Open Letters Monthly mourns the death of legendary and utterly one-of-a-kind MGM superstar Esther Williams, who has died in her sleep at the age of 91. Throughout the 1940s and ‘50s, she starred in a string of sunny, successful movies in which her resplendent smile and winning personality lifted millions of viewers out of their postwar cares, and in 1999 she wrote (with Digby Diehl) Million Dollar Mermaid, a heartfelt and often raucously hilarious battle-toughened industry memoir that gave many sterling Hollywood reputations a dunking in the deep end. Tough, graceful, and smart, she was the Ginger Rogers of the swimming pool. The world has seen nothing quite like her since, and the world is the poorer for it.
