Million Dollar Mermaid: Mervyn LeRoy

Australian swimmer Annette Kellerman may have been one of the most fascinating women of the early 20th century. After overcoming a disability which left her legs weak as a child, she went on to become one of the first women to attempt swimming the English Channel, became a star of stage and screen, and helped popularize the one-piece bathing suit for women. It seemed predictable that Hollywood would one day make a film based on her life. But what I couldn't have predicted was that the ensuing film, Mervyn LeRoy's Million Dollar Mermaid, would essentially make Kellerman a supporting character in her own story. Here's the film's main problem: it takes a very interesting story about a woman overcoming a disability to become a super-star and a force for social progress and makes it a vapid love story. Kellerman's relationship and eventual marriage to James Sullivan, her American promoter, dominates most of the film. The scenes that actually focus on Kellerman, her life in Australia before traveling to Europe and America and the lavish synchronized swimming sequences (one of which I could swear I saw when I was a young child at my grandmother's house in rural Georgia), are fantastic. But the romantic side-plot turns a very fascinating, ground-breaking woman into a wistful puppy desperate for approval and affection. Perhaps the most nauseating moment is near the end when she is accidentally injured during a disastrous accident during a film shoot where she suffers a potentially career-ending spinal hematoma. And, incredibly, the film suggests that it was James who gave Annette the agency to recover. The reconciliation of their relationship at this point is treated as the film's emotional climax. What is this? A silent melodrama starring Mary Pickford? I might be more forgiving of the film's decision to frame Annette's life as a romantic melodrama if it wasn't for the fact that as a character James Sullivan is so boring that whenever he's onscreen (which makes up a considerable chunk of the film's run-time) almost all of the energy and enthusiasm is sucked away. So as a tribute to Annette Kellerman, the film is a failure. And as a piece of entertainment, it is also a failure.

5/10