Monday, August 8 1921: American actress Esther Williams was born.

1921 (Taisho 10) Monday, August 8 American actress Esther Williams was born in Inglewood, a suburb of Los Angeles, California. Her father was Louis Stanton Williams, a famous painter, and mother Bula, a psychologist. She was the youngest of their five children. She has been a competitive swimmer since high school and won the U.S. National Championships three times. Esther was expected to win a medal in the swimming event at the Tokyo Olympics, which was scheduled to take place in 1940 when she was 19 years old, but the Olympics itself has been cancelled. In 1941, a year after the Pacific War began, she was recruited by the film company MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) and became an actress. At the time, Fox, a rival film company of MGM, was promoting figure skating star, Sonia Henny from Norway, who became the first female Olympic champion for three consecutive years, as a film star. Esther Williams, who made her film debut, became very popular after appearing in many films but retired in 1961. She rarely appeared on the stage and died of natural causes in 2013. She was 91 years old.

There are also many fans in Japan, and among the songs in the 7th album ‘IN THE SUN, IN THE SHADE’ (1989) of the Japanese music group “Star Dust Revue”, there is the song “Queen of Summer”, which was dedicated to Esther Williams. There was a live video on Youtube. Please take a look if you like.