WEBVTT - Annette Kellerman 0:00:01.160 --> 0:00:04.120 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how 0:00:04.160 --> 0:00:14.320 Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:14.560 --> 0:00:18.000 I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly fry So. Uh, 0:00:18.160 --> 0:00:22.280 summer coming, at least in theory, sho. I think I 0:00:22.320 --> 0:00:27.360 think summer has definitely arrived where you are, which is Atlanta. Yeah, 0:00:27.480 --> 0:00:29.800 I mean, I guess technically it's still cooler than it 0:00:29.880 --> 0:00:32.879 usually would be this time of year. Yeah, it is 0:00:32.960 --> 0:00:35.839 not warm at all. It's fifty seven degrees right now. 0:00:35.880 --> 0:00:39.400 We're recording this on May thirtieth. Yeah, like, I think 0:00:39.400 --> 0:00:42.080 our high today might be eighty, which sounds hot to 0:00:42.120 --> 0:00:44.320 some people, but for Atlanta at the end of May, 0:00:44.400 --> 0:00:47.680 that's really not. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's been a We've 0:00:47.680 --> 0:00:51.400 had an unseasonably cool um May up here in New 0:00:51.400 --> 0:00:55.120 England anyway, though, at least in theory, summer is either 0:00:55.280 --> 0:00:58.800 on the way or here for most but not all 0:00:58.880 --> 0:01:00.959 of our listeners. So seems like a good time talk 0:01:01.000 --> 0:01:06.880 about swimming. We yes, specifically, we are talking about Annette Kellerman, 0:01:07.200 --> 0:01:09.280 who gets a lot of the credit for developing the 0:01:09.360 --> 0:01:13.480 woman's one piece bathing suit and then for making it 0:01:13.560 --> 0:01:16.319 socially appropriate for women in a lot of the English 0:01:16.360 --> 0:01:18.520 speaking world to put on an outfit that you could 0:01:18.560 --> 0:01:22.000 actually swim in without drowning and then go out in 0:01:22.080 --> 0:01:26.600 public that way, and perhaps kind of ironically, she was Australian, 0:01:27.040 --> 0:01:32.520 where it is definitely not coming on summer. So Australians, 0:01:32.600 --> 0:01:36.199 we have some Australian history today that is uh, seasonally 0:01:36.319 --> 0:01:40.280 incongruous for where you actually live, unless you happen to 0:01:40.319 --> 0:01:42.759 be uh somebody who's downloading it late in the game, 0:01:42.959 --> 0:01:45.320 in which case store hooray summer for you as well. 0:01:47.040 --> 0:01:50.240 Annette Kellerman was born in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia. 0:01:50.640 --> 0:01:53.200 She was coy about her birth date, and it's variously 0:01:53.280 --> 0:01:56.720 cited as July five or sixth of eighteen eighty six, 0:01:56.800 --> 0:02:00.200 eighteen eighty seven, or eighteen eighty eight. The sixth is 0:02:00.240 --> 0:02:03.800 the most frequently cited date. Her father, Frederick, was a 0:02:03.880 --> 0:02:07.120 violinist born in Australia, and her mother, Alice, was a 0:02:07.160 --> 0:02:10.000 pianist and a music teacher who was originally from France. 0:02:10.760 --> 0:02:13.240 When she was young, and Nett had to wear braces 0:02:13.320 --> 0:02:16.720 on her legs because of persistent weakness, and not only 0:02:16.760 --> 0:02:20.000 were these braces painful to wear, but she also found 0:02:20.000 --> 0:02:24.720 them embarrassing. The cause is unclear. A few sources site 0:02:24.760 --> 0:02:27.720 rickets or polio, and later on in her life she 0:02:27.800 --> 0:02:31.519 speculated that hip might have been a calcium deficiency her 0:02:31.639 --> 0:02:34.400 according to her own account, actual doctors at the time 0:02:35.160 --> 0:02:37.079 said that it was because she had been allowed to 0:02:37.160 --> 0:02:39.600 learn to walk too early, or that she had chalk 0:02:39.680 --> 0:02:43.720 in her bones. Neither of those are real things would 0:02:43.720 --> 0:02:47.520 have caused her to need leg braces. Um, so totally unclear, 0:02:47.720 --> 0:02:50.480 but the braces were a real part of her life. 0:02:50.600 --> 0:02:54.160 That's so she get when you go to cartoon doctors, like, 0:02:54.280 --> 0:02:57.320 chalk in your bones sounds like such a cartoon diagnosis, 0:02:57.720 --> 0:03:02.960 and chalk bones is a nickname for like one congenital 0:03:03.000 --> 0:03:06.160 bone condition, but it has nothing to do with what 0:03:06.320 --> 0:03:08.600 she was experiencing. Is a totally different set of symptoms. 0:03:08.720 --> 0:03:12.120 So very weird. Yeah, whatever the cause of her disability, 0:03:12.320 --> 0:03:16.600 eventually her father visited a doctor who recommended swimming lessons, 0:03:16.840 --> 0:03:19.240 and at first and that was really terrified of this plan, 0:03:19.880 --> 0:03:22.960 possibly because it meant exposing her legs to people, which 0:03:22.960 --> 0:03:25.720 she did not want to do because they were visibly undeveloped, 0:03:26.120 --> 0:03:27.919 and she begged not to have to go, but her 0:03:27.960 --> 0:03:30.760 parents and the doctor were all certain that swimming would 0:03:30.800 --> 0:03:33.519 really help, so she and her brothers were taken to 0:03:33.600 --> 0:03:36.480 Frederick Cavell's baths so they could learn to swim, and 0:03:36.520 --> 0:03:39.200 the Cavils were actually a whole family of swimmers there 0:03:39.200 --> 0:03:41.840 in the International Swimming Hall of Fame for their combined 0:03:41.920 --> 0:03:46.120 contributions to the sport. It took a Net a lot 0:03:46.200 --> 0:03:48.280 longer to get the hang of swimming than it took 0:03:48.280 --> 0:03:50.680 her brothers. They were both able to swim on their 0:03:50.720 --> 0:03:53.280 own after a handful of lessons, but it took a 0:03:53.320 --> 0:03:55.880 net close to twenty But once she knew how to 0:03:55.960 --> 0:03:59.080 do it, as predicted, it really did help her build 0:03:59.120 --> 0:04:02.280 her strength up and her legs, and with the water 0:04:02.440 --> 0:04:05.480 supporting her, she could move around without having to wear 0:04:05.520 --> 0:04:09.240 the braces, and that would later describe her gradual improvement 0:04:09.280 --> 0:04:12.880 through swimming as a process of intense joy. By the 0:04:12.880 --> 0:04:15.560 time she reached the age of thirteen, her muscle development 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:18.200 was more or less typical for a child her age, 0:04:18.240 --> 0:04:21.080 although she was susceptible to muscle strains and had to 0:04:21.080 --> 0:04:24.719 wear very tightly laced boots until she was eighteen. A 0:04:24.760 --> 0:04:27.120 lot of the swimming strokes that are recognized and used 0:04:27.160 --> 0:04:30.080 competitively today were still new or in the process of 0:04:30.120 --> 0:04:33.240 being developed and refined. So what a Net learned at 0:04:33.240 --> 0:04:36.080 first was basically the breaststroke, and that was the stroke 0:04:36.160 --> 0:04:38.960 that she used mostly when she was exercising at first. 0:04:39.520 --> 0:04:42.279 At about the age of fifteen, she started branching out 0:04:42.320 --> 0:04:46.599 into learning other strokes, putting dedicated effort into practicing them 0:04:46.600 --> 0:04:49.040 and getting better at them, and soon she told her 0:04:49.080 --> 0:04:52.640 parents that she wanted to start competing in swimming. Her 0:04:52.680 --> 0:04:55.880 first swimming race was a local event, and she wanted 0:04:56.720 --> 0:04:59.839 Annette's father had been incredulous when she said she wanted 0:04:59.839 --> 0:05:02.760 to enter a swimming race. He had thought of swimming 0:05:02.800 --> 0:05:05.719 as something she was doing because of her disability, not 0:05:05.839 --> 0:05:08.719 as something she would seriously pursue for her own sake. 0:05:09.360 --> 0:05:11.480 But once she had that first win under her belt, 0:05:11.600 --> 0:05:14.760 he was instrumental in her progress as a competitive swimmer, 0:05:15.120 --> 0:05:19.040 essentially becoming both her trainer and her coach. As soon 0:05:19.200 --> 0:05:23.039 as she started seriously competing, a Net started winning races 0:05:23.120 --> 0:05:26.200 and setting records. In nineteen o two, at the age 0:05:26.200 --> 0:05:29.520 of about sixteen, she won a one hundred yard championship 0:05:29.600 --> 0:05:32.800 for New South Wales and also set a world record 0:05:32.839 --> 0:05:35.160 for swimming a mile with a time of thirty two 0:05:35.200 --> 0:05:39.040 minutes and twenty nine seconds. That same year, she started 0:05:39.080 --> 0:05:44.440 participating in long distance swimming races and public diving demonstrations. 0:05:44.440 --> 0:05:48.200 Her time in the water wasn't only about competition, though, 0:05:48.320 --> 0:05:53.279 She started doing mermaid shows in Australian aquariums along with 0:05:53.400 --> 0:05:56.560 other aquatic performances while she was still in her teens. 0:05:57.240 --> 0:05:59.719 Although she was winning races and making a name for 0:05:59.760 --> 0:06:02.800 her self as a competitive swimmer, she wasn't really able 0:06:02.839 --> 0:06:05.760 to earn an income from doing so. So Annette and 0:06:05.760 --> 0:06:08.000 her father moved to England with the hope of finding 0:06:08.000 --> 0:06:12.520 more lucrative opportunities to compete and perform. Once they arrived 0:06:12.520 --> 0:06:15.080 in England, they had a really hard time getting started. 0:06:15.720 --> 0:06:19.480 Although Annette already held multiple records and swimming, they didn't 0:06:19.520 --> 0:06:22.760 know anyone and Annette didn't have a local reputation to 0:06:22.800 --> 0:06:25.360 try to build on, So her father hatched a plan 0:06:25.520 --> 0:06:29.600 to drum up some publicity. She would swim twenty six miles, 0:06:29.600 --> 0:06:32.880 which was forty two kilometers down the Thames from Putney 0:06:32.960 --> 0:06:37.239 to black Wall in five Annette, at about age eighteen, 0:06:37.360 --> 0:06:40.800 became the first woman to make this swim, Although it 0:06:40.839 --> 0:06:43.200 did indeed bring in a lot of media attention. The 0:06:43.240 --> 0:06:47.320 swim itself was terrible. The Thames was filthy, and Annette 0:06:47.400 --> 0:06:50.000 later said she felt like she'd swallowed big mouthfuls of 0:06:50.040 --> 0:06:53.080 oil from the surface of the river. She had also 0:06:53.120 --> 0:06:55.839 had to dodge a lot of flotsam, garbage, tugboats and 0:06:55.960 --> 0:07:01.160 barges along the way. But afterward a sports editor from 0:07:01.200 --> 0:07:05.520 The Daily Mirror approached her with another idea. The Daily 0:07:05.560 --> 0:07:08.120 Mirror was the first paper in the UK to use 0:07:08.240 --> 0:07:12.320 photographs rather than illustrations, and the editor thought that articles 0:07:12.400 --> 0:07:15.400 on a net complete with photographs of her in the 0:07:15.480 --> 0:07:18.320 scandalous swimwear that we're going to talk about a little 0:07:18.320 --> 0:07:20.760 bit more later, if you thought that would sell a 0:07:20.760 --> 0:07:22.920 lot of papers. So we offered to back her in 0:07:23.000 --> 0:07:26.200 attempts and an attempt to swim across the English Channel, 0:07:26.400 --> 0:07:30.160 along with paying for and writing about swims along the 0:07:30.200 --> 0:07:34.560 coast to train for it. This entire enterprise was wildly 0:07:34.600 --> 0:07:38.840 successful in almost every way, and that's training. Swims down 0:07:38.880 --> 0:07:41.680 the coast threw huge crowds, and the articles and their 0:07:41.680 --> 0:07:45.800 corresponding photos sold lots of papers. She swam an average 0:07:45.800 --> 0:07:48.640 of forty five miles or seventy two kilometers per week, 0:07:49.080 --> 0:07:51.600 increasing the distance of each swim until she had done 0:07:51.640 --> 0:07:55.240 the twenty four miles stretch from Dover to Ramsgate. At 0:07:55.280 --> 0:07:57.160 that point she thought she was ready to try to 0:07:57.200 --> 0:08:00.560 conquer the Channel. Although that's a slightly shorter stints than 0:08:00.600 --> 0:08:03.560 her swim down the Thames, swimming in the English Channel 0:08:03.640 --> 0:08:06.160 is far more difficult due to the very cold water, 0:08:06.520 --> 0:08:10.640 the waves and the tides. She made her first attempts 0:08:10.720 --> 0:08:13.560 to swim across the English Channel along with six men 0:08:13.720 --> 0:08:17.880 on August nine oh five. They all started their swim 0:08:17.880 --> 0:08:20.600 at about three in the morning, all from different points 0:08:20.600 --> 0:08:23.280 along the coast, based on where they thought the currents 0:08:23.320 --> 0:08:26.800 and the tides would be the most advantageous. Each swimmer 0:08:26.920 --> 0:08:29.080 was accompanied by a steam tug in a row boat 0:08:29.080 --> 0:08:31.960 in case they fell into some distress along the way, 0:08:32.040 --> 0:08:35.360 and then periodically hot chocolate or food could be handed 0:08:35.400 --> 0:08:38.000 down to the swimmers from these boats to keep their 0:08:38.080 --> 0:08:42.080 energy up. An advertiser had given a net chocolate to 0:08:42.080 --> 0:08:44.800 eat along the way, but the combination of chocolate and 0:08:44.840 --> 0:08:48.120 the choppy water really made her sea sick. The further 0:08:48.280 --> 0:08:50.480 she went, the bigger her pay day would be those 0:08:50.520 --> 0:08:53.480 so she kept herself going through that seasickness by thinking 0:08:53.840 --> 0:08:57.079 the longer you stick, the more you get. She stuck 0:08:57.120 --> 0:08:59.000 it out for about six and a half hours, and 0:08:59.080 --> 0:09:02.439 she was paid thirty pounds. This was the first of 0:09:02.520 --> 0:09:05.760 Kellerman's three attempts to swim that swim the English Channel, 0:09:06.520 --> 0:09:08.679 and as with her swim down the Thames, she was 0:09:08.720 --> 0:09:12.160 the first woman to make the attempt. The closest she 0:09:12.320 --> 0:09:15.120 came in these three attempts to actually crossing was about 0:09:15.160 --> 0:09:17.199 three quarters of the way, which took ten and a 0:09:17.240 --> 0:09:21.080 half hours. Later, Killerman would say she thought she had 0:09:21.080 --> 0:09:24.200 the endurance to swim the channel, but not the raw strength. 0:09:24.800 --> 0:09:28.440 In her book How to Swim, she wrote that she 0:09:28.480 --> 0:09:31.560 didn't think a woman would ever successfully swim the English Channel. 0:09:32.080 --> 0:09:35.600 She was proven wrong in six when Gertrude utterly crossed 0:09:35.600 --> 0:09:39.040 in fourteen hours thirty nine minutes, not only swimming the 0:09:39.120 --> 0:09:41.960 channel but beating the previous record time by more than 0:09:41.960 --> 0:09:47.320 two hours. Today there are lots of women swim across 0:09:47.360 --> 0:09:51.440 the English Channel, including swimming at three consecutive times, like 0:09:51.480 --> 0:09:53.720 swimming it across one way and then going back and 0:09:53.720 --> 0:09:57.559 then going back across again, which is astounding to me. 0:09:58.480 --> 0:10:02.280 So in kellerman first attempt to swim across the English Channel. 0:10:02.600 --> 0:10:05.360 The male swimmers who were swimming that night were allowed 0:10:05.400 --> 0:10:08.280 to be nude, but she had to wear a swimsuit 0:10:08.360 --> 0:10:11.880 that chafed her skin just terribly. And this brings us 0:10:11.880 --> 0:10:15.320 to her efforts to make suitable swimwear for women, which 0:10:15.360 --> 0:10:24.040 we will talk about more after a sponsor break. That 0:10:24.200 --> 0:10:26.720 swim down the Thames and the attempts to cross the 0:10:26.720 --> 0:10:30.880 English Channel, We're not Annette Kellerman's only long distance races 0:10:31.000 --> 0:10:35.120 in the nineteen hundreds. Before leaving Australia, she had taken 0:10:35.240 --> 0:10:39.319 multiple long distance swims down the Yarra River, including becoming 0:10:39.320 --> 0:10:42.840 the first woman to complete a ten mile stretch. In 0:10:43.000 --> 0:10:45.720 nineteen o five, she participated in a race down the 0:10:45.800 --> 0:10:49.719 sin where she tied for third with with Thomas William Burgess. 0:10:50.120 --> 0:10:52.320 And her account of this race and how to swim, 0:10:52.400 --> 0:10:55.960 she wrote that well, meeting spectators kept calling out that 0:10:56.000 --> 0:10:58.840 she was almost there and had just two bridges more, 0:10:59.440 --> 0:11:02.360 and when she alized she was not almost there, and 0:11:02.640 --> 0:11:05.960 she became just really discouraged because she had worn herself 0:11:06.000 --> 0:11:08.400 out doing what she thought was her final push to 0:11:08.400 --> 0:11:11.360 the finish line. So when Burgess caught up to her 0:11:11.400 --> 0:11:14.560 and saw that she was crying in a very lovely 0:11:14.600 --> 0:11:17.560 show of sporting behavior. He stayed with her and encouraged 0:11:17.559 --> 0:11:19.200 her for the rest of the of the race, and 0:11:19.200 --> 0:11:22.959 that is how they came to tie. In June of six, 0:11:23.040 --> 0:11:25.920 Kellerman also won a twenty two mile or thirty six 0:11:26.000 --> 0:11:30.319 kilometer race down the Danube. I think anyone also who 0:11:30.360 --> 0:11:33.640 has ever run a race knows the the ire of 0:11:33.720 --> 0:11:36.160 please don't tell me if you're almost there, when you're not, 0:11:36.360 --> 0:11:38.840 when you're not know anyway, it was a little bit 0:11:38.920 --> 0:11:40.960 unclear to me whether these were the people in the 0:11:41.000 --> 0:11:43.719 guide boat or the people who were just spectators who 0:11:43.760 --> 0:11:47.160 were saying this, but like she they got her a 0:11:47.200 --> 0:11:49.439 couple of times, and then in like time number three 0:11:49.480 --> 0:11:51.559 of them being like, you're almost there, she was like, oh, 0:11:51.679 --> 0:11:55.000 I'm not well right. And it's almost always well intentioned, 0:11:55.040 --> 0:11:58.439 like if you but let this be a note if 0:11:58.440 --> 0:12:01.439 you're ever spectating and sporting that please don't fimb to 0:12:01.520 --> 0:12:04.920 the participant because it does more to harm their head 0:12:04.920 --> 0:12:07.880 game than than help. And in most of these events, 0:12:07.960 --> 0:12:10.760 Kellerman was one of very few women, and sometimes she 0:12:10.840 --> 0:12:13.679 was the only woman, and she typically swam them wearing 0:12:13.679 --> 0:12:17.040 a swimsuit that was actually made for men, so this 0:12:17.200 --> 0:12:20.800 was not unheard of in Australia at this point. Uh 0:12:20.800 --> 0:12:24.880 swimming was already a more established sport in Australia than 0:12:24.920 --> 0:12:27.360 it was in the United Kingdom or the United States, 0:12:27.880 --> 0:12:30.800 but it was astonishing in a lot of the rest 0:12:30.840 --> 0:12:34.920 of the English speaking world, where water was for bathing, 0:12:35.120 --> 0:12:38.720 not for swimming. Bathing meant getting into the water a 0:12:38.720 --> 0:12:41.400 little way and you might wait or play or maybe 0:12:41.480 --> 0:12:45.200 float a little out there, but you didn't really swim, 0:12:45.240 --> 0:12:47.480 and a lot of people didn't even know how to swim. 0:12:47.960 --> 0:12:52.240 The idea of uh man made swimming pool was also 0:12:52.520 --> 0:12:55.080 still quite recent at this point, like there had not 0:12:55.200 --> 0:13:00.360 even been one built for the Olympics yet. So like 0:13:00.640 --> 0:13:03.720 bathing was a thing that happened at a beach, whether 0:13:03.760 --> 0:13:06.240 it was like a lakeside beach or a seashore beach, 0:13:06.679 --> 0:13:09.319 it did not really happen in a pool. And even 0:13:09.360 --> 0:13:11.880 if you wanted to swim, if you were a woman 0:13:12.000 --> 0:13:14.840 around the turn of the twentieth century, your bathing entire 0:13:15.000 --> 0:13:18.360 was not something you could actually swim in. The standard 0:13:18.400 --> 0:13:21.400 bathing costume for women was essentially a dress with a 0:13:21.480 --> 0:13:23.920 length that ranged within a couple of inches above or 0:13:23.920 --> 0:13:27.160 below the knee. It had a blousey top and puffy, 0:13:27.360 --> 0:13:31.840 usually short sleeves, sometimes with the sailor's collar. It was cinched, 0:13:31.920 --> 0:13:34.920 belted or ribboned at the waist and worn with stockings 0:13:34.960 --> 0:13:38.560 and bathing slippers or sometimes even bathing boots that went 0:13:38.600 --> 0:13:41.240 all the way up the calves, and many women wore 0:13:41.240 --> 0:13:46.520 their bathing clothes with corsets and other underpinnings. Here is 0:13:46.600 --> 0:13:49.959 what a net Kellerman had to say about these outfits. 0:13:50.160 --> 0:13:53.000 Quote there is no more reason why you should wear 0:13:53.080 --> 0:13:59.079 those awful water overcoats, those awkward, unnecessary, lumpy quote bathing suits. 0:13:59.440 --> 0:14:02.920 Then there is that you should wear lead chains. Heavy 0:14:03.000 --> 0:14:06.640 bathing suits have caused more deaths by drowning than cramps. 0:14:06.679 --> 0:14:09.480 I am certain there isn't a single reason under the 0:14:09.600 --> 0:14:14.040 sun why everybody should not wear lightweight suits. Anyone who 0:14:14.040 --> 0:14:18.120 persuades you to wear the heavy skurty kind is endangering 0:14:18.160 --> 0:14:23.680 your life. Just thinking about wearing tights into the water 0:14:23.960 --> 0:14:28.480 is a horrifying prospect to me. Oh, I don't know why. 0:14:28.480 --> 0:14:33.360 It just kind of grosses me out. Uh. For competitive 0:14:33.400 --> 0:14:36.760 women's swimmers, there was a grudging exception to the standard 0:14:36.800 --> 0:14:39.720 of dress they could wear. A men's bathing suit, which 0:14:39.760 --> 0:14:42.760 was more like a T shirt and shorts, sometimes constructed 0:14:42.800 --> 0:14:45.840 all is one piece, But this also starts a whole 0:14:45.920 --> 0:14:49.080 chicken and egg situation. Women weren't supposed to be seen 0:14:49.120 --> 0:14:51.640 in a tired that they could actually swim in, which 0:14:51.680 --> 0:14:55.920 created a huge barrier for entry for the sport of swimming. Yeah, 0:14:55.920 --> 0:14:57.960 if people were like, well, I guess you can wear 0:14:58.200 --> 0:15:01.760 a men's suit for this race, that left the question of, like, 0:15:01.840 --> 0:15:03.480 all the training you would need to do to be 0:15:03.520 --> 0:15:06.320 able to compete in the race in the first place. 0:15:07.560 --> 0:15:10.640 It was this whole social standard of what was acceptable 0:15:10.720 --> 0:15:14.080 for women to wear that led Kellerman to invent a 0:15:14.120 --> 0:15:17.680 new swimsuit. In five she was scheduled for a swimming 0:15:17.720 --> 0:15:20.400 performance at London's Bath Club and some of the royal 0:15:20.440 --> 0:15:23.800 family was to be in attendance. The men's bathing suit 0:15:23.880 --> 0:15:26.760 that she had been wearing was determined to be inappropriate 0:15:26.800 --> 0:15:29.800 because it was two revealing. So Kellerman bought a pair 0:15:29.840 --> 0:15:32.400 of black stockings and she sewed them to the legs 0:15:32.400 --> 0:15:35.760 of her men's bathing suit, creating what was effectively a 0:15:35.800 --> 0:15:38.520 one piece garment that covered her from her shoulders to 0:15:38.600 --> 0:15:42.400 her feet. From there, she began tweaking and refining this 0:15:42.480 --> 0:15:46.360 original design, eventually developing a one piece, form fitting garment 0:15:46.440 --> 0:15:50.120 without sleeves. The lengths of the legs varied from full 0:15:50.200 --> 0:15:54.480 length and stalking like to stopping at the thigh. Although 0:15:54.520 --> 0:15:57.640 this would be considered pretty modest swimwear by a lot 0:15:57.680 --> 0:16:00.600 of today's standards, it was not at all all modest 0:16:00.680 --> 0:16:03.280 by the standards of the day. Like we said before 0:16:03.280 --> 0:16:06.080 the first break, the very idea of a woman in 0:16:06.240 --> 0:16:09.320 public and such a garment was enough to sell newspapers. 0:16:09.760 --> 0:16:13.880 It's widely reported that in seven Kellerman was arrested for 0:16:14.040 --> 0:16:17.600 indecency on Revere Beach in Massachusetts while wearing one of 0:16:17.640 --> 0:16:21.280 these swimsuits. Although there's no arrest in the log books, 0:16:21.280 --> 0:16:23.280 it's a story that came up again and again and 0:16:23.320 --> 0:16:27.000 again during her own lifetime, including from her own mouth, 0:16:27.440 --> 0:16:30.160 like I don't think she made this up, but people 0:16:30.200 --> 0:16:32.680 have noted that, like they can't find a document that 0:16:32.760 --> 0:16:36.920 actually details the arrest. In spite of heavy resistance to 0:16:36.960 --> 0:16:40.840 the idea of women being out in public so relatively unclothed, 0:16:41.320 --> 0:16:45.239 Kellerman persisted. She launched her own line of women's swimwear, 0:16:45.360 --> 0:16:48.120 some of which came with a modesty panel, which was 0:16:48.160 --> 0:16:50.640 a close fitting skirt that went from waste to knee, 0:16:50.680 --> 0:16:53.600 covering the thighs but bringing along far less fabric and 0:16:53.640 --> 0:16:57.640 weight than the previous era of swimsuits. She became so 0:16:57.720 --> 0:17:00.720 closely associated to this type of swim where that soon 0:17:00.840 --> 0:17:03.400 people were calling anything that looked like it in a 0:17:03.520 --> 0:17:06.720 net Kellerman or just a Kellerman, although it was a 0:17:06.800 --> 0:17:09.200 name she trademarked and went to court to defend when 0:17:09.240 --> 0:17:13.440 she needed to, and at some beaches, Kellerman type suits 0:17:13.520 --> 0:17:17.679 were actually banned. As Kellerman became more famous and her 0:17:17.720 --> 0:17:22.040 swimsuits became more widely adopted, it gradually became more acceptable 0:17:22.080 --> 0:17:24.159 for women to be seen in them and for women 0:17:24.200 --> 0:17:28.680 to participate in the sport of swimming, and compounding that, 0:17:28.800 --> 0:17:33.040 for swimming in general to be seen as a recreational activity. 0:17:33.200 --> 0:17:35.720 Some of this was part of an overall growth in 0:17:35.760 --> 0:17:40.080 the popularity of swimming, but it wasn't just happenstance. Kellerman 0:17:40.240 --> 0:17:43.400 was an active advocate for women to learn to swim 0:17:43.520 --> 0:17:46.639 and for swimming to be seen as an acceptable form 0:17:46.680 --> 0:17:52.000 of exercise, recreation, and competition for women. She wrote quote, 0:17:52.280 --> 0:17:54.840 I'm not trying to shut men out of swimming there's 0:17:54.960 --> 0:17:57.320 enough water in the world for all of us. But 0:17:57.440 --> 0:18:00.560 as men can indulge in so many others sports where 0:18:00.560 --> 0:18:03.480 women can make a poor showing or cannot compete at all, 0:18:03.920 --> 0:18:08.960 Swimming may well be called the women's sport. But unfortunately 0:18:09.000 --> 0:18:12.640 this progress did not apply to all women. Even though 0:18:12.720 --> 0:18:15.760 Kellerman herself wrote things like quote, there is nothing more 0:18:15.800 --> 0:18:19.880 democratic than swimming, and a clean, cool, beautiful, cheap thing 0:18:19.960 --> 0:18:23.679 we all from cats to kings can enjoy, swimming was 0:18:23.720 --> 0:18:27.840 not actually accessible to everyone. In the United States, public 0:18:27.880 --> 0:18:30.880 beaches and as they were built, public swimming pools were 0:18:30.920 --> 0:18:34.960 often racially segregated, and the Indigenous population was barred from 0:18:34.960 --> 0:18:38.800 many public swimming areas in Australia, So while Kellerman was 0:18:38.840 --> 0:18:42.640 a staunch advocate for making swimming accessible to women, that 0:18:42.760 --> 0:18:46.600 was really most applicable to white women. And to add 0:18:46.600 --> 0:18:49.119 another layer to all of this, a lot of the 0:18:49.160 --> 0:18:51.920 swimming strokes that she learned as a child and then 0:18:51.920 --> 0:18:55.320 helps to popularize and as an adult were either patterned 0:18:55.359 --> 0:19:01.119 after or directly taught to white swimmers by Indigenous Australians 0:19:01.160 --> 0:19:04.320 and indigenous people from elsewhere in the Pacific. So like 0:19:04.400 --> 0:19:08.040 a lot of the art and skill of swimming drew 0:19:08.119 --> 0:19:11.919 from indigenous knowledge, but Indigenous people were excluded from a 0:19:11.960 --> 0:19:16.280 lot of public swimming locations. In addition to contributing to 0:19:16.320 --> 0:19:20.280 the popularity and at least for some accessibility of swimming, 0:19:20.640 --> 0:19:24.040 Annette Kellerman's fame and skill led to a completely different 0:19:24.080 --> 0:19:28.000 aspect of her career Vaudeville and Hollywood. We're going to 0:19:28.080 --> 0:19:31.840 talk about that after we pause for a sponsor break. 0:19:36.160 --> 0:19:39.280 A lot of Annette Kellerman's fame as a swimmer came 0:19:39.320 --> 0:19:44.560 because she was naturally a performer. She was definitely talented. 0:19:44.640 --> 0:19:48.280 I don't want to overlook that at all. She legitimately 0:19:48.400 --> 0:19:51.040 won races, and she set records, and she was one 0:19:51.040 --> 0:19:54.000 of the best swimmers of her era. But a lot 0:19:54.040 --> 0:19:56.920 of the attention that she got for those successes was 0:19:57.000 --> 0:20:00.480 due to showmanship and an openness with her body that 0:20:00.640 --> 0:20:03.920 was not really typical for the time. A woman swimmer 0:20:04.040 --> 0:20:07.639 was already relatively novel in a lot of places, and 0:20:07.720 --> 0:20:11.960 a woman swimmer who flaunted social expectations to proudly wear 0:20:12.000 --> 0:20:16.719 a scandalous swimsuit was a real attention getter. This attention 0:20:16.880 --> 0:20:20.199 actually led her to a career in Vaudeville. In nineteen 0:20:20.240 --> 0:20:23.040 o six, Having performed at the London Hippodrome and won 0:20:23.160 --> 0:20:26.359 numerous races in Europe, she sailed for the United States 0:20:26.400 --> 0:20:30.480 to perform an amusement parks and theaters. Her vaudeville act 0:20:30.640 --> 0:20:34.600 involved a combination of swimming, high diving, water stunts, and 0:20:34.640 --> 0:20:37.959 mermaid shows, for which she often designed all of her 0:20:37.960 --> 0:20:41.400 own costumes. She would eventually donate all of her costumes 0:20:41.400 --> 0:20:44.040 and memorabilia to the Sydney Opera House. We will put 0:20:44.080 --> 0:20:45.679 a link in the show notes where you can go 0:20:45.760 --> 0:20:48.720 look at them. There's a lot. There are lots and 0:20:48.760 --> 0:20:51.359 lots of pictures of this collection that you can browse through, 0:20:51.440 --> 0:20:56.200 and they are fascinating. Although water shows already existed in Vaudeville, 0:20:56.440 --> 0:20:59.320 Kellerman added a lot of her own flare and incorporated 0:20:59.359 --> 0:21:02.320 ballet and other movement in what would become a precursor 0:21:02.359 --> 0:21:05.960 to synchronize swimming. Her biggest production at the New York 0:21:06.000 --> 0:21:10.120 Hippodrome included a core of two hundred mermaids, all swimming 0:21:10.119 --> 0:21:13.280 in tandem. She also tried her hand at other types 0:21:13.280 --> 0:21:17.760 of performance, including male impersonation and high wire walking. By 0:21:17.800 --> 0:21:20.920 nineteen fourteen, Kellerman had become one of the highest paid 0:21:20.960 --> 0:21:25.280 performers in vaudeville. Also during her time in vaudeville, she 0:21:25.359 --> 0:21:29.160 got married after proposing to her manager, Louis Sullivan, who 0:21:29.240 --> 0:21:33.560 was known as Jimmy in ve Running parallel to her 0:21:33.600 --> 0:21:38.200 time in vaudeville, Kellerman also began acting in films. Her 0:21:38.240 --> 0:21:40.960 first films were a series of silent shorts made while 0:21:41.000 --> 0:21:43.439 she was trying to work out a contract dispute between 0:21:43.520 --> 0:21:47.520 two different theater managers. Later on, when other people started 0:21:47.520 --> 0:21:50.480 to copy her water act and her pay in vaudeville 0:21:50.480 --> 0:21:56.080 consequently plummeted, she turned to film almost entirely. Kellerman's film 0:21:56.200 --> 0:22:00.399 roles involved lots of water and swimming, and sometimes also 0:22:00.480 --> 0:22:03.479 played off the fact that the South Pacific was pretty 0:22:03.520 --> 0:22:07.600 exotic two American audiences, which meant that Kellerman herself was 0:22:07.680 --> 0:22:11.639 often seen as exotic as well. Her first full length 0:22:11.680 --> 0:22:15.000 movie was Neptune's Daughter, which came out in nineteen fourteen. 0:22:15.640 --> 0:22:18.679 She played a mermaid wearing sheer body suits that matched 0:22:18.680 --> 0:22:22.280 her skin tone. In nineteen sixteen, she started a film 0:22:22.320 --> 0:22:25.159 called The Daughter of the Gods, which was a fantasy drama. 0:22:25.680 --> 0:22:29.159 She played Anisia, who was the daughter in question. In 0:22:29.200 --> 0:22:31.040 this film, she had a scene in which she was 0:22:31.119 --> 0:22:34.080 completely nude, although part of her body was covered by 0:22:34.119 --> 0:22:37.000 her hair. It was one of the first fully nude 0:22:37.000 --> 0:22:40.399 appearances by a major star in a non pornographic movie. 0:22:41.080 --> 0:22:44.200 Her final film, Venus of the South Seas, came out 0:22:44.240 --> 0:22:49.280 in nine four. There are definitely people who call the 0:22:49.400 --> 0:22:54.360 Daughter of the Gods role like the first nude appearance 0:22:54.400 --> 0:22:57.280 by a woman in film, and that seems a little there. 0:22:57.359 --> 0:23:02.920 It needs a little more caveats in that um Kellerman 0:23:03.160 --> 0:23:06.600 mostly retired from performing in the nineteen thirties. She and 0:23:06.640 --> 0:23:09.120