Esther Williams

With two little boys in diapers, I had to keep it simple if I were going to have a life at all.

Widowhood had done nothing to curb my smart mouth. So much for diplomacy.

Which Esther Williams do you want to hear about

What the public expects and what is healthy for an individual are two very different things.

We can't all win Olympic medals. Even I never won one.

Victor Mature was a big man he had a great swagger. I liked him and I knew we'd be good together on screen.

Traveling to swimming meets took me beyond my small-town existence, gave me a hint of the exciting world outside of my own home.

There was a policy at Hughes against drinking at lunch, but the men ignored it.

I was all in gold sequins for Million Dollar Mermaid, 50 feet in the air.

I took my daily swim at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool despite the presence of onlookers.

I took a job at the pool in order to earn the five cents a day it cost to swim. I counted wet towels. As a bonus, I was allowed to swim during lunchtime.

I gave my eardrums to MGM. And it's true I really did.

I ended up buying a restaurant. Already we had invested in a gas station and a metal products plant.

I always took it for granted that there would be life after Hollywood.

Everything about my teenage life was almost ideal.

Critics established a snobbery toward me.

Clark Gable was the first to have called me a mermaid.

By the time I got home at night, my eyes were so chlorinated I saw rings around every light.

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.

The wisdom acquired with the passage of time is a useless gift unless you share it.

I was 15, and the years of hard swimming had packed muscle on my frame and made me very strong. Not as strong as a football player, but strong enough to inflict heavy damage.

Three events. Three gold medals. I was news, big news, in the sports world.

My first event was the 100-meter freestyle, the top event of the meet, competing against the best in the nation, over 100 swimmers.

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 always felt that if I made a movie, it would be one movie I didn't see how they could make 26 swimming movies.