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Raised in Marrickville, Kellerman’s 10 Hollywood movies, in which she did all her own stunts, broke box office records, prompting Esther Williams’s portrayal of her in 1952 Hollywood biopic Million Dollar Mermaid. In 1912, Harvard professor Dudley Sargent declared her the “most perfect woman of modern times”.
Kellerman’s lifelong message was promoting the benefits of fitness for modern women.
“Swimming for women is more than physical,” she said in 1915. “It can engender self-confidence and, in the art and science of swimming, a kind of equality, even superiority, to that of men.”
She did not, however, call herself a feminist.
Christa Hughes with writer Hilary Bell.Credit:edwina pickles
“She advocated that women exercise and look fantastic so they could keep their husbands,” Bell says. “Her independence from her, career from her, the choices she made, they were unheard of at the time. She was the proto-feminist but she refused to call herself one.
Hughes, who sings Bell and Styles’ songs in and around the aquatic center’s main pool, is proud to play Kellerman.
“She’s a true, fearless role model,” she says. Her drive and ambition was frowned upon for women. But she swam marathons and jumped off cliffs and lighthouses rather than just pouting.
After decades as an international superstar, diving from 18-metre cliffs with bound hands and legs for film roles, tap-dancing, wire-walking, playing the accordion and inventing a monocled drag act for her vaudeville shows, Kellerman returned to Australia to live in Queensland. She died in 1975 aged 89 in modest circumstances.
“She did a lot to marry the Australian identity with being sporty and plucky and giving the finger to the class system,” Bell says. “I don’t think she knew fear.”
Marrickville Mermaid August 12-14, Annette Kellerman Aquatic Centre. Free.
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