Van Johnson, Esther Williams
Esther Williams Box Set, Vol. 2: Part I
If you find yourself unmoved by what you've read so far, then I suggest you skip this Esther Williams set altogether as, historical and sociological dimensions aside, these films are pretty dreadful. The visual style usually hovers around the level of "faceless competence" (but, curiously enough, the dullest-looking of the bunch, This Time for Keeps, was shot by Fritz Lang's brilliant Metropolis cameraman Karl Freund); those of you who are fans of mid-century set design and color values will at least have that to pay attention to. Better to scrutinize the periphery of the shots than to waste too much attention on supporting casts featuring the likes of Jimmy Durante, the aforementioned Mr. Melchior and, worst of all, Van Johnson (inflicted on us in both Easy to Love and Thrill of a Romance).
Esther Williams herself isn't much better. She wasn't blessed with a surplus of screen presence, and her directors seem to have realized this, giving her fewer closeups than was typical for the era and even sometimes minimizing her in compositions. Nobody could quite figure out what to do with her, and these limp, directionless movies are the result.
If you feel like you must watch one of the films on this set, I nominate Million Dollar Mermaid (1952). Mervyn LeRoy directs, and while he's not the world's most exciting filmmaker, he learned his craft at Warners in the 1930s and thankfully never grew out of that no-nonsense, efficient style. Williams has improved as an actress by this point, at times even convincingly impersonating an adult woman of average IQ (in this case, real-life Australian actress-swimmer Annette Kellerman). Male lead Victor Mature (above, next to Williams) is not exactly, say, Robert Mitchum, but — and this isn't so much setting the bar low as tossing the bar into the Marianas Trench — he's at least more exciting than Van Johnson.
Most significantly, Million Dollar Mermaid benefits from the hand of Busby Berkeley, brought in to direct Williams' swimming scenes, which here achieve a kind of breathless, rapturous grandeur. Berkeley's scenes in Mermaid are the best of the whole set, using shot scale, camera movement and color in ways that foreshadow the advances of the 1950s and 1960s more than they look back to his career-making Depression-era films. No wonder this one is reputedly Williams's favorite of her filmography; it's the only one that does justice to her athleticism.
The bells and whistles of this set are up to the usual fine standard of previous TCM boxes. Each film is accompanied by a trailer and vintage MGM short, and the packaging is very attractive. The only failing here, oddly and atypically for TCM, is the video quality, which is shockingly inconsistent across the six movies. Thrill of a Romance, in particular, snaps back and forth between a lovely, sharp, vibrant image and something that seems to have come from a VHS dub.
Despite this, and despite Williams' shortcomings as a star, I'm glad that Turner went to the trouble of preserving these goofy films. I don't quite understand who the audience for this set is supposed to be, but the fact that there is a second set leads me to believe that they're out there. I hope they have a good time with these discs. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone else, other than students of classical Hollywood's decline, or perhaps Van Johnson enthusiasts.
© Dan Erdman
It is nice to watch classical movies at times, I will have to watch this Million Dollar Mermaid and scrutinize the film myself. Thank you for sharing such an interesting and informative article. – Manila :)