Esther Williams

Esther Williams (1921 to 2013) was an American competitive swimmer who became a film star. As a teenager on the Los Angeles Athletic Club swim team she set regional and national records, but the outbreak of World War II cancelled the 1940 Summer Olympics she had been training for. She then joined Billy Rose's Aquacade, swam alongside Olympic champion Johnny Weissmuller in San Francisco and was noticed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer scouts. Through the 1940s and early 1950s she starred in a run of aquamusicals that built elaborate synchronised swimming and diving numbers into feature films, and in 1952 she played the Australian swimmer Annette Kellerman in Million Dollar Mermaid. She later built a business career and served as a commentator for synchronised swimming at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.