Deaths 2022

Deaths 2021

Deaths 2020

Deaths 2019

Deaths 2018

Deaths 2017

Deaths 2016

Deaths 2015

Deaths 2014

Deaths 2013

Deaths 2012

Deaths 2011

Deaths 2010

Deaths 2009


Full list by date of death

Esther Williams

Actress

Born - 8 August 1921, Los Angeles, California, USA
Died - 6 June 2013

Cheerful, dark-haired, athletically-built MGM star, a national swim champion whose Olympic dreams were dashed by World War Two. Instead she joined an aquacade, where she was spotted for films and began a screen career as the 'million-dollar mermaid' (also the title of her autobiography), the star attraction of a series of aqua musicals. Ventures into drama were less successful (she was less effective with a serious face on), although she was also a nifty dancer, as she proved in Take Me Out to the Ball Game/Everybody's Cheering (1949), in which she did more dancing than swimming (and with Gene Kelly, no less). After a debut in Andy Hardy's Double Life (1942, in a swimsuit even then), she was rushed into splashy Technicolor swimfests, remaining a box-office attraction (in the top 10 in 1949 and 1950) for the next decade: Bathing Beauty (1944), Thrill of a Romance (1945), Easy to Wed (1946), Fiesta (1947), On an Island with You (1948), Neptune's Daughter (1949), Pagan Love Song (1950), Duchess of Idaho (1950), Texas Carnival (1951), Skirts Ahoy! (1952), Million Dollar Mermaid/The One-Piece Bathing Suit (1952), Dangerous When Wet (1953), Jupiter's Darling (1955), Raw Wind in Eden (1958), The Big Show (1961) and The Magic Fountain (1962), her last feature, although she also appeared as an on-screen narrator in That's Entertainment! III in 1994. In her latter years, carried visiting cards that said: 'Yes, I still swim'. She married (third of four) actor Fernando Lamas, who died in 1982.