This very long movie (On an Island With You) is playing this morning on TCM. They just had the ‘final kiss’ in the pool. Esther Williams started out her teens setting swimming records at the Los Angeles Athletic Club, and was only prevented from competing in the 1940 Olympics by the outbreak of World War II. So she was a serious jock. She was not just a hottie in a swimsuit. With no Olympics, she joined “Billy Rose’s Aquacade!” (yeah I don’t know what an “aquacade” is either) Hollywood spots the fetching young lass and puts her in the movies. But because they have no imagination, Esther spends the next 20 years waterlogged.

The same way Gene Kelly was a dancer, so to Hollywood’s mind, he could only be in movie’s where he danced. Shirley Jones could relate, they had her as a singer, so when musicals went out of favor so did she. Poor Shirley Temple, she was a “child star”, so when she grew up to be a stunning young woman, she was out. One of the few to break the mold, in his case “costume” pictures, was Tyrone Power. Eve Arden was the ‘cynical girl Friday’. Natalie Wood was put in anything that showed off her figure. John Wayne was a cowboy. The cliché is authors only have 1 book in them. I long ago figured out directors only have 1 movie, they just change the location or the actors. Sometimes.

She was also quite the businesswoman: “My suits are quality fabric. She went on: “I put you in a suit that contains you and you will swim in. I don’t want you to be in two Dixie cups and a fish line.”