Neptune's Daughter Reviews

Here we go, here is a fast-paced vehicle for Esther Williams that keeps her in the water, gives her plenty to do within her modest range, and gives us a successful, highly entertaining series of musical and comedy interludes to distract from the thin plot. Neptune’s Daughter may just be the best starring vehicle for Williams’ charms as a movie personality.

Williams plays a bathing-suit designer, and occasional model, while Red Skelton, a frequent co-star, plays a masseur at a fancy polo club who poses as a Latin lothario (Ricardo Montalban) to seduce Williams’ sister (Betty Garrett), while Montalban takes a shine to Williams and tries to romance her. The romance gets complicated, but the film is never anything less than charming.

The movie never slows down long enough to let the sheer absurdity of the plot machinations get too much focus. It’s nice to see Williams and Skelton share the screen again, but she never had believable romantic chemistry with him. They play off of each other well as a comedic duo, she as the straight man and he as the madcap jokester. Skelton and Betty Garrett have a fun, kooky romantic pairing, with Garrett as the romantic and sexual aggressor.

Montalban, practically a walking/talking definition of elegance and sophistication, is incredibly handsome here, he keeps up with Williams in the pool, and spins her around in some romantic dance routines as well. Montalban and Williams create believable chemistry together, and their performance of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is a slow-burning seduction (the immediate reprise by Skelton/Garrett switches the genders and plays it for laughs with Garrett becoming the aggressive seductress).

Neptune’s Daughter may not be a classic musical comedy, but it takes the best parts of a typical Esther Williams movie, and does them all incredibly well. It keeps her in the pool, gives her a plausible romance to play out, some fun supporting players, and great musical/comedy bits. Not to mention the sight of Montalban dripping wet in a Tarzan-like loincloth in the grand finale is as memorable an image as that of Williams and her back-up swimmers revealing their supple flesh in tightly choreographed synchronized swimming sequences.