The Million Dollar Mermaid: An Autobiography

The Million Dollar Mermaid:

Simon & Schuster, $26 hard

Esther Williams has ruined my life. Until now, there were few things about life I could count on. Among them were death, taxes, and my fantasy of a blue-collar romance with Jeff Chandler. You know how it is -- sometimes he's an auto mechanic who shows me that it was a loose nut causing all my problems, or sometimes he's a construction worker who lends me a torque wrench. In any case, he's always there for me, showing up just in time, with just the right tool, keeping a firm grip on things. But it's all different now. Now, because of the evil Miss Williams' book, every time he shows up, he comes wobbling in on high heels, wearing a big red-and-white polka-dotted chiffon dress, and the effect is far from erotic. Finding out that Jeff Chandler was a cross-dresser has been devastating for me, and I am forming a support group to help others adjust to this new vision of a, well, kinder and gentler Jeff Chandler. If we can push the image of Jeff in the dress out of our minds for just a little while, Esther Williams has quite an amazing story to tell, one which she tells with grace and good humor (with Digby Diehl). Even though the enormous amount of press for this book has made it unnecessary to actually read it, do it anyway. Miss Williams is the epitome of the MGM "manufactured star" who is nonetheless a breed apart, a tough, levelheaded dame who survived the system that created her. Her movies, always based on swimming, became increasingly opulent productions that miraculously solved a repeated conundrum -- how to keep getting Miss Williams into the water, time after time. Then we read about Jeff Chandler. And now? Now all we have left is death and taxes.