Champion swimmer, silent movie star, underwater ballerina, entrepreneur, vaudeville entertainer and author.

Discover more about Annette Kellerman's incredible life in this compilation.

Notes by Beth Taylor

Annette Kellerman is credited with being the first woman to appear nude in a film – in the grand epic A Daughter of the Gods (Herbert Brenon, USA, 1916).

This is a publicity still for the film. The film itself is now considered lost.

When she spoke with Joel Greenberg in 1974 she insisted she wore a ‘very thin pair of tights’ for filming. A long wig was also strategically placed for modesty.

Notes by Beth Taylor

Kellerman was 52 years old when her husband and manager Jimmie Sullivan filmed this rare silent footage. She is performing the underwater adagio - a slow ballet dance.

She trained herself to hold her breath for 3 minutes and 20 seconds at a time. Jimmie however, was unable to swim so she was concerned for his welfare during the filming.

It was filmed in the crystal clear waters of Silver Springs, Florida, US.

This is a compilation of the longer piece of actuality footage, which was deposited at the National Film Archive (now the NFSA) in 1977. The film was one of the first items in the national collection.

Notes by Beth Taylor

Annette Kellerman says she never needed a stunt double in any of her films.

She also talks about her infamous swim in a pool full of crocodiles on the shoot for the silent feature A Daughter of the Gods (Herbert Brenon, USA, 1916). The Bill Fox she refers to is film's producer William Fox.

This excerpt from Kellerman's oral history was recorded in 1974, a year before her death. The interviewer is Joel Greenberg.

The cover image is a hand-tinted publicity image of Kellerman.

Notes by Beth Taylor

This is an excerpt from a mute trailer for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Million Dollar Mermaid (Mervyn LeRoy, USA, 1952). The film is based on the life story of Annette Kellerman and stars then relative newcomer Esther Williams.

As far as biopic trailers go, this is something of an oddity, focusing almost exclusively on grandiose choreographed swimming and diving routines rather than other aspects of Kellerman's life.

Nonetheless, the technicolour is sumptuous and the superimposing of moving footage adds an attractive dreamlike quality, almost mimicking the translucent nature of the water. What it does effectively advertise is that this is a big-budget film and cinema audiences can expect a visual treat.

The clip features examples of synchronised swimming, a sport which Kellerman pioneered. It is given the 'Busby Berkeley treatment'. Berkeley was the prominent Hollywood choreographer of his generation, creating large-scale dazzling dance spectacles in films like 42nd Street (1933), Footlight Parade (1933) and Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933).

Kellerman performed all of her stunts, unlike Williams who required two stunt doubles. Olympic diver Helen Crlenkovich likely performs the high dive from a trapeze that is seen in the trailer, while Edith Motridge was Williams' swimming double. Esther Williams injured herself while they were shooting a high-diving scene in the film, and spent six months in a body cast as a result.

Kellerman was not a fan of Million Dollar Mermaid, calling it a 'silly little yarn' and a 'namby-pamby attempt' at her life story. She said, 'It may not sound modest, but I did many more things in show business than my swimming act. I lectured in five languages in Europe. I sang, danced, and played the accordion.'

She was particularly disappointed that they left out a sequence where she danced the Diving Swan ballet with Arturo Toscanini, a highlight of her career. She was also an author and fitness entrepreneur.

The title of the film refers to Kellerman's nickname 'The Million Dollar Mermaid', which she gained after the financial success of Neptune's Daughter (Herbert Brenon, USA, 1914).

The UK title was The One-Piece Suit, honouring Kellerman's pivotal role in popularising the modern one-piece bathing suit. By 1911 the term ‘Annette Kellermann suit’ was American terminology for a one-piece swimsuit and she lent her name to a range of swimsuits from 1914 to the 1930s, incidentally becoming a prototype for movie stars marketing their own clothing lines.

Notes by Beth Taylor

‘After making examinations of ten thousand girls, Annette Kellerman is the closest to physical perfection of any’ declared Dr Dudley Sargent, director of the Harvard University Gymnasium in 1912.

This silent Warwick Bioscope Chronicle newsreel shows Kellerman in her famous one-piece swimming costume performing dives for an audience of men in suits and hats. Kellerman's strength and skill as a diver and performer is apparent in the footage.

Sargent's study was a response to concerns that women were becoming more masculine with their increasing levels of physical exercise. He concluded that while women's proportions had changed in the previous 20 years, it was, in fact, for the better. Sargent concluded that ‘the American woman of today is becoming more like the Greek ideal of the beautiful ... She substitutes harmonious curves and symmetry for exaggeration of the distinctly feminine characteristics.'

Kellerman, who was around 26 years old at the time, was compared to Venus de Milo – 'the most perfectly formed woman of ancient times' – by Sargent. ‘Miss Kellerman embodies all the physical attributes that most of us demand in the Perfect Woman.’

This claim to fame for Kellerman featured in advertisements for her vaudeville show and films for years to come.

Later in life, in her oral history, she said 'It's the most ghastly thing in the world when you're called the "perfect woman". Of course every other woman said, "I don’t see that she’s anything"'.

Notes by Beth Taylor

'Ghastly!' Kellerman recalls how she disliked the perfect woman label given to her in the early 1900s.

This excerpt from Kellerman's oral history was recorded in 1974, a year before her death. The interviewer is Joel Greenberg.

The cover image is a hand-tinted publicity image of Kellerman.

Notes by Beth Taylor

This studio portrait of Annette Kellerman, taken around 1907, shows her wearing a revolutionary one-piece swimming costume.

Peter Cox, curator of a 2016 exhibition about Kellerman for the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences in Sydney, says 'Defying convention, she was responsible more than any other person for the gradual acceptance of the one-piece bathing suit'.

Prior to this, women were expected to keep their legs covered with pantaloons and wear bulky garments in the water. Kellerman discovered the freedom of men's cotton swimsuits during her endurance swims across the English Channel and down the Seine, Thames and Danube Rivers.

It is said that the Prince of Wales (later King George V) was to attend one of Kellerman's aquatic vaudeville performances in England. She had intended to wear her usual men's cotton bathing suit with bare thighs for her underwater routine. When told this was unacceptable for a royal audience, she improvised and wore tightly gartered long black stockings sewn into her swimsuit, creating a new svelte, but still modest, one-piece look.

There is a popular myth that Kellerman was arrested at Boston's Revere Beach for wearing a one-piece bathing suit however this isn't supported by any evidence.

By 1911 the term 'Annette Kellerman suit' was understood in America to mean a style of swimsuit much like this one which was relatively form-fitting with a knee-length, one-piece tunic worn with tights or shorter leggings.

Ever the entrepreneur, she lent her name to a range of 'Annette Kellerman Sun-Kist' swimsuits from around 1914 to the late 1930s.

It is hard to imagine now, but there was a ban on daylight swimming on Sydney's beaches until 1902. Kellerman did much to popularise swimming and the aquatic arts for women, including writing a book called How to Swim in 1918.

She wrote: 'Water is 700 times as heavy as air, and to attempt to drag loose-flowing cloth garments of any sort through water is like having the Biblical millstone around one’s neck'.

Notes by Beth Taylor

A timeline of Annette Kellerman's life and legacy, from her birth in 1886 to her death in 1975, and beyond.

Born Annette Marie Sarah Kellermann on 6 July 1886 in Sydney, Kellerman (her stage name) was diagnosed with rickets as a young child. Rickets is caused by vitamin D deficiency, resulting in the softening and weakening of bones in children. Swimming became part of her treatment.

In this excerpt from the documentary The Original Mermaid (Michael Cordell, Australia, 2002), Tara Morice narrates Annette Kellerman's story.

In her book How to Swim (1918), Kellerman talks about catching 'mermaid fever' at the Farmers Baths in Farm Cove, Sydney under the tutelage of Percy Cavill and others.

Athlete and silent film star Snowy Baker encouraged her to dive from the high platform, which no other girl had attempted. By the age of 16 she held the world record for the women's 100-yard swim. 

In 1905 Kellerman and her father went to England where she took part in marathon swimming competitions across the English Channel as well as the Thames, Seine and Danube rivers. She called the race in France along the Seine in Paris, where she was the only woman in a race of 17 men, the 'thrillingest race I was ever in’. She came third and only four of them finished the race.

Kellerman was passionate about swimming as a great sport for women – for engendering strength and self-confidence.

She later wrote, 'My early physical misfortune has turned out to be the greatest blessing that could have come to me. Without it I should have missed the grim struggle upward and the reward that waited at the end of it all’.

Notes by Beth Taylor

After wowing Australia, England and Europe with her marathon swimming prowess, Annette Kellerman became famous for her vaudeville performances.

This excerpt from the documentary The Original Mermaid (Michael Cordell, Australia, 2002) uses a mixture of expert interviews, stylised re-creations, film and photographs from the time, and narration (by Tara Morice, playing Kellerman) to tell her life story. Much of Kellerman's narration is taken from papers and books that she wrote. 

In voice-over, historian Murray Phillips gives context to Kellerman's vaudeville act. Film historian Anthony Slide speaks over footage of her performing her unique underwater ballet.

Kellerman's most active vaudeville years were from 1905 to the 1930s. Her show evolved over time to include a mix of diving, swimming, ballet, tap-dancing, underwater ballet, physical culture, diabolo, wire walking, comedy, physical fitness and health lectures, and playing the violin and piano accordion.

She even incorporated a drag act into her show from 1918. Wearing a tailored suit, top hat and monocle she called her character 'the English Johnny'.



Performing for the Queen of England at the London Hippodrome was an early highlight of her career. In 1907 she moved to the USA and acted in silent films such as Neptune's Daughter (1914) and A Daughter of the Gods (1916).

Rather than diminishing her vaudeville career, Kellerman's silent film appearances boosted her theatre audiences. Her 'Big Show' season at New York's Hippodrome in 1917 was the peak of her career, running for 426 performances. Two hundred mermaids appeared in the show and the finale was a high dive over a waterfall.

Kellerman was known as the Queen of Modern Vaudeville and was one of the most highly-paid stars on the circuit, earning thousands of dollars per week.

Notes by Beth Taylor

'I want to help all women to become as perfect in every way, as healthy, as vigorous as beautiful and happy as Nature meant them to be.' - Annette Kellerman, The Body Beautiful (1909).

This is an extract from the documentary The Original Mermaid (Michael Cordell, Australia, 2002), featuring an interview with Kellerman biographer Barbara Firth.

An early health entrepreneur, Kellerman was passionate about the benefits of physical exercise – particularly swimming – and eating a healthy vegetarian diet.

Tara Morice's voice-over in the clip quotes Kellerman: 

'I was weak and deformed in childhood but I believed in nature's power to remedy unnatural physical conditions. If I am now, as they say, "the most perfectly developed woman in the world", I owe it to this fact. What I have done for myself I can also do for you.'

Kellerman wrote a number of publications for women including The Body Beautiful (1909), How To Swim (1918) and The Physical Beauty, How to Keep It (1918). Kellerman later claimed that 40,000 women had benefited from her mail-order health, fitness and beauty course, with an additional 500,000 women hearing her health lectures in five different languages as part of her vaudeville act.

Advertisements for her private tuition promised, 'Devote but 15 minutes daily to my system and you can weigh what Nature intended'. Kellerman encouraged women to engage in physical exercise, drive motor vehicles and free themselves from restrictive garments like corsets.

Notes by Beth Taylor

Annette Kellerman stars as Anitia in the silent film A Daughter of the Gods (Herbert Brenon, USA, 1916).

Regarded as big on spectacle but flimsy on plot by critics at the time, the million dollar film shot in Jamaica was popular with cinemagoers and cemented Kellerman's role as a silent film star.

While we cannot view the extravaganza for ourselves as the film is lost, publicity photos like this one hint at the extravagant costumes and sets. A scrapbook entitled Snaps from Screenland, compiled by actor Vera James in the 1920s from magazine and newspaper clippings, shows publicity stills from the film.

The three-hour epic had a US $1 million budget and reportedly featured 20,000 extras.

The fantasy plot incorporated a sultan, sheik, prince, harem and witch, as well as gnomes, mermaids and hungry crocodiles. Kellerman's Anitia dances before the sultan, escaping imprisonment in a tower by diving 30 metres into the sea. Kellerman performs the dive and all of her own stunts in the film, including being thrown into a pool with six large crocodiles.

In appraising the film, Australian stage magazine The Green Room called Kellerman ‘the greatest woman swimmer in the world, a graceful, creative genius’ whose work ‘in this new spectacular film will leave behind for all time a wonderful record of her daring attainments’.

Notes by Beth Taylor

A publicity portrait of silent movie star Annette Kellerman.

This clip is taken from the Fox Movietone newsreel Annette Kellerman Returns to Australia.

After living and working abroad since 1905, swimmer, vaudeville performer, silent movie star, author and entrepreneur Annette Kellerman arrives back in Australia to a warm welcome in 1933.

Kellerman knew how to market herself and make people sit up and take notice. A fine example of this is her reference to her next novel – which she laments may never be finished because 'nowadays a novel has to have so much sex appeal and I don't know a thing about that'. 

It's not clear who the people are standing behind her in this newsreel, but their shy smiles and reactions to her talk of nudity and sex appeal show how ahead of her time Kellerman was.

Notes by Beth Taylor

In this newsreel excerpt, Annette Kellerman is training her troupe of performers in Sydney for a 'musical marine fantasy' hospital benefit – complete with piano accordion accompaniment.

Almost 20 years after her last film, Venus of the South Seas (1924), Kellerman continues to perform as well as train others for charity shows like this one.

At the end of the newsreel story we see Kellerman dancing one of her unique underwater ballet pieces.

According to the biography written by her sister Marcelle Wooster, Kellerman trained herself to hold her breath underwater for three minutes and twenty seconds at a time.

Excerpt taken from the newsreel Cinesound Review No. 0430.

Notes by Beth Taylor

The silent film Neptune’s Daughter is an 'eight-reel spectacular pictorial triumph' made by Hollywood's Universal Studio. In it, Annette Kellerman plays a mermaid who swears vengeance on the fishermen who trapped and killed her little sister in their nets.

Transforming into a human, she seeks the King with the intention of killing him as his laws were responsible for the death. After being discovered, Annette makes her escape and is thrown back into the sea where she realises that she is in love with the King.

Kellerman was internationally famous for long-distance swimming and became a life-long advocate for women’s fitness. It was claimed she had the exact physical measurements of the Venus de Milo statue.

Neptune’s Daughter showcases Kellerman’s aquatic skills as well as her 'perfect' figure, which was shown, 'in the nude – beautifully, chastely in the nude', as Australian Theatre Magazine commented. 

Filming for Neptune’s Daughter took place in Bermuda with a cast of 200, all transported from the US. Both Kellerman and director Herbert Brenon were injured during production, unfortunate incidents which nevertheless made good publicity.

The two-and-a-half-hour film opened in Australia during March 1915 under the auspices of Canadian Ernest Shipman. This was his first venture into motion pictures. He was a well-known manager of world tours by high-profile singers but, in the wartime context, German contralto Madame Schumann Heink’s Australian appearances had been cancelled.

An odd wartime piece of doggerel in a publicity brochure compared Kellerman’s mythical mermaid to submarines, being used with deadly force at the time by the Germans. (The sinking of the liner Lusitania happened not long after the film’s Australian opening.)

Naming the Submarine

'A submarine can swim and dart

So fast', said Captain Carter,

'That if I named the craft' (he laughed),

'I’d call it Neptune’s Darter.'

'The submarine that swims and dives

Has such a knack of taking lives,

That by your nomenclature plan

I’d call it Annette Kill-a-man!'

Notes by Beth Taylor

Annette Kellerman was 70 years old when this silent home movie footage was filmed.

Her athleticism is very much in evidence - particularly as she strikes synchronised swimming poses in the ocean in the second half of the footage.

She lived in Queensland until her death in 1975.

Notes by Beth Taylor

A brief appearance from Kellerman in this government tourism documentary from the late 1930s shows her lasting cultural significance.

Reference is made by the narrator to her being likened to a 'mermaid' and her 'perfect form'.

Kellerman is included in this tourism documentary about the Great Barrier Reef because she moved to Queensland with her husband after her vaudeville and silent film career in the US wound down.

She lived in Surfers Paradise until her death at 89 years old in 1975. Her ashes were scattered over the Great Barrier Reef according to her wishes.

Viewed today, this brief clip could be considered offensive for using Aboriginal people as props and featuring animal cruelty. This film must be understood in its historical context.

Notes by Beth Taylor

This excerpt from a 200-page scrapbook made by New Zealand-born actor Vera James is made up of magazine and newspaper clippings. Each chapter profiles a prominent actor of the time.

Many of the stills of Kellerman come from promotion for the lost film A Daughter of the Gods (Herbert Brenon, USA, 1916), so it is a valuable chance to see the costumes, hordes of extras (she claims there was 20,000) and extravagant sets from the film.

Kellerman expert Peter Cox writes that the huge sets included 'an underwater mermaid village and a Moorish city that was burnt to the ground'. You can see the city on the bottom of page three in the scrapbook.

Shot in Jamaica, the million dollar film boasts the first nude scene by an actress (Kellerman later insisted she was wearing a ‘very thin pair of tights’). 

Billed as 'the perfectly formed woman', from early in her career, Kellerman's measurements were often compared with figures from the western art and cultural canon. Hence the reference to the painting The Birth of Venus (Sandro Botticelli, Italy, 1486) in one scene from the film, pictured on page three of the scrapbook.

Kellerman's splendid, detailed costumes were made from fabrics such as gold lamé, tulle and silk, decorated with sequins, diamantés, synthetic pearls and beads. Many of them are housed in the Museum of Applied Arts and Science's collection in Sydney.

In appraising the film, Australian stage magazine The Green Room called Kellerman ‘the greatest woman swimmer in the world, a graceful, creative genius’ whose work ‘in this new spectacular film will leave behind for all time a wonderful record of her daring attainments’.

Notes by Beth Taylor

A black-and-white advertisement for silent film A Daughter of the Gods (Herbert Brenon, USA, 1916). 

The three-hour epic featuring Annette Kellerman screened at the St George's Theatre in Yarraville. Though publicity stills and documents like this one have survived, the film is now considered lost.

The ad lists Kellerman's physical measurements, comparing them with (what must be the estimated measurements) of Cleopatra and Venus. Kellerman was lauded as 'the perfectly formed woman' in 1912 and this label followed her for the rest of her life.

Notes by Beth Taylor

Coming at the tail end of her silent film career, Venus of the South Seas (USA, 1924) was directed by Kellerman's husband and manager James (Jimmie) Sullivan. Kellerman's mother Alice Charbonnet-Kellermann wrote the script.

The film was primarily financed in the US but shot in New Zealand. This film is complete, unlike Neptune's Daughter (1914), which exists only in fragments, and A Daughter of the Gods (1916), which is lost altogether.

The simple plot is an excuse for Kellerman (as Shona and also the fairy princess and the mermaid) to display her considerable swimming, diving and underwater ballet talents. As well as displaying physical strength and prowess, Kellerman's character sails a boat single-handed in stormy conditions.

These qualities aside, Venus of the South Seas is a fairly lightweight and otherwise forgettable film. Viewed today, it suffers from an overly melodramatic story and some weak acting.

This watermarked copy of the complete 47 minute film comes from Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision in New Zealand.

Notes by Beth Taylor

Variety called Annette Kellerman 'The Diving Venus' in 1909. Kellerman had moved to America in 1907 to perform her vaudeville act.

This evocative publicity still comes from her time as a silent film star.

Kellerman had many nicknames, including: The Perfectly Formed Woman, Million Dollar Mermaid, The Australian Mermaid, Cooee Girl, Queen of the Mermaids, Neptune's Daughter and Queen of the Aquatic World.

Notes by Beth Taylor

Films starring Annette Kellerman almost always found a way to showcase her skills as a diver, swimmer and underwater ballet artist. This scene showing her diving appeared in the silent feature Neptune's Daughter (Herbert Brenon, USA, 1914).

Some reels of Neptune's Daughter have been lost but, to give an idea of the level of stunts she performed herself, Kellerman wrote, ‘In one scene I was thrown over a cliff with my hands and feet tied. I had to release myself under the water. The cliff was about 50 feet high but I had done so much high diving all my life it did not seem difficult’ -  Fairy Tales of the South Seas (1926).

The winning combination of action, drama and a hint of nudity, resulted in a big win at the box office for Neptune's Daughter. The film cost US$35,000 to produce but grossed over US$1 million, earning Kellerman the moniker 'Million Dollar Mermaid' (which became the name of the biopic starring Esther Williams as Kellerman, released in 1952).

Notes by Beth Taylor

A publicity still of Annette Kellerman from the lost film A Daughter of the Gods (Herbert Brenon, USA, 1916). Kellerman is credited with being the first woman to appear nude in a film.

When she spoke with Joel Greenberg in 1974 for her oral history she insisted she wore a ‘very thin pair of tights’.

As you can see in this photograph a long wig was also strategically placed for modesty.

Notes by Beth Taylor

A signed publicity still of Annette Kellerman.

Kellerman, who was a silent film star and vaudeville performer, had many nicknames including: The Perfectly Formed Woman, The Diving Venus, Million Dollar Mermaid, The Australian Mermaid, Cooee Girl, Queen of the Mermaids, Neptune's Daughter and Queen of the Aquatic World.

Notes by Beth Taylor

Kellerman’s childhood ballet training helped to hone her precision diving, and ballet was an important of her vaudeville act. When she lived in the US she took daily lessons from Luigi Albertieri, master of ballet at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York.

Her childhood ambitions to be a ballerina were fulfilled when she performed the Dying Swan solo at a benefit at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House in 1916. According to Kellerman expert Peter Cox she referred to it as the ‘supreme moment of my life’.

Kellerman's vaudeville act capitalised on her broad range of talents including: swimming, high diving, ballet, acrobatics, wire walking, acting, underwater ballet, singing, speaking multiple languages, diabolo, physical culture training, tap dancing, and playing the piano accordian and the violin. At one time she even included a drag act in her shows – dressing up as 'The English Johnny'.

The extraordinary athletic abilities Kellerman possessed are even more impressive given that she was diagnosed with rickets as a young child. Swimming was prescribed as part of her therapy for the condition.

Looking back on her life she wrote, 'My early physical misfortune has turned out to be the greatest blessing that could have come to me. Without it I should have missed the grim struggle upward and the reward that waited at the end of it all.'

Notes by Beth Taylor

A bi-fold pamphlet advertising Australian screenings of Neptune's Daughter (1914).

Billed as 'The Greatest Picture of the Century', the leaflet proclaims a $200,000 budget and boasts of 1,000 people featuring in the production.

The text reads in part, 'In this delightful romance of the sea, Miss Kellerman, aside from her marvellous aquatic feats, which she has many opportunities to display, proves that she is a powerful actress, a fascinating dancer, an expert swordswoman, and a mistress of a thousand arts'.

Notes by Beth Taylor

Scenes from Neptune's Daughter (Herbert Brenon, USA, 1914) give an idea of the more spectacular plot points.

Photographs included in this  bi-fold pamphlet show Annette (played by Annette Kellerman) vowing to avenge the death of her little sister mermaid, saving her lover the King and diving off a 60-foot (18-metre) cliff with her hands and feet bound.

Kellerman performed all of her own stunts in her films.

Notes by Beth Taylor

An advertisement for an Australian screening of A Daughter of the Gods (Herbert Brenon, USA, 1916). 

The three-hour epic featuring Annette Kellerman screened at the St George's Theatre in Yarraville, Melbourne.

Though publicity stills and documents like this one have survived, the film is now considered lost.

Notes by Beth Taylor

This short excerpt from Venus of the South Seas (James Sullivan, USA, 1924) shows Annette Kellerman performing underwater as both a mermaid and a princess.

Kellerman pioneered the art of underwater ballet in her vaudeville shows and in silent films like this one. Her athletic prowess and swimming skill are apparent in her ability to swim with both of her legs bound in a mermaid's tail costume.

For the shots where she is seated it would be easy to believe she wasn't underwater – except the bubbles coming out of her mouth give it away. Kellerman trained herself to remain underwater for an amazing 3 minutes and 20 seconds at a time.

Even from watching the complete film it's obvious that this subplot is included to showcase Kellerman's underwater abilities. It is obvious from the screen time given to them that her impressive underwater feats were a big drawcard for the audience.

The camerawork is basic and static – all the tricks in this sequence belong to Kellerman. The editing too is simple, with cuts between two of the three characters Kellerman plays in the film.

This watermarked excerpt comes from Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision in New Zealand.

Notes by Beth Taylor

Annette Kellerman's love of colour is obvious from her pink outfit in this beautifully executed promotional photograph. The vertical lines in the backdrop add to the drama of Kellerman's pose.

It's not known when, why or by whom this photograph was taken, however the look and colour profile of the photograph suggests Kellerman was older. Evident in the shot is the physical fitness and performing prowess that she maintained well into her 80s.

Kellerman's rigorous physical training led to success as a champion swimmer, vaudeville performer, silent film star, ballet and tap dancer, water ballerina and health and fitness entrepreneur.

She died in 1975 at the age of 89 in Southport Queensland.

Notes by Beth Taylor