Million Dollar Mermaid

John: I feel like watching a bad movie.

Zoë: Daddy wan a' watch a bad movie?

But the Voice of Reason's bedtime is 8:00. Now I am free. I am watching "Million Dollar Mermaid", the 1952 MGM aquatic extravaganza. Based on a true story, it stars Esther Williams as Annette Kellerman, the Australian swimming champion who overcame childhood rickets to scandalize Boston bluenoses by wearing a one-piece bathing suit in 1902. Before 1902 competitive women swimmers had to wear heavy wooden Victorian bathing machines. These devices, weighing 200 pounds or more, rolled along the bottom of the pool on wheels. The fastest time for the 400 yard freestyle was just over 2 hours. Kellerman was able to shave just over two hours off that time. Her nemesis was a giant Russian musclewoman named Draga (played by Danish actress Dolphina Lindgrun). After coming in second in their first encounter, the Russian emerges from her stylized Troika bathing machine and utters the movie's famous tag line, 'I will BREAK you'. Draga narrows the odds by conspiring with a mad Confederate army scientist (played by Busby Berkeley!) with a scheme for converting all the water in any pool into steam power. The scene in which Kellerman flails to narrow victory in only a few inches of dangerously hot water is a memorable one, and a testament to Berkeley's talents as a choreographer. Hideously disfigured, Draga is driven mad by the spectacle of her enemy's victories, increasing social acceptance, and extreme wealth due to synchronized swimming. Draga attacks the Hippodrome in New York City in a towering, infernal bathing device. Our heroine is rescued from the clutches of 'The Iron Mermaiden' in the nick of time by Sullivan (Victor Mature), her always-just-about-to-make-it-big carny heart-throb, in his nobody-believed-it-could-fly gyro-bathing machine. Nuptials follow. And an interesting intereview with Martin Scorcese about why the movie is important. Perched on the edge of his chair, just under his own eyebrows, he explains in very animated terms that - even though he is a New Yorker - it was only while he was doing research for "Gangs of New York" that he learned the New York Hippodrome was destroyed by a giant Victorian bathing machine in 1902. It just doesn't make it into the history books. True story.