June 6  This Day in History   Jun 6, 2013:  Swimmer turned movie
star Esther Williams dies  On this day in 2013, Esther Williams,
a champion teenage swimmer who went on to star in a series of
hugely popular aquatic-themed movie-musicals in the 1940s and
1950s, dies at age 91 in Beverly Hills, California.  Born on
August 8, 1921, in Inglewood, California, Williams learned to
swim as a child and worked at her neighborhood pool to earn the
money it cost to swim there. As a teen, she won national
swimming championships and hoped to compete in the 1940 Summer
Olympics; however, the games were cancelled due to World War II.
She went on to perform in a swimming revue, Billy Rose’s
Aquacade, in San Francisco in 1940 with Olympian and “Tarzan”
star Johnny Weissmuller. During this time, Williams was
discovered by a talent scout for the movie studio MGM, which was
looking for someone to star in a swimming musical. Louis B.
Mayer, head of MGM, intended for this new film genre to match
the box-office success of the ice sk