 Book Reviews
with Robin Osborne
The Original Million Dollar Mermaid
By Emily Gibson with Barbara Firth
Allen & Unwin
$29.95
 Sydney-born
swimmer, fitness nut, vaudeville performer and screen actress, Annette Kellerman,
had a second burst of fame after a Hollywood movie was made about her life, although
Esther Williams, who starred in The Million Dollar Mermaid, was a pale version
of the original.
In 1888, two-year old Kellerman was diagnosed with rickets and five years later,
desperate for a cure, her doctor prescribed swimming, much to the horror of both
the patient and her father, neither of whom could even stay afloat.
"I loathed it," she would recall. "They had to drag me kicking
and screaming to the lessons."
Yet she was soon beating all comers: "Only a cripple can understand the
intense joy that I experienced when little by little I found that my legs were
growing stronger and taking on the normal shape."
By her mid-teens Kellerman swam like a fish and was an accomplished high-diver,
heralding a career that brought glory and several brushes with death. While filming
A Daughter of the Gods she agreed to plunge off a Jamaican waterfall with her
hands and ankles tied. The stunt was tried first with a dog that promptly vanished.
"Annette, hands still tied, could see that she was heading straight for
the jagged rocks lining the shoreline but could do little to stop herself being
dashed against them. Somehow she grabbed hold of a rock and, Houdini-esque, cut
the binding cords on its sharp edges."
She emerged covered in blood, having almost severed her arteries in the process.
Kellerman had left Sydney with her father for England where, financially pressed,
she undertook gruelling long-distance swims, including three nearly successful
Channel attempts that captivated the media and earned her the title of 'Australian
Mermaid'.
She titillated the public by wearing a black, body-hugging, one-piece costume
that 'accentuated the symmetry of the figure that was to become the most famous
in all the world'. Her shape and body measurements were 'analysed' - or ogled
over - by men and women alike.
She blitzed the stage in England, Europe and America, diving into a giant glass
tank to perform an extraordinary underwater ballet in a skin-coloured costume
that made her seem naked. She gave fitness lectures and befriended royalty and
glitterati worldwide.
Retiring to the Gold Coast with much-loved husband, Jimmie, she died in 1977
at the age of 91. Quite a life for the girl who wore iron braces on her legs for
five years.
- Books reviewed are available at Book Warehouse, Keen Street, Lismore.
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