The Girl Called Ess

She can bake an apple pie better than ‘mother used to make." She drives a tan Cadillac convertible. She does not smoke. She wears hand-embroidered cotton night gowns.
She is always on the run and is apt to be late for appointments. She is conscious of her height which is 5′ 7". She plays an excellent game of penny-ante poker.
She is very intuitive. She was christened Esther Jane, her friends call her Ess and she is sometimes addressed as Mrs. Ben Gage. She is Esther Williams.
She seldom buys hats because she usually makes her own. She has no temperament, but she has more temper than you would suspect. She speaks a smattering of Spanish.
She loves company, Her voice when she is fatigued has a tendency toward throatiness. She has few inhibitions and is inclined to call a spade a spade. She believes in doing what comes naturally.
She wears glasses to correct her near sightedness. She never drinks beer.
She was born at 8722 Orchard Street, Inglewood, Californian August 8th, 1922.
She likes to wear earrings, but is constantly losing them because her ear lobes are too thin and she is squeamish about having them pierced.
She requires eight to nine hours sleep. She is a talented ballroom dancer and especially enjoys the rumba and samba. Her husband is her favourite dancing partner.
She loves to shop for antiques, never plays golf or tennis, and is allergic to the smell of cigar smoke.
She seldom eats bread and likes her coffee black. She has an aversion to people who are "cynical and pessimistic."
She adores publicity and she is astutely aware that it has played an important part in her success. She hates waste of any kind.
She can converse earnestly about politics, business cycles and local real estate values.
She has no jealousy in her nature. She is delightfully feminine in personality. Yet her approach to a business transaction is masculine.
She believes that environment is more important than heredity. She likes pot cheese, zither music and red geraniums.
She has made only one ‘flop’. picture since her debut in 1942, this was The Hoodlum Saint in which she co-starred with William Powell.
She has the ability of being able to meet any emergency with the utmost poise and reserve. She likes riding in subways.
She becomes irritated by stupidity.
She was 18 when she won the national 100.meter free- style swimming championship in the then record time of 1 minute. 8 seconds.
She is unobtrusively a very charitable person, and she is most admired for her great affection’ for her family. She has hasel eyes.
She does not think of herself as a great dramatic actress and she is content to go on making happy pictures in which she can sing and dance and wear snug bathing suits.
She is sentimental about birthdays and anniversaries and is pleased that Ben always remembers the date they first met.
She likes Mexican food, sun bathing and philodendron planted in "anything from beer mugs to antique spittoons."
She was vice-president of the student body at Washington High School and a straight A student.
She once described herself as "the girl next door …with sex.’. She adores good cooking and midnight snacks. She always feels sorry for the loser of any sporting contest.
She once made a screen test with Clark Gable when he couldn’t remember the dialogue. Every time he forgot his and housekeeper, and Lena, a cook. She saves old press clippings but has never kept a diary.
She doesn’t like kippered herring. Her next picture is MGM’s Jupiter’s Darling.
She is often critical of herself, but rarely of others.
She is the daughter of a child psychologist and the sister of another and she is inclined to think in psychological terms. She believes in a theory of "controlled behavior" for persons like herself who are constantly in the public limelight.
She has a definite flair for fashion and, though she does not have expensive tastes, she is one of the best dressed women in the movies.
She enjoys painting furniture and "just puttering." She never balances her own bank statement.
She can sew but she cannot type. She often deplores the stresses and strains of modern living, but she has no regrets for having been born in the atomic age. She occasionally suffers with sinus trouble.
She is definite in her opinions, and she is sometimes embarrassingly frank in expressing them. She has a thorough mind and she likes to explore a subject fully and from both sides.
She takes great joy in her growing family and she is constantly devising new schemes to make them happier.
She loves hamburger with onions, parlour games and riding horseback in the rain. She is not addicted to patent medicines.
She keeps her movie career entirely separate from her home life as Mrs. Ben Gage, and she often speaks of herself in the third person when referring to the Esther Williams who has been built into a star by exploitation, publicity and a series of good pictures.

She is rarely visited on the set by her husband as he is always too busy with their other joint business ventures.
She uses her hands expressively when she talks.
She enjoys bullfights, the smell of morning coffee and travel in foreign countries.
She has considerable strength of will, except when it comes to buying new shoes.
She seldom dreams, but on the night before her recent baby was born she dreamed that it would be a girl and she would name her Susan.
She never goes hunting. She is active in the work of the Los Angeles Nursery School for Visually Handicapped Children.
She does not care for prizefights. She believes that some part of her success is due to "empathy," which means that audiences mentally trade places with the character she portrays on the screen. She detests racial discrimination.
She has a contagious sense of humour, and she is a wonderful audience for a joke or funny story. She adores the ridiculous.
She owns a home in Acapulco, Mexico, but she rarely visits it because of the time-absorbing demands of her career. She plans some day to produce her owu aquacade and travel with it allover the world.
She currently receives more fan mail than any other star at her studio, and her bosses think so much of her that her contract runs fifty-two weeks a year for the next six years.
She once counted towels to earn swimming pool privileges but she now earns in the neighborhood of $150,000 a year.
She is the mother of three children but her measurements are the same as they were ten years ago.
She is mad about surprise parties. She likes to eat and serve good food and she thinks her grocery bill is her greatest extravagance.
She has considerable concentration and she becomes completely engrossed in any project that demands her attention.
She laughs heartily, thinks clearly and exercises regularly.
She has a strong social consciousness. She likes tea with lemon, the Sunday comics and people who respect her privacy.
She does not care for "arty.. movies, preferring those that have a wide appeal to "ordinary people like myself."
She has no passion for neatness. She becomes irritated with gossip writers who dig and jab at her about matrimonial difficulties for she is convinced that she and Ben have one of the happiest and most solid marriages in Hollywood.

Written by Allan MacDonald

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