Die Wasserprinzessin

Jack Carson plays a traveling salesman, promoting a potion called Liqua-pep on the county fair circuit. While driving through Arkansas, he meets a family that owns a dairy farm and are dedicated to physical fitness.

When Jack's character, Wendy, realizes the eldest daughter, Katy (that's how it's spelled in the credits)--played by Esther Williams--is a beauty and a tireless swimmer, he wants her to attempt the English Channel as a promotion for his snake oil. Eventually, she agrees.

Along the way, she meets a Frenchman played by Fernando Lamas (who Esther marries sixteen years later) who becomes her love interest.

Esther's films tend to be light fare, intending merely to entertain while allowing her to swim in a pool, a lagoon, or wherever the script might take her. "Dangerous When Wet" includes a few upbeat songs and the usual all-American touchstones. But it is best known for Esther's underwater swimming sequence with Tom and Jerry (Jerry danced nine years earlier with Gene Kelly).

Arkansas farm family is tapped to swim in a race across the English Channel as part of a promotional campaign for a health drink. MGM musical isn't smothered with the usual studio-gloss, and Esther Williams is spunky and likable, but the plot is still pretty thin. Esther's on-screen romance with Fernando Lamas generated sparks off-screen (they were soon married in real-life), yet only a smidgen of this chemistry makes it into the movie. Not bad, overall; it's probably best remembered for the wonderful dream sequence wherein Williams swims with various cartoon characters, including Tom and Jerry. **1/2 from ****

Katie Higgins (Esther Williams) is the eldest daughter of a dairy-farming family of health nuts. Health tonic promoter Windy Weebe (Jack Carson) convinces her to enter a contest to swim the English Channel. After arriving in Europe, Katie finds herself pursued by a dashing Frenchman (Fernando Lamas). This is one of Esther's best movies. She's gorgeous here, as she always was -- the Queen of Technicolor. The cast is great. Highlights include Barbara Whiting's performance of the cheeky song "I Like Men," Esther's famous underwater ballet with Tom & Jerry, and pretty much every scene with William Demarest. It's a very funny and charming musical comedy. A must-see for Esther fans.

In Dangerous When Wet Esther Williams finds herself the oldest daughter of three in the Ozark family of William Demarest and Charlotte Greenwood, her sisters being Donna Corcoran and Barbara Whiting. Medicine show salesman Jack Carson is passing by and all the clichés about the farmer's daughter start occurring.

When Carson comes calling Demarest starts bragging about his family all being physical culturists, Ozark style. When he gets to talking about Esther Williams swimming the Chattahoochee River which is nowhere near the Ozarks, Carson gets interested. He's peddling some kind of snake oil medicine, but he sees Esther swimming the English Channel he sees her as one tasty bit of advertising. Carson's libido ain't totally put on hold.

But he's cooled down a might when Esther meets a romantic Frenchman played by Fernando Lamas. Their real life marriage came much later. Not to worry because a French Channel swimming aspirant Denise Darcel has her eyes on Carson.

Dangerous When Wet is best known for a dream sequence where Esther does a water ballet with Tom and Jerry and some other cartoon characters. In her memoirs Esther says that one of her least favorite experiences was with Gene Kelly who gave her an awful time in the dance numbers in Take Me Out To The Ballgame. The muscles she developed as a swimmer were not conducive to dancing as she explained and Kelly knew this and still gave her a bad time. One of his innovations was a ballet with Tom and Jerry in Anchors Aweigh. I think Esther decided to show him that she could do what he could in her own field. And Esther certainly succeeded.

Jack Carson is his usual braggart type and William Demarest and Charlotte Greenwood show a thing or two with a little soft shoe they do. All and all Dangerous When Wet is a great example of the MGM musical and an Esther Williams water spectacular rolled into one.

Esther Williams has the misfortune to be born to a family of irrepressible morning people. You know the type: always perky and cheerful first thing in the morning and ready to beat it into you if you're not. Esther enters a contest to swim the English Channel, and for some reason the time of the race is set only the night before. Wouldn't you know it, that's the night she's chosen to go out drinking with Fernando Lamas.

All in all, a delightful piece of fluff. This is the one where Esther dances a water ballet with Tom and Jerry.