Take a Dive Into an Esther Williams Swimming Pool!
Happy Summer!
Tis the season for Esther Williams’s splashy, summery films.
My recommendation? Thrill of a Romance early in the morning on a clear,
sunny day. That’s how I first watched it and it really left an impression on me.
This movie is best watched on a crystal blue morning with the sun still rising.
Then you’ve got the whole day ahead of you after you finish this touching
romance.
If it’s one thing you’re guaranteed with an Esther Williams
movie it’s this: carefully choreographed aquatic ballets in oversized—sometimes
Florida–shaped—swimming pools.
Who doesn’t watch one of her flicks and immediately fantasize about replicating
it in their own pool?
And what if
you could do it in an Esther Williams Swimming Pool? Once upon a time, you
could!
Swimming
pools were a newer luxury in American homes following the Second World War. It
soon became the height of chic to have one, and when Don Preuss came knocking
at Esther Williams’s front door with the offer to slap her name on a line of
affordable pools, she couldn’t turn down the offer.
According to
a Time article from 1960, Preuss promised Esther that she would get 5%
of the gross of all pool sales and the title of President in exchange for her
name and promotional efforts while he would run the day-to-day, own the stock,
and provide a capital of $50,000. She agreed, and the International Swimming
Pool Corporation (later based out of White Plains, New York) was formed.
Esther put
her heart and soul into promoting her swimming pools, travelling across the
United States—according to Time, over 200,000 miles in 1959—to visit the
various sales districts and encourage homeowners to buy pools.
If You Can Afford a Car You Can Have This Pool in Your
Backyard
So said
Esther Williams, smiling up in the brilliantly blue magazine advertisement announcing
her swimming pools. “A person in show business can have a mission in
addition to entertainment. Mine is to have a part in bringing the joys and the physical
rewards of swimming into the lives of millions of American families. My pool
can do this for you.”
If you weren’t
sold yet, the traveling pool salesman package contained a miniature set-up—the
Esther Williams Swimming Pools came in three sizes: 16’ x 30’ with a
diving depth of 7’; 18’ x 36’ with a diving depth of 7.5’; or 20’ x 30’ with a diving
depth of 8’.
“The greatest addition to the home since the family,”
the box proclaimed. And it wasn’t just a fanciful claim by a Hollywood starlet
desperate to make money: these pools were widely considered to be the superior
home swimming pools and are credited to this day for improving the quality of
home pools and setting the standards that are still in use today.
In its first
year, 1956, the Esther Williams Swimming Pools had sales of $500,000 but by
1959, were up to more than $9 million and 762 distributors across the United
States. How it worked, according to Esther, was that people could apply to be
the exclusive sales rep in geographic markets, and they’d go door-to-door,
place advertisements, and otherwise do what they could to sell pools.
In The Gazette and Daily newspaper from York,
Virginia on March 20, 1958, Clair Eisenhart, the exclusive franchised dealer
for Esther Williams Swimming Pools in York and Adams Counties, placed a full
page advertisement extolling the benefits of the pool.
“Beyond and doubt it is the finest, safest most complete
home swimming pool ever to be placed on the consumer market. Its ‘custom built’
quality at low cost makes it one of the outstanding home investment and home
improvement VALUES of all time.”
But it wasn’t
all fun and games.
As Esther wrote in her autobiography, Million Dollar Mermaid,
“Don Preuss, the entrepreneur who had started marketing ‘Esther Williams’
aluminum above-ground backyard swimming pools, was planning a big publicity
event in connection with my return to the States. Don was selling franchises to
install and service these pools. For two hundred thousand dollars, a new
distributor received exclusive rights to a particular sales territory, basic
inventory, plus training on installation and service. He also received a free
promotional visit from me—or so I thought.”
“Only later did I discover that Don was gouging the
franchisees another five thousand dollars for the pleasure of my company on
these junkets and pocketing the fee. I was killing myself traveling around the
country whistle-stopping from one middle-sized town to another, counting on the
goodwill my trip would generate to boost sales. But Don was making me a
mercenary in their eyes, and with each visit the distributors were gritting
their teeth because they’d paid through the nose.”
She claimed, in legal filings in 1960—hence the Time article—that
she was taking less than the promised 5% but couldn’t understand why Preuss
couldn’t keep to his bargain…or where the money had gone if the company. Preuss
filed for an insolvency claim in 1959 despite the huge profits, and declared
that the relationship with Esther Williams was over.
Esther would go on to salvage her name and pool brand and
worked with another company throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s and beyond. And while
you can’t buy an Esther Williams pool today, they still have a strong legacy.
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Did you or someone you know own an Esther Williams Swimming Pool? I want one! I at least want the mermaid plaque that got placed with every pool.
Here's a fun YouTube video, too: the projector presentation for Esther Williams Swimming Pools from 1958.
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