Swimming and Swimming Pool Collection

The defining moment of human history was when ancient man stood upright and strode across the open plain, claiming dominion over the planet. However, three-quarters of the planet are covered with water, and with notable Biblical exceptions, you just cannot walk across the water!

Human beings are designed for land operations, but there are certainly times when being able to swim comes in handy. Most people who are good swimmers learned how while they were kids, in fact, babies are born with what is called an innate swimming reflex. If their face is exposed to water, they automatically hold their breath and even use their arms and legs in a swimming motion. The swimming instinct seems to disappear after kids learn to walk, but there were plenty of G.I. volunteers when Esther Williams offered swimming lessons during her appearance on Command Performance. Lucille Ball did not have it as easy on My Favorite Husband when she learned to swim in her living room.

Swimming is touted as an ideal form of exercise. It challenges the cardiovascular system as well as the musculature, builds endurance and overall athletic performance, and can be done just about anywhere there is water. Bob and Ray celebrated Mary McGoon's efforts in 1949 to swim across the cold waters of Boston Harbor. Fibber McGee displays his marvelous physique when he and Molly take a trip to the ocean in 1935, and in 1957 he makes plans to swim across Lake Michigan as a publicity stunt. W.C. Fields tells us about swimming to Catalina Island on Your Hit Parade, and Vox Pop visits the Aquacade at the 1940 New York World's Fair to discover how deep a person can swim underwater.

Venturing into deep water is an inherently dangerous activity for creatures who are not adapted to an aquatic life, and swimming can be used as a means of murder. The Whistler has a chilling tale of young lovers who meet while swimming off Cape Ann and hatch a watery demise for her husband. Crime Club finds a vacationer drowned on the beach but there are signs of foul play, and the cops on Broadway is My Beat have to discover how a strong swimmer could have drowned in a public swimming pool. The Green Lama faces the mystery of how a pretty girl in a swimming pool is killed by a baby dinosaur, our favorite insurance investigator takes a cold swim and finds an even colder corpse on Yours Truly Johnny Dollar, and Paladin defends a school teacher whose pupil drowns during swimming lessons on Have Gun Will Travel.

Despite the dangers, being able to swim often gives the Hero an opportunity to escape the nefarious plans of the bad guy. On the syndicated serial Magic Island, the Gregory's and Jerry are able to get away from the island because the evil Euclideans cannot swim. Jungle Jim takes to the water to get away from Kolu. The Eternal Light shares a story of refugees heading for Palestine swimming for their lives after their ship is torpedoed by a Nazi sub, and Hop, Tand, and Chris swim back to the airfield where their plane awaits after their escape from "La Pantera".

Although most of the planet is covered in water, most of us learn to swim in a man-made swimming pool. Ideally, the purpose of a swimming pool is to provide a safe and clean facility designed for people to swim for sport or exercise, but the real purpose of many swimming pools is to advertise to the world that the property owner is wealthy enough to have a swimming pool. On The Chase and Sanborn Hour, W.C. Fields brags that he has installed a fur-lined swimming pool (which seems like something which would have given the censors a fit). Perhaps the height of luxury comes when Phil Harris drives a Cadillac into the pool on The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show. The gang on It Pays to Be Ignorant have a tough time telling us just what a swimming pool is.

Building a pool is no small excavation, as Fred Allen discovers on Town Hall Tonight when "The Mighty Allen Art Players" present "The Great Swimming Pool Mystery" or "He Didn't Know His Own Backyard from a Hole in the Ground". Maintaining a swimming pool requires a good deal of effort as well, as Jack Benny discovers when he opens his pool for the season. Safety is a major concern for public pools, which makes Alan's intentions to apply as a lifeguard at the Van Nuys Pool worrisome on The Alan Young Show.

A swimming pool provides an opportunity to show off a fashionable swimming suit, which becomes a problem for the Baxter's on The Little Things in Life when they discover that their hosts are dedicated skinny dippers. Skinny dipping gets to be a problem on a few occasions for Wild Bill Hickok and his pal Jingles when they decide to take a dip and the bad guys get the drop on them by stealing their clothes. On the Suspense episode, "Murder Takes a Swim" a treasure hunt leaves a bathing beauty dead along with a gossip columnist.

See also: Esther Williams Collection, Mermaid Collection, and Summer Themed Radio Shows.