Barely a teenager, Elizabeth Taylor was already more beautiful and voluptuous than Miss America. When she arrived at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel for our magazine shoot, I was bowled over. I couldn't believe she was only fourteen. She filled out a swimsuit better than I did. We did the pictures, including one shot of me teaching her to float. With that superstructure of hers, she floated just fine. What she couldn't do was sink.

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.

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

I was 15, and the years of hard swimming had packed muscle on my frame and made me very strong. Not as strong as a football player, but strong enough to inflict heavy damage.

Somehow I kept my head above water. I relied on the discipline, character, and strength that I had started to develop as that little girl in her first swimming pool.

Traveling to swimming meets took me beyond my small-town existence, gave me a hint of the exciting world outside of my own home.

Marriage to Fernando offered shelter and security, but the shackle was the price I'd pay.