Esther Williams

Esther Williams retired from acting in the early 1960s. Brendon, who suffered a problem with stuttering when younger, has served as the honorary chairperson of the Stuttering Foundation of America's Stuttering Awareness Week. Her brother, Stanton Williams, also had a brief acting career during the 1920s before his death while still a teenager. He has an identical twin brother, Kelly Donovan, who has served as his stunt double and played the part of Xander in scenes in which Xander has been duplicated. Her third husband was actor Fernando Lamas. Nicholas Brendon (born April 12, 1971) is an actor, born Nicholas Brendon Schultz, best known for playing the character Xander Harris in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She was romantically linked with Jeff Chandler, and has been married four times.

Her love life was a source of media interest. In her autobiography, Williams details several other occasions in which she nearly drowned shooting her oxygen-defying stunts. Her many hours spent submerged resulted in her rupturing her eardrums numerous times. She broke her neck filming a 50-foot dive off a tower during a climactic musical number for the 1952 release Million Dollar Mermaid which landed her in a body cast for six months (she subsequently recovered though she still suffers headaches as a result of the accident).

Many of her films, such as Million Dollar Mermaid and Jupiter's Darling, contained elaborately staged swimming scenes, obtained not without physical cost to the performer. Williams instead went to Hollywood, and quickly became a popular star of the 1940s and 1950s. She qualified to be in the United States swim team in the 1940 Olympics, but the games were canceled due to World War II. Esther Williams was born in Inglewood, California, and was enthusistic about swimming from her youth.

Esther Jane Williams (born 8 August 1922) is a United States swimmer and movie star. Williams, Esther, The Million Dollar Mermaid: An Autobiography, Simon & Schuster, 1999.