Object of the week: promotional still for the lost silent romcom Swim Girl, Swim

With its emphasis on stunts and physical humour, silent comedy required an unprecedented level of fitness and sporting prowess. In the same moment, there was a decisive change in the way in which the body was thought about, described and represented: particularly how the body could be made healthier, or at least could be made to appear healthier.

Women’s bodies on screen became a site of intense preoccupation. Swim Girl, Swim (1927), starring Bebe Daniels and champion swimmer Gertrude Ederle, was one such vehicle. Health was idealised and the physical abilities of the body were put on show. Actors sought to direct the discussion around their bodies by engaging with the media on topics of health, beauty and fitness – a conversation that continues to this day.

A child star who made the transition through to romantic and musical comedies via the stunt-packed films of Harold Lloyd, Bebe Daniels presented herself as a modern woman who swam with athletes and flew her own planes. She entered into a lifelong debate on health, diet and beauty, including editing a cookery book of salad recipes by the stars. In interviews, she sometimes gave advice that contradicted her progressive on-screen characters.

In the year prior to the release of Swim Girl, Swim, Ederle – shown here in a bathing suit teaching the protagonist Alice Smith (Daniels) how to swim – became the first woman to swim across the English Channel. (This feat, and Ederle’s early swimming career, was recently depicted in the film Young Woman and the Sea, starring Daisy Ridley). In the summer of 1926, she was arguably the most famous female athlete in the world and, riding high, Ederle agreed to appear in Swim Girl, Swim – a significant coup for the film’s distributor, Paramount.

However, despite Ederle’s notoriety, the film was not a commercial success and today it is considered a lost film. Promotional stills like this one are, therefore, an invaluable record of how it looked – and also for understanding onscreen swimwear fashions in the 1920s. The collections of the BFI National Archive also hold contemporary reviews, music cue sheets and a pressbook for the film, all of which provide tantalising clues of how this elusive title was presented and received by audiences.

Produced with the support of the BFI Screen Heritage Fund, awarding National Lottery funding.

This image, along with other items from the BFI National Archive collections, is currently on display at Splash! A Century of Swimming and Style at the Design Museum, London (28 March to 17 August 2025).