ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses primarily upon all-American Williams, exploring discourse around MGM’s Million Dollar Mermaid (1952) and the promotional materials (posters, marquee displays, photographic pin-ups, etc.) for her and her films. This is supplemented with a range of other contemporaneous materials that engaged with the American cultural phenomenon of the aquacade, such as pornographic comics, known as Tijuana bibles, satirical cartoons and promotional materials as well as archive footage of one of the most famous aquacades: Billy Rose’s Aquacade at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. This chapter explores common American understandings of the aquacade as a liminal space, and the swimmer as a desirable but ultimately disruptive figure. It demonstrates how the iconography of the aquacade and the spectacular body of the swimmer were appropriated by the American film industry to evoke the aquacades’ sexualised connotations while ostensibly appearing to cinema censors and more conservative audiences to be good clean fun.