Aquamusic

   Why don't they make stars like Esther Williams any more? And no, I do not refer to the sensuous and slightly sonorous voice behind the funk nugget 'Last Night Changed It All', although she, too, is worthy of appreciation

   Known as the "Million Dollar Mermaid" at MGM after the 1952 film she starred in, Williams made a great many films under the studio's aegis, amongst which was Ziegfeld Follies. I recall watching it as a small and entranced child who was as far from being the world's keenest swimfan as Josef Fritzl is from being a humanist; the enrapturing aspects of those beatific, synchronised sequences nevertheless left quite the  impression. This was a special time; a time I refer to as "My First Impression of Wet Women"

   YouTube naturally has a myriad video range of her work (I recommend this embedding-unfriendly profile from That's Entertainment) and whilst much of it seems genteel and quaint, there is always a particular dignity, physical grace and acute professionalism in her movements - par for the course in Cinema's Golden Age, of course. But then, I've often been accused of preferring to look too closely at nice forms: