She used her fame as an athlete and a “body” to preach a new kind of healthy, active, holistic lifestyle for women.
Kellerman was a vegetarian, teetotaler, and firm believer in women’s physical liberation. “Miss Kellerman is a delightful comedienne,” one reviewer for the Los Angeles Times wrote, “a sort of female Doug Fairbanks, with a crisp kind of drollery.” She was a vaudeville star and introduced the sports of synchronized swimming and high-diving to thousands of people who saw her elaborate shows, which also included her singing, dancing, and walking a high wire. Capitalizing on her fame, she starred in silent films shot in exotic seaside locales, with titles like “Neptune’s Daughter” (1914) and “A Daughter of the Gods” (1916). When I say exercise and diet will make a woman healthy and beautiful, I don’t mean she’ll have a classical nose and gorgeous blonde hair.ĭespite this title, Kellerman was much more than “just a pretty fish” - she was even a movie star for a time. I will say without qualification that Miss Kellerman embodies all the physical attributes that most of us demand in the perfect woman.” “Miss Kellerman has an appealing comeliness and at the same time has an all-around development very superior to any woman I have ever seen.
Gibson and Firth note that Sargent proclaimed: Dudley Sargent declared that Kellerman’s svelte athlete’s body made her the perfect woman.
Her arrest in America was quickly followed by an even bigger PR coup. “After I learned, I’d go swimming anywhere, anytime.” For Kellerman, the water meant freedom, far away from “a black earth full of people that push.” “Only a cripple can understand the intense joy I experienced,” she remembered.
A sickly child, she had worn leg braces as the result of rickets and, on doctor’s orders, began to swim. Kellerman hailed from Sydney, where she was born in 1886.
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