STILL THE PERFECT FIGURE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 53, 4 March 1939, Page 4

STILL THE PERFECT FIGURE

ANNETTE KELLERMAN THIRTY-FOUR YEARS AGO HER COSTUME SHOCKED RAMSGATE

LONDON, Jan. 25. Ever-youthful Annette Kellerman, diver, swimmer, actress, dancer, is travelling from Florida to Australia by way of London and Paris. To-day she has a perfect figure and great grace. In 1905 this Australian shocked the holiday crowds at Ramsgate. England, by diving off the pier in the first one-piece bathing costume ever seen there. Now she is in London with her husband, Mr. James Sullivan, a Hollywood photographer, and to-day she told me that swimming and sensible eating have combined to keep her youthful figure. But she does not mean the sort of swimming you indulge in when the sun is out and the weather is warm. For day after day she covers a measured mile. Then every now and then she dives downward just to see if she can improve upon her 3.27 underwater record. During the last three years in America she has been responsible for raising nearly 100,000 dollars (£20.000) to benefit infantile paralysis hospitals there. Her favourite one is in Florida, where children seek cures from warmth and salt water bathing under medical supervision. When she staged her last big pantomime show at Warm Springs, a centre for adult sufferers, the president of the United States and Mrs. Roosevelt were among her audience. It is precisely one of these same gigantic spectacles that she hopes to put on in Melbourne or o.*dney to lienefit some Australian charity, preferably for children. “It is the only worth-while job I can think of,” she says, “when you haven t four or five children of your own to show for your life . . Generally she picks the Bath Club. Florida, said to be wealthiest in the world, for her shows because the members cheerfully pay about £2 for

, a seat and £2O for a box. Then, because all her performers i give their services free —even to sing- ' ers with the reputations of Lawrence ' Tibbett and Richard Tauber—she reaps great profits for the paralysis ' homes. These performances must be amaz- : mg. Half the 21-hour programme ’ takes place on a stage erected at the I very edge of the Bath Club’s mosaic- ■ lined swimming pool; half in the pool itself. 1 But although the 200 girls who I dance and dive and swim have to I amuse a most discerning audience, Annette Kellerman, the first woman to attempt to swim the English ChanI nel, does not want them to be cham- . pions. | “In fact,” she told me, “if I give a ! charity performance in Australia I | will only want girls who are moder- ; ately good in the water. , “It is grace and charm that I aim i at getting.” ; Since the crisis a craze for physical . fitness has swept across America, ac- ’ cording to Miss Kellerman. The | countless women’s clubs are always clamouring for lecturers on how to I get fit and how to keep fit. ■ But. she says, they prefer this fit- ' ness to be linked up In some way to J glamour and a short way to getting [ good, clear skins. But whatever she talks about, i sooner or later Annette Kellerman comes back to what can be done for : infantile paralysis sufferers —if only 1 people will give money freely. This is because, until she was seven, she had her legs braced in iron to keep them straight. Now she and her husband plan to ■ spend a year in Australia, mostly on the Great Barrier Reef, where he will photograph the underwater creatures. Before they return to America, she hopes to buy a house in Sydney for ;