Have you heard of Annette Kellerman? I knew a few things about her: that in the early 1900s she had broken swimming records, amazed and shocked with her one-piece swimsuits (very risque for the times), and wowed with her high-diving acts.

But this new biography by Grantlee Kieza introduced me to so much more about this truly astounding Australian woman.

For example:

• She began life as a sickly, weak child, with lower limbs deformed by rickets, the horrible disease that ravaged many children then. Swimming was her way out of a life of disability but to begin with, she was terrified of the water! From this dubious start she went on to outswim male record holders and compete with leading swimmers on attempts to cross the English Channel, among other gruelling marathon events.
  
• She grew up in a family where entertainment and performance were givens; her mother an accomplished musician of French background who demonstrated ‘chutzpah’ from an early age; her father also a talented musician.
  
• These entertainment genes led her into a career in vaudeville, where she showed off her ballet skills along with her diving prowess (diving from heights into glass tanks, for example), later adding juggling diablo, high wire walking and other accomplishments to her repertoire. For a time she was the biggest name on the New York vaudeville scene.
  
• As well as her incredible swimming career, she became a star of Hollywood, creating and appearing in sell-out and critically acclaimed silent movies. Through these efforts she became one of the highest paid movie stars in the world, mixing with some of the household names of Hollywood (Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Mae West, to name just a few).
  
• Alongside all of this activity she advocated strongly for women’s health and fitness, promoting excercise and healthy diet as the key to happiness and beauty. Keep in mind that this was at a time when women were discouraged from swimming and taking part in active sport of any kind, and the typical feminine outfit included whalebone corsets and multiple layers of petticoats.
  
  ‘Swimwear’ consisted of long bloomers, a full dress and other covers that impeded movement. So when Annette adopted what was essentially the same swimsuit as men were wearing (a one piece that covered from shoulders to knee but not much else) which then got shorter and more revealing over the years, you can imagine the amazement it generated! She was absolutely a trailblazer and never stopped in her public advocacy for woman’s participation in physical activity, especially swimming, which she regarded as the ‘perfect exercise’.

I have a few more OMG facts for you. I know some people who admire modern-day actors who do their own stunts on movie sets. Well, let me tell you – those actors have nothing – NOTHING – on this woman from Australia who, in the early years of movie making, not only did all her own stunts but – given the deplorable lack of safety standards on workplaces then – did so with no regard to her own safety.

She dived into a pool full of live Jamaican crocodiles. She survived a perilous cascade down a 60 foot waterfall with her hands tied behind her back. She leaped into the ocean from a high wire suspended from a 30 metre structure called the Tower of Kives and Swords over treacherous rocks . All done without a single double, dummy or safety net. Most, if not all, of these hair raising stunts were her own ideas.

Tom C et al, eat your collective hearts out.

Another way in which she beat today’s performers at their own game, decades before they’d even been born, is the way in which Annette kept her performances fresh – ‘reinventing’ herself, if you will. As she grew older and long-distance swimming lost its charm, she switched focus to her stage acts. In the 1920s she toured Great Britain and Europe giving lectures on health and fitness – in German, Swedish and Dutch. Later still, her lifelong love of dance and ballet training saw her perform the Dying Swan dance alongside world famous Anna Pavlova.

Was there nothing this woman couldn’t do?

I should point out that along with Annette’s own personal drive and quest to learn and achieve, her success was assisted by the unwavering support of her father Fred. Despite his own uncertain health, he accompanied his teenaged daughter to England in 1905 in a bid to launch her international swimming career, and he stayed with her, managing her affairs through thick and thin even as his health failed.

And her later manager and eventual husband, Jimmie Sullivan, was another stalwart supporter, though her impulsive ideas and fearlessness must have driven him to the edge of a nervous breakdown on many an occasion.

Annette was often promoted as the ‘Perfect Woman’ (by which was meant her bodily proportions, not her character) and the front and back cover photos of this book do capture the incredible combination of strength, grace and joy which she possessed.

There is a very funny anecdote concerning an Ohio husband and wife brought before the courts soon after the release of one of Annette’s more famously provocative films involving sheer (invisible or perhaps non-existent) costumes. The husband made the mistake of seeing the film three times in three days and compounded his error by remarking to his wife each night what a ‘pretty form’ Annette Kellerman had.
The couple ended up in front of the magistrate, he sporting bandages on his head and she explaining why she had wielded a potato masher at her husband!

After such an active life in the public eye, Annette and Jimmie retired to the Gold Coast in Queensland in the 1960s, then a sleepy coastal backwater. After Jimmie died she continued the fundraising work she had always done, though ‘many of those who attended the events knew her only as the nice little old lady from Labrador, rather than a woman who was once one of the most famous and daring entertainers in the world.’ (p295)

In a very fitting end to a life that revolved around water, Annette’s ashes were scattered by her beloved sister from a small plane over the waters of the Coral Sea.

As always with Grantlee Kieza’s books, Annette Kellerman: Australian Mermaid is a thoroughly researched and engagingly written biography about an Australian figure of note. I had so many ‘OMG’ moments reading this book, that by the end I had to admit that what I’d thought I knew about Annette Kellerman had been a drop in the proverbial ocean – or swimming pool.

Annette Kellerman: Australian Mermaid was published by HarperCollins in April 2025.
My thanks to the publishers for a review copy.