Last Sunday, CBS' Omnibus dropped in on Esther Williams, at the Yale pool, he less. They had extra special lights for the TV cameras because the pool hasn't any windows. No Yalies were in the seats. Omnibus couldn't have them hooting and hollering at Esther Williams in a medium-low cut spangled bathing suit.

Actually, Esther Williams started out wearing old-fashioned bathing suits, one on top of the other. Then she began to peel. She displayed everything from the first bathing costume ever created, which looked like a snow suit, down to a bikini. She didn't wear the bikini. She palmed it.

Then she read from some books. She read directions one how to swim, like "Don't inhale under water," quoted from the Bible, and read from "Horatio at the Bridge," explaining how Horatio swam the Tiber clothed all in armor. Meanwhile, Captain John Phair of the Yale swimming team swam the entire length of the 25-yard pool clothed all in armor--on loan, I guess, from some museum. He wore K-rations strapped around him to make up, they said, for the lack of Tiber current in the Payne Whitney pool.

Next, Miss Williams told about directions on how to cut your toe nails in the water and how to do the goat caper.

To demonstrate how swimming strokes developed, Miss Williams handed the book to Yale's coach, pudgy Bob Kiphuth. "All right, out, you landlubbers," he said to his team, which has won so many meets--over 500--that nobody else is counting. The whole team came out. It's about three times the size of Harvard's team, swimming or football.

Meanwhile, some girls from the Walter Reed Swim Club kept beating the Yalies, but that was because the girls were demonstrating the improvements on the old strokes the Yalies were swimming.

Finally, Yale had its day. There's a new event in swimming this year. Instead of the three-stroke medley relay, they have a four-stroke one, with both the butterfly and breast strokes. So Yale set the record in it. It wasn't a fluke. Yale is good. But the event is so new that almost any team could swim it and set a record. Even before Esther Williams got the times from the judges, she said. "The old record was ..." The whole Yale team applauded. But Miss Williams misread the times.

Then Esther hitched up her suit straps and beat three Yalies in synchonized swimming (at which she is excellent).