A biography for Esther Williamshasn’t been written yet.
“By the time I got home at night, my eyes were so chlorinated I saw rings around every light.”
“Life magazine ran a page featuring me and three other girls that was clearly the precursor of Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues.”
“It appeared as if I had invited the audience into the water with me, and it conveyed the sensation that being in there was absolutely delicious.”
“When you're out of sight for as long as I was, there's a funny feeling of betrayal that comes over people when they see you again.”
“I think it's so funny when people think they can't control a movie star. They can. We're just women, you know.”
“There was a policy at Hughes against drinking at lunch, but the men ignored it.”
“Everything about my teenage life was almost ideal.”
“I was the only swimmer in movies. Tarzan was long gone, and he couldn't have done them anyway; he could never have gotten into my bathing suit.”
“I ended up buying a restaurant. Already we had invested in a gas station and a metal products plant.”
“Once I married Fernando, I became invisible.”
“I remember when I first walked into Mayer's cavernous office. You had to walk 50 yards to get to him, and in that time he could really study everything about you.”
“Which Esther Williams do you want to hear about?”
“The newspapers loved pinup pictures of pretty young swimmers, and as a national champion, I got more than my share of space in the sports pages.”
“The wisdom acquired with the passage of time is a useless gift unless you share it.”
“Critics established a snobbery toward me.”
“I never walked the streets of New York hoping to be a musical comedy star. For one thing, they would have thought I was too tall, because l was five feet eight and a half, and they were all little bitty things running around in the studio at that time.”