There is something peculiarly off-putting about a book whose opening sentence reeks of inaccuracy: ‘In 1952, the first Technicolor water spectacular film The Million Dollar Mermaid thrilled the movie-going world.’ I am not talking about anything arcane here; just the sort of factual stuff anyone can check on the Internet. Esther Williams, star of Mermaid, the Annette Kellerman biopic, had appeared in about ten films since Bathing Beauty (1944) that might have qualified as ‘water spectacular films’. Not to harp, but one’s confidence is further undermined in the foreword by co-author Barbara Firth’s uninflected boast that in 1964 she ‘was invited to join the Ladies Committee of the Sydney Opera House Appeal Fund, which was at that time the most prestigious committee in Sydney’, rising in time to be its ‘honorary public relations officer’.
The Original Million Dollar Mermaid: The Annette Kellerman story by Emily Gibson (with Barbara Firth)
Allen & Unwin, $29.95 pb, 230 pp
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