Esther Williams @ 100: Million Dollar Mermaid

Team Experience has been celebrating Esther Williams Centennial with a three part miniseries. Previously we featured Thrill of a Romance and Neptune's Daughter. 

by Cláudio Alves

In some ways, Million Dollar Mermaid is both the quintessential Esther Williams movie and a departure in the screen siren's career. During the 1940s, Williams achieved cinematic stardom through self-knowing exercises in romantic silliness and musical extravagance, lighthearted productions that wore their escapist possibilities as a badge of honor. One can often feel the screenwriter's strain, trying to shoe-horn swimming scenes in stories that could function just as well without them. Even the baseball comedy Take Me Out to the Ball Game had to be retrofitted into having an out-of-place pool number where Williams gets to lip-sync while swimming under the gaze of Busby Berkeley's camera. Consequentially, MGM never presented Williams as a great dramatic actress, preferring to exhalt her natural charms, radiant presence, and aquatic athleticism.

Loosely inspired in the life of Australian professional swimmer, vaudevillian, and early movie star Annette Kellerman, Million Dollar Mermaid is a lavish biopic with inspirational aspirations...

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49 days til Oscar nominations. The #1 film of '49 was...

by Nathaniel R

With 49 days left of fervent prayers from contenders hoping to be among The Chosen on January 23rd, is it any wonder that Samson & Delilah (1949) popped into mind... shortly before Blade Runner 2049 (This is how my brain works -- my deepest apologies).

Biblical movies were once favorites of Oscar voters, especially in the mid 20th century. One might call them the sci-fi blockbusters of the day in terms of both their audience popularity and their difficulty being truly respected outside of "craft" categories. Samson & Delilah was, according to Wikipedia, the year's biggest box office hit in 1949... though that makes little sense. Apparently it was only released in NYC in 1949 and then hit Los Angeles in 1950 to become Oscar eligible for the 1950 Oscars instead of the 49 Oscars...

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The Furniture: My Gal Sal's Nonsense Gay Nineties

"The Furniture" is our weekly series on Production Design. You can click on the images to see them in magnified detail. Here's Daniel Walber...

My Gal Sal is a pack of lies. The 1942 musical, ostensibly a biopic of songwriter Paul Dresser, is almost entirely fabricated. Of course, that hardly matters. Accuracy is no prerequisite for the Best Production Design Oscar, which Richard Day, Joseph C. Wright and Thomas Little won for the picture. No one will be mad if some details are fudged in musical numbers like “Me and My Fella and a Big Umbrella.”

That said, My Gal Sal is interesting because it’s all nonsense. It’s a window into the way Hollywood projects itself onto the past, a compendium of historical kitsch.

Dresser (Victor Mature) begins the film in a strict, Indiana home. His minister father objects to his music, so he runs away and gets a job with a medicine show. 

Eventually he meets Sally Elliott (Rita Hayworth), an established Broadway star. They don’t hit it off right away, but he meets her again in New York City. Their on-again-off-again romance, troubled by his sudden success, drives the rest of the plot...

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