Million Dollar Mermaid (1953) Dir. Mervyn LeRoy DoP. George J. Folsey

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Esther Williams broke her neck upon impact while performing the film's signature high dive. She wrote in her memoir that she was already disoriented atop the platform after seven broken eardrums as the wages of her years working underwater. When she dove, she knew that the headdress of her costume was too heavy and that she was in trouble. She heard her neck pop when she hit the water. When she reached the surface, she could kick her legs, but her upper body was paralyzed and she had to be helped out of the pool. An x-ray revealed she had broken three vertebrae. Williams writes, "I'd come as close to snapping my spinal cord and becoming a paraplegic as you could without actually succeeding.