The greatest movie ever!

brilliant actors, brilliant editing

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Entertaining biopic of Annette Kellerman, an Australian swimmer turned vaudeville and early Hollywood star. Esther Williams is a natural fit for the role and does a fine job. Of course, it's an old-school Hollywood biopic so there's more fiction than fact in their telling of Kellerman's story. That sort of thing never really bothers me but it does some so be advised ahead of time this isn't a documentary. Esther is lovely as ever and has some excellent aquatic numbers choreographed by the great Busby Berkeley. A couple of these numbers are classics that every Esther fan will want to see. The rest of the cast, including Walter Pidgeon, Victor Mature, and Jesse White, is solid. The only problems are that the movie is overlong and the romance with Mature is less than exciting. But it's Esther Williams swimming in Technicolor and that definitely needs to be the headline.

Even though (at the beginning of the story) pretty Esther Williams had to compete with the endearing charm of a cute, boxing kangaroo named Sydney - Soon enough, Million Dollar Mermaid (MDM, for short) became Esther's, and only Esther's, picture. And that's the way it continued to stay, right through to its final, closing credits.Being a typical glamour production from a 1950's Hollywood, MDM was clearly only a partially accurate account of the life of early-20th Century swimming sensation, Annette Kellerman, who was a native Australian (born in 1886).Of the half-dozen, or so, Esther Williams' vehicles which I've now seen. MDM was certainly one of the rare ones that used just about any old excuse it could to get our glamorous star into a form-fitting bathing suit and splashing around in the water.But, whether she was wet or dry, Esther could always be counted on the have a dazzlingly fresh, Pepsodent smile to flash at all of her adoring fans.It was famed, veteran choreographer, Busby Berkeley (definitely long past his prime) who was responsible for staging the elaborate aqua-musical numbers in MDM.As the story goes - In the final fantasy sequence, Williams was required to dive off a 115 foot tower into the water below. Having no stand-in to take on such a dangerous stunt as this, Esther, of course, did it herself.And, as a result, Williams ended up sustaining a fairly serious spinal injury which made it necessary that she wear a body cast for 7 months.Oh, well - There's no business like show business - Right? Born in 1921, Esther Williams' career as MGM's prize Aqua-star petered out by the end of the 1950s. In real-life - Williams lived to a ripe, old age of 91.

Million Dollar Mermaid (Mervyn Le Roy, 1952), which gave splashy star Esther Williams the title of her autobiography, is a standard Hollywood biopic lit by several stupefying water ballet set-pieces. Williams is Annette Kellerman, the Australian swim star who became an international celebrity after first tackling the Thames and then outraging American society with her one-piece swimsuit. Victor Mature is the rough diamond of a promoter who takes her close to the top, then bails – wanting to prove it's he, not she, who's the architect of that success. Walter Pidgeon plays Kellerman's supportive father, a music teacher who's dreaming of his own conservatory once more, while Jesse White is particularly strong in his sympathetic supporting part. Williams does quite well in a role that demands more than her usual pouting and foot-stomping, though to quote the script: "Wet, she's sensational; dry, she's just a nice girl who should settle down and get married." The main draw, as ever with Williams' work, are the swimming showpieces. The ones here are particularly good, including a gilded number commencing Kellerman's residency at the New York Hippodrome, and Busby Berkeley's 'Fountain and Smoke', which is just spectacular. Berkeley, who pretty much invented the kaleidoscopic musical number in films like 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933 - each routine stuffed with surreal overhead shots of dancing girls moving in sync - is here employed as a sort of 'specialty director', contributing just one extraordinary number – perhaps because his eye-popping extravaganzas were so expensive to film.

While my comment above is hardly a glowing endorsement, I liked this movie far more than I thought I ever wood. The movie is a biography of Annette Kellerman, who was a champion swimmer at the turn of the century and created quite a scandal when she began swimming in comfortable bathing suits--something "decent" women didn't do back in her day! From swimming champ to long distance swimmer to movie star, the film follows her career. Ms. Williams does a fine job as does co-star Victor Mature. I think the reason I liked this movie so much was because since it was a bio-pic, much of the usual over-the-top swimming choreography was missing or at least subdued. A decent movie with plenty to hold your interest.