*Neptune's Daughter (1949)
*Screen Actors (1950) (short subject)
*Duchess of Idaho (1950)
*Pagan Love Song (1950)
*Texas Carnival (1951)
*Callaway Went Thataway (1951) (cameo)
*Shirts Ahoy! (1952)
*Million Dollar Mermaid (1952)
*Dangerous When Wet (1953)
*Easy to Love (1953)
*1955 Motion Picture Theatre Celebration (1955)
(short subject)
*Jupiter's Darling (1955)
*Screen Snapshots: Hollywood, City of Stars (1956)
(short subject)
*The Unguarded Moment (1956)
*Raw Wind in Eden (1958)
*The Big Show (1961)
*The Magic Fountain (1963)
*That's Entertainment! III (1994)

==Further reading==
* Williams, Esther, The Million Dollar Mermaid: An
Autobiography, Simon & Schuster, 1999.

==External links==
*imdb name|id=0930565|name=Esther Williams