But she is perhaps most famous for eschewing the cumbersome female woollen bathing dresses of the 1900s for a fitted knee-length one-piece suit. Her appearance at a Boston beach in 1907 sparked an alleged arrest and international uproar. Kellerman gave not a toss.
“I want to swim,” she said,in response. “And I can’t swim wearing more stuff than you hang on a clothesline.”
The world’s first “aqua queen” is now being celebrated inMarrickville Mermaid,a theatre song cycle written by Hilary Bell. Starring Christa Hughes,it is being staged at the inner west pool named after Kellerman,the Annette Kellerman Aquatic Centre.
Bell says she and musical collaborator Luke Styles were struck by Kellerman’s talent for inventive self-promotion more than a century ago.
“She understood branding,creating publicity and using the media to promote her own story and career,” Bell says. “They’re now so much part of our culture but were very new at the time.
“It’s possible she went to Revere Beach in Boston deliberately and strolled along in the revealing bathing suit she’d invented.”