Without Liquid Assets

Four years ago, Don Pruess, onetime underwear salesman, made an unannounced business call at the home of Cinemermaid Esther Williams near Santa Monica. His proposition: a partnership to mass-produce swimming pools at prices the average homeowner could afford. Esther Williams would give her name to the pools, promote them, serve as titular president of the company, and get 5% of the gross. Pruess would run the company, provide the initial $50,000 capital and own the stock. Before the afternoon was over, the International Swimming Pool Corp. was launched.

On the sales charts, things went swimmingly. Thanks largely to Esther Williams' name and luscious presence (she traveled 200,000 miles promoting the pools last year), sales climbed from $500,000 through 50 distributors in 1956 to more than $9,000,000 with 762 distributors in 1959. But last December, International voluntarily filed an insolvency statement with a U.S. district court in New York, obtained permission to stay in business while it negotiated with its creditors. The obvious question: Why had profits failed to keep pace with soaring sales? Other swimming-pool makers thought it was largely due to poor management.

Last week Chairman Pruess offered another explanation: "The fantastic cost of exploiting and promoting the Esther Williams name and likeness." After estimating that the company had paid its glamorous president $607,000 in the past three years, Pruess announced that International's relationship with Miss Williams "no longer exists." Retorted Actress Williams from Hollywood, after pointing out that she had in fact taken less than the 5% a year due her to help out the company: "If a man can't provide a 5% payment on a $10 million gross to the person who is the whole reason of the business, I don't think that man should be in charge any more. I'm not accusing him, but I am wondering where the rest of the money went." Her hope is that International's distributors will hold on until September.

By then she hopes to have set up her own "sound, well-capitalized company," or, one way or the other, to market Esther Williams swimming pools.

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