The Million Dollar Mermaid

Book excerpt: Not since David Niven wrote the bestselling THE MOON'S A BALLOON has one of Hollywood's great stars written with real wit and candour about what it was like to work in the movie factories. In this glamorous world actors were pampered and coddled, yet expected to work without complaint for long, hard hours; made into an object of desire for millions of people and live in a world of almost total unreality, while still being expected to go about the business of finding a partner and raising a family, and avoiding personal scandal at all costs. Now, for the thousands of fans of the Golden Age of Hollywood comes Esther William's wonderfully witty, fresh and frank autobiography, all about an 18 year old girl who reluctantly answers the call of MGM and finds herself launched in a career that will last almost twenty years. During her career, she helped to create a genre of film that seems almost unimaginable today, yet which still holds its original freshness and fascination. Whether speaking of her own marriages, divorces, and love affairs or telling tales about the legends of the studio era, Williams is acutely perceptive and always uncompromisingly honest.