What the public expects and what is healthy for an individual are two very different things.
The wisdom acquired with the passage of time is a useless gift unless you share it.
Somehow I kept my head above water. I relied on the discipline, character, and strength that I had started to develop as that little girl in her first swimming pool.
No one can avoid a challenge in life without breeding regret, and regret is the arsenic of life.
My training in Science of Mind had begun with my mother. She took me to a different church every Sunday, and she encouraged me to question the minister afterward.
No one had ever done a swimming movie before so we just made it up as we went along. I ad-libbed all my own underwater movements.
It appeared as if I had invited the audience into the water with me, and it conveyed the sensation that being in there was absolutely delicious
Marriage to Fernando offered shelter and security, but the shackle was the price I'd pay.
Barely a teenager, Elizabeth Taylor was already more beautiful and voluptuous than Miss America. When she arrived at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel for our magazine shoot, I was bowled over. I couldn't believe she was only fourteen. She filled out a swimsuit better than I did. We did the pictures, including one shot of me teaching her to float. With that superstructure of hers, she floated just fine. What she couldn't do was sink.
Traveling to swimming meets took me beyond my small-town existence, gave me a hint of the exciting world outside of my own home.
I took a job at the pool in order to earn the five cents a day it cost to swim. I counted wet towels. As a bonus, I was allowed to swim during lunchtime.
Clark Gable was the first to have called me a mermaid.
I was the only swimmer in movies. Tarzan was long gone, and he couldn't have done them anyway; he could never have gotten into my bathing suit
Even though I had a lucrative contract with MGM, I had a husband who was drinking and gambling our money away faster than I could make it.
I remember when I first walked into Mayer's cavernous office. You had to walk 50 yards to get to him, and in that time he could really study everything about you.
I always felt that if I made a movie, it would be one movie; I didn't see how they could make 26 swimming movies.
I took my daily swim at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool despite the presence of onlookers
Life magazine ran a page featuring me and three other girls that was clearly the precursor of Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues
I always took it for granted that there would be life after Hollywood.
We can't all win Olympic medals. Even I never won one.
I was all in gold sequins for Million Dollar Mermaid, 50 feet in the air
I ended up buying a restaurant. Already we had invested in a gas station and a metal products plant.
I never walked the streets of New York hoping to be a musical comedy star. For one thing, they would have thought I was too tall, because l was five feet eight and a half, and they were all little bitty things running around in the studio at that time.
I was 15, and the years of hard swimming had packed muscle on my frame and made me very strong. Not as strong as a football player, but strong enough to inflict heavy damage.
By the time I got home at night, my eyes were so chlorinated I saw rings around every light.
