Annette Marie Sarah Kellerman (6 July 1886 – 6 November 1975) was an Australian professional swimmer, vaudeville and film star, and writer. She was one of the first women to wear a one-piece bathing costume and inspired others to follow her example.
She is often credited for inventing the sport of synchronised swimming after her 1907 performance of the first water ballet in a glass tank at the New York Hippodrome. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Early life
Kellerman was born in Darlinghurst, New South Wales, Australia, on 6 July 1886, to Australian-born violinist Frederick William Kellerman and his French wife, Alice Ellen Charbonnet, a pianist and music teacher.
At the age of 6, a weakness in Kellerman’s legs necessitated the wearing of painful steel braces to strengthen them. In order to further overcome her disability, her parents enrolled her in swim classes at Cavill’s baths in Sydney. By the age of 13, her legs were practically normal, and by 15, she had mastered all the swimming strokes and won her first race. At this time she was also giving diving displays.
In 1902, Kellerman decided to take her swimming seriously and subsequently won the ladies’ 100 yards and mile championships of New South Wales in the record times of 1 minute, 22 seconds and 33 minutes, 49 seconds respectively. In that same year, her parents decided to move to Melbourne, and she was enrolled at Mentone Girls’ Grammar School where her mother had accepted a music teaching position.
During her time at school, Kellerman gave exhibitions of swimming and diving at the main Melbourne baths, performed a mermaid act at Princes Court entertainment centre and did two shows a day swimming with fish in a glass tank at the Exhibition Aquarium. In June–July 1903 she performed sensational high dives in the Coogee scene of Bland Holt’s spectacular, The Breaking of the Drought, at the Melbourne Theatre Royal.
Swimming career
On 24 August 1905, aged 18, Annette Kellerman was the first woman to attempt to swim the English Channel. After three unsuccessful swims she declared, "I had the endurance but not the brute strength."
Kellerman was famous for advocating the right of women to wear a one-piece bathing suit, which was controversial at the time. According to an Australian magazine, "In the early 1900s, women were expected to wear cumbersome dress and pantaloon combinations when swimming. In 1907, at the height of her popularity, Kellerman was arrested on Revere Beach, Massachusetts, for indecency – she was wearing one of her fitted one-piece costumes."
The popularity of her one-piece suits resulted in her own line of women’s swimwear. The "Annette Kellermans", as they were known, were the first step to modern swimwear.
In 1908, after a study of 3000 women, Dr Dudley A. Sargent of Harvard University dubbed her the Perfect Woman because of the similarity of her physical attributes to the Venus de Milo.
Movie career
In 1916, Kellerman became the first major actress to do a nude scene when she appeared fully nude in A Daughter of the Gods. Made by Fox Film Corporation, Daughter of the Gods was the first million-dollar film production. Like many of Kellerman’s other films, this is now considered a lost film as no copies are known to exist.
The majority of Kellerman’s films had themes of aquatic adventure. She performed her own stunts including diving from ninety-two feet into the sea and sixty feet into a pool of crocodiles. Many times she would play mermaids named Annette or variations of her own name. Her "fairy tale films", as she called them, started with The Mermaid (1911), in which she was the first actress to wear a swimmable mermaid costume on film, paving the way for future screen sirens such as Glynis Johns (Miranda), Esther Williams and Daryl Hannah (Splash). She designed her own mermaid swimming costumes and sometimes made them herself. Similar designs are still used by The Weeki Wachee Springs Mermaids, including her aquatic fairy costume first introduced in Queen of the Sea (1918).
Kellerman appeared in one of the last films made in Prizma Color, Venus of the South Seas (1924), a U.S./New Zealand co-production where one reel of the 55-minute film was in color and underwater. Venus of the South Seas was restored by the Library of Congress in 2004 and is the only feature film starring Annette Kellerman known to exist in its complete form.
Legacy
Kellerman’s large collection of costumes and theatrical memorabilia was bequeathed to the Sydney Opera House. Today, many of her original costumes and personal items are held by the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Australia.
She was portrayed by Esther Williams in the film Million Dollar Mermaid (1952). Her name is on a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, on Hollywood Boulevard.
Text and images from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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