Nonfiction

Weeki Wachee, City of Mermaids: A History of One of Florida’s Oldest Roadside Attractions by Lu Vickers and Sara Dionne

(University Press of Florida, Hardcover, 294 pp.,$34.95)

Reviewed by Lynne Barrett

Take a deep breath. Hold it.

Plunge into the waters of Weeki Wachee Springs and in their strange clarity see the ghosts of mastodons and movie stars, conquistadors and stuntmen, and, above all, girls, Florida girls transmogrified into that strange creature—athlete and ballerina, ethereal and practical, woman and fish—the mermaid.

Gasping? Okay, you can breathe again. Though Newt Perry, Florida’s Human Fish, could hold his breath for 5 minutes, his barrel chest so strong, his vitality so great they thought he was immortal. In the Twenties and Thirties, Perry led the way to making Florida’s ancient springs a place of fun on film. For Grantland Rice newsreels he went from chasing turtles with Johnny Weissmuller to staging ever more elaborate scenes remarkable simply for happening underwater, in water clear enough to film through. The tricks of eating bananas and drinking soda underwater led to the underwater track meet, underwater magic carpet ride, underwater “Silver Fizz Night Club” with bar and four piece band (Newt Perry, bartending). And he instigated the technological innovations to stage and film them. This period was full of the spirit of “let’s put on a show,” invention and improvisation, using the wildlife, the water, the local people who learned how to entertain by simple illusion. How do you smoke underwater? “To imitate a smoker, a boy would take a slug of milk and pretend to puff on a piece of chalk.” How do you appear to pour coffee underwater? Read the book.

In Weeki Wachee, City of Mermaids, novelist Lu Vickers and documentary filmmaker Sara Dionne have put together a wonderful work of cultural and natural history, a tale of myth and kitsch, the ur-Florida story of a rise which causes its own fall, and perhaps a rise again.

Having worked at Silver Springs on a series of Tarzan movies, Perry was recruited to Wakulla Springs, where he had the swim team from Florida State College for Women and his own Wakulla Aquamaids doing synchronized swim. He figured out how to use airlocks –breathing stations—and air hoses to do underwater shows. He held a Miss Underwater of Florida contest (a pageant ten feet below the surface) in 1947 and then moved on to be aquatic director at Weeki Wachee, on US 19 north of Tarpon Springs, where he debuted his Aqua Belles. Soon Ann Blyth was there filming “Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid.” The movie let Perry recruit new swimmers, to be proclaimed for the first time as mermaids. A notice in the St. Petersburg Independent said, “Main requirements Perry states are beauty and long hair that will flow with the current...It won’t be necessary for the girls even to know how to swim, as long as they can hold their breath underwater.” But those who came and learned from the Human Fish needed, it soon becomes apparent, to be gutsy, as they learned to breathe pressurized air from hoses and dive deep and surface properly, to study ballet and avoid hypothermia, and perform ever greater feats of what might be called survival with allure.

And allure they did. The book documents the rise of Weeki Wachee the tourist attraction, as the underwater theater is constructed and shows expand, bringing gift shop, motel, restaurant, and a parade of celebrities from Esther Williams to Elvis. ABC bought Weeki Wachee in 1959 and built a million dollar theater with sound system and clamshell roof, paid for choreography and costumes, and the performances became full productions. Arthur Godfrey came to do a live television special “Gurgle Along with Godfrey.” Weeki Wachee became its own tiny town in 1966 because ABC wanted it to show up on the map, just one bit of the relentless publicity trying to draw tourists to West Florida.

And then the map changed. Disney began construction in spring 1969 at a crossroads of major highways in Central Florida. Attempting to compete, Weeki Wachee put in an exotic bird show and naturalist exhibits. But Disney inexorably drew tourists away. Development near Weeki Wachee started in the late 60’s too, and fertilizer entered the aquifer that feeds the spring, bringing algae. Cloudy water in 1976 made it impossible to do the full show for 9 months, so the mermaids performed close to the glass (“London Fog Mystery With Sherlock Holmes”) and an amphitheater was put in for a high dive show. In 1979 a water park was added. In 1983 at a mermaid reunion, Newt Perry, the old king, paralyzed by a stroke, came and sat in a wheelchair surrounded by his mermaids and mermen. The following year, ABC sold the park to a management group which sold it to another in 1989, and their various attempts to save money took Weeki Wachee further from its history, as property deteriorated, props were destroyed, historic photographs cast aside (some rescued by mermaids) and long-term employees fired with accompanying loss of know-how. Weeki Wachee became best known as kitsch, a remnant of the goofy past.

But ruin has a depth and meaning of its own. Writers and filmmakers keep going back to Weeki Wachee to elucidate its significance and use its beauty. In 1997, instigated by the inquiries of an NPR reporter, some of the earliest mermaids got together and from their stories a 50^th anniversary show was born, with the first production by former mermaids. And the old magic—and crowds—came with them:

The mermaids paid tribute to shows of the past; they walked a tight-rope, played underwater golf, performed balletic moves taught to the original mermaids by Newt Perry: the foot-first dolphin, the flowing knee-back dolphin, the Ferris wheel. They did the “human elevator”: arced their bodies, pointed their arms out like movie stars, then drifted slow upward through the blue water, still as statues. Then they blew out streams of perfect silver bubbles and descended. They guzzled soda and ate bananas, then tossed the yellow peels to the turtles. One mermaid lifted Bonnie arched high above her head, and both ascended, performing Weeki Wachee’s trademark adagio, the pose that is immortalized in the statue in front of the park.

The reader knows what the adagio looks like, because the book is loaded with pictures, staff photos, postcards, billboards, wonderful publicity shots and cheesy brochures. I own one of the pamphlets myself, with Bob Hope saying, “The live Mermaids are the greatest at Weeki Wachee.”

But what’s different here is that the mermaids (and mermen, who modestly admit they come second) are identified, named where before they were nameless, and so the continuity of their story becomes visible. Mary Darlington Fletcher on page 4 is an adorable teenage girl feeding the fish underwater in 1948. Mary Darlington Fletcher on page 238, 67 years old in a white gown with sparkling white mermaid tail, is a dignified mermaid queen, inspiring a new dream. The nameless become the ones truly celebrated in this book for their grace, discipline, art, and an endurance far beyond holding ones breath, because they have come back to save the place.

Weeki Wachee is not saved yet. At this point the Southwest Florida Water Management District owns the spring and surrounding acreage, and the park is leased back to the tiny city of Weeki Wachee, its few residents veterans who care about the place. Whether fundraising needed to make necessary repairs will succeed is a question. The authors leave us with the 60’s theater being restored and mermaid reunion shows a draw, the old skills revived and passed along. But the mermaids have redeemed it in another sense: they saved the photos, the stories, the memories, that go into this book.

Lu Vickers, Sara Dionne, and The University of Florida Press’s Florida History and Culture Series bring us a book that’s beautiful to flip through, engrossing to read, entertaining, serious history about a place that hasn’t always been serious about itself.

Lynne Barrett is author of The Secret Names of Women and editor of The Florida Book Review.

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