It's EASY TO LOVE Cypress Gardens!

First things first: Happy 100th Birthday Esther Williams! 

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Today, on what would've been her centennial birthday, I'm taking a look at one of my favourite of her films: Easy to Love. It's a romantic comedy co-starring (who else but) Van Johnson, and it's set at one of the most visually stunning places I've ever seen captured on film: Cypress Gardens, Florida. 

Instead of rehashing the entire film (which I encourage you to watch on TCM today, since Esther's being featured in their lineup of Summer Under the Stars today), I'm going to focus on the locale and why Cypress Gardens is so important to Esther's career. 

This post is a part of the 100 Years of Esther Williams Blogathon which is hosted by Micahela from Love Letters to Old Hollywood. Make sure you click through to read the other awesome entries! 

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Cypress Gardens was a stunning theme park and botanical garden that was built near Winter Haven, Florida in 1936. It was run by a man named Dick Pope (Van Johnson plays a fictionalized version of him in Easy to Love) and he and his wife Julie devoted themselves to turning the land into a splashy amusement park. 

Julie arranged the flowers and Dick walked around with a camera to make sure everything looked perfectly composed no matter what angle you shot from, and if it didn't photograph nicely, the area was restructured until it did. According to a Central Florida tourism blog, when Cypress Gardens opened on January 2, 1936, there were at least 8,000 flowers from over 90 countries planted there. 

Cypress Gardens quickly became a 'sight to see' in Florida and Dick Pope became known as Mr. Florida. Another fun addition to Cypress Gardens was its waterskiing show (the Gardens became known as the Waterskiing Capital of the World) during the Second World War, when Julie and her children banded together to create a spectacle to entertain the troops (Dick was away on service during this time). Waterskiing soon became a staple at Cypress Gardens, and was prominently featured as a main stunt in Easy to Love. 

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Easy to Love was Esther's second film shot at Cypress Gardens; the first was On an Island With You. But this would prove to be the bigger spectacle. Here's the basic premise: Esther Williams plays Julie, a star swimmer at Cypress Gardens, and she's hopelessly in love with her boss, Ray, who is so overworked and micromanaging that he doesn't notice. She then enlists the help of two other men to make him jealous, and like Esther says in her must-read autobiography, "If you can't guess how this comes out, you haven't been paying attention." 

Of Easy to Love, Esther would write that it was her "quintessential MGM film" and that by this point, this being their fifth film together, she and Van Johnson were like synchronized swimmers (though they never socialized off set). 

But here's the thing: Esther found out she was pregnant just as she arrived in Florida to make this picture (when she told Joe Pasternak, he said, "My God, Esther, what's the matter with you?" and she replied that there was nothing wrong with her because everything was obviously working). 

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All of the water scenes were filmed first so that she could do the stunts without a visible baby bump, and she had to learn how to waterski, and quick, so as not to look like an amateur when the professionals came to film. 

Esther also wrote that Cypress Garden stayed open to the public while they were filming, so there were always crowds gathered to watch her swim (her soon-to-be-ex-husband also decided that he'd get on a pair of waterskis and hop into the film, but she promptly shut that down and sent him back to California). 

When Dick Pope learned that it would be filmed at his beloved Cypress Gardens, he built an iconic pool for Esther's use in the film: the Florida pool. 

Here's Esther at the Florida Pool while filming her 1960 television special 'Esther Williams at Cypress Gardens'

It would later be used during her famed television special, Esther Williams at Cypress Gardens, which aired on her 39th birthday, August 8, 1960, on NBC. She worked organizational magic to pull it together, taking key roles in sourcing talent, getting the settings and backdrops she wanted, plugging her own line of swimming pools, producing it, and editing it down into the program she wanted. 

Her co-star was Fernando Lamas, who had acted alongside her in previous films, and would go on to marry her in 1969. Theirs was a relationship dominated by his controlling behaviour: he wanted her not to work, to devote herself totally to him, to recognize that he would be the breadwinner and head of the household, and even forced her to live apart from her children because he couldn't stand to have to share her attention with anyone else. It's honestly horrifying to read about their relationship in her autobiography, though she definitely had the rose-coloured glasses off by the time he passed away in 1982.

She would write in her must-read autobiography that "...it was my birthday and on August 8 I got not only [a birthday] party but also a very nice birthday present—a fifty-two share, meaning that more than half of all TV sets in use in the country were tuned in to Esther Williams at Cypress Gardens. If NBC had any reservations about [the birthday] party [she requested they throw for her], they vanished when the ratings came in." 

You can watch Esther Williams at Cypress Gardens here: 

Sadly, Cypress Gardens closed in 2009 after its owners couldn't find a way to make it work after declining tourism numbers and damage caused by hurricanes. It was purchased by Merlin Entertainment the next year and re-opened as a Legoland in 2011. Though most of Cypress Gardens's original features are long gone, the company had a mandate to maintain some of the important park areas, like Esther's Florida pool, which is today filled with Lego blocks. 

And that's Cypress Gardens! It looked like a real treat in its heyday. Did you ever visit, or wish you could have? Let me know in the comments. And let me know what you think of Easy to Love and Esther Williams in general. What's your favourite film of hers? (Mine's Bathing Beauty!)