Everything about my teenage life was almost ideal.

No one had ever done a swimming movie before so we just made it up as we went along. I ad-libbed all my own underwater movements.

The newspapers loved pinup pictures of pretty young swimmers, and as a national champion, I got more than my share of space in the sports pages.

Clark Gable was the first to have called me a mermaid.

We can't all win Olympic medals. Even I never won one.

Life magazine ran a page featuring me and three other girls that was clearly the precursor of Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues

I gave my eardrums to MGM. And it's true: I really did.