Game, set and match!
How Billie Jean won the battle of the sexes
September 20, 1973, at the Houston Astrodome. On court 30,492 people had gathered — joined by 90 million tV viewers worldwide — to see the muchhyped battle Of the Sexes tennis match.
Amid a storm of publicity, billie Jean King would take on former U. S. Open and Wimbledon tennis champion — and avowed misogynist — bobby riggs.
She was transported on to the court like Cleopatra on a feathered throne carried by four muscular, bare-chested men dressed as ancient slaves. riggs arrived in a rickshaw pulled by scantily dressed female models. It was 1973 after all. She presented him with a real piglet as a symbol of his chauvinism. He gave her a giant Sugar Daddy lollipop.
Yet, she says, what she will always remember about the beginning of the match is how the commentator, Howard Cosell, focused on her appearance.
‘I was very clear about how important this match was and I wanted to win it desperately.
‘but if you remember that day, all that Howard Cosell did when I was coming out on to the court was talk about my looks. If I’d let my hair grow, if I’d get rid of the glasses, if I’d do this or that . . . he was talking about my appearance, and he never even talked about my accomplishments.’
She beat riggs in straight sets: 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. Now the game is being recreated in battle Of the Sexes, starring La La Land’s emma Stone (who won best Actress Oscar this year) as billie Jean and Steve Carell, star of Anchorman, as riggs.
At the time it was the mostwatched televised sports event ever. ‘the whole world was watching. It was the sporting world’s version of the moon landing,’ says Stone. Carell adds: ‘this was a big moment. tennis was popular, but that was crazy to play in a football stadium.’
THe match has since been regarded as a turning point for women’s sport and a triumph for women everywhere. the film focuses on off-court battles as well.
While billie Jean’s husband, Larry, was urging her to use the match to fight for equal pay, she was also trying to come to terms with her own sexuality.
At 29 she was one of the top female players in the world, the first female who could win more than $100,000 in a year, and had realised her sexual preference was for other women.
riggs was 55, had won Wimbledon as a 21-year old amateur, and the U.S. Open in 1939 and 1941. A compulsive gambler he was now risking his reputation in an attempt to relive his former glories. billie Jean, as a feminist symbol, was the perfect opponent.
However, describe billie Jean, now 73, as a champion of women’s rights, and she shoots back. ‘I’m not about women’s rights. I’m about equality for everyone. everyone labels me because I’m a girl and they think I just fight for women, but I fight for everybody. If they’re not getting a fair deal, I fight like crazy for them.’
In fact, as the movie shows, while billie Jean was determined to win, she never lost her sense of humour.
In the lead-up to the match it was clear riggs would say anything to rile her. Admitting taking 135 vitamin pills three times a day in preparation, he said women’s tennis was inferior to men’s and even at 55, he could beat any top female player.
‘Women belong in the bedroom and the kitchen in that order,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you why I’ll win. She’s a woman and they don’t have the emotional stability. they play about 25 per cent as good as men so they should get about 25 per cent of the money men get.’
billie Jean simply dismissed him as a ‘creep’. ‘I thought it would set us back 50 years if I didn’t win that match. It would affect all women’s self-esteem,’ she has said.
the young billie Jean moffitt, daughter of a firefighter and a housewife, was brought up in conservative Long beach, California. She told her parents she wanted to be a world No. 1 tennis player and recalls: ‘they were very supportive — and my father believed in me as much as my mother did, which I think made a huge difference.
‘men don’t realise what effect they have on their daughters, and my dad gave me courage.’
the problem, she says, was one all women tennis players faced then — finding a professional body to represent them.
In 1970, billie Jean, her friend rosie Casals and a group of others joined the flamboyant female sports promoter Gladys Heldman to create a women’s tennis circuit, which provoked horror among the male- dominated tennis establishment.
‘And don’t start saying we said we’re better than the guys, please,’ she snorts. ‘because we never said that, it’s the guys who said it, not us. We always said we wanted three things. Number one, for any girl in the world who was good enough to have a place to compete. Number two, that we should be — for the first time — appreciated for our accomplishments, not just our looks.
‘And number three, we wanted to make a living. We were making just $14 a day. When you spend a year playing tennis, you’re losing a year of training for something else, to be a lawyer, a doctor, whatever. We’d never made a living before this and we wanted to start doing so.’ So when bobby riggs, whose career had been cut short by World War II, challenged her to play him in a televised match with a prize of $100,000, it was game on. Carell describes him as ‘ a hustler, a promoter, a showman, apart from being a great tennis player’. billie Jean has said: ‘the reason I beat him is because I respected him so much. I had grown up hearing bobby riggs stories, I wanted to win that match desperately, and by the time I got onto that court, I had really zoned in.’
She also discovered a surprising level of affection for her opponent, with whom she remained friendly, even speaking to him the day before he died of cancer in 1988.
‘He was a male chauvinist, but he was upfront about it,’ she laughs. ‘but he was a very generous, kind human being.
‘He just loved to hustle and gamble every day of his life, and he loved attention — which we got from this match. I wish he could have been here for this movie because he loved the attention.’
but the triumph was for billie Jean and women everywhere.
She says: ‘I still have men who come up to me every day and say: “You changed my life. I was ten years old when I saw that match, and I had a whole new way of thinking after it.” So there was a definite shift.
‘And now those men have daughters as well as sons, and they have told me directly that they absolutely insist their daughters have equal opportunities with their sons. that’s big.’
Off the court, she was soon to face another challenge. In 1971 billie Jean — until then happily married to college sweetheart Larry — began a secret affair with her secretary marilyn barnett (played by Andrea riseborough).
the affair ran its course after seven years, with billie Jean ordering marilyn out of their malibu home. In 1981, barnett sued billie Jean for half of her income for the seven years they had been together — the first gay palimony suit on record.
‘ It was very painful,’ says billie Jean now. ‘ marilyn just wanted money, basically — it was blackmail.’
On may 1 1981, billie Jean, sitting in a Los Angeles press room with her husband and parents, admitted having affairs with other women.
She was the first prominent American athlete to openly admit to having a gay relationship.
She and Larry divorced in 1987, but remain friends. She and her current partner, South Africanborn ex-tennis pro Ilana Kloss are godparents to his two children from his second marriage.
When she was approached about the film four years ago by producers Danny boyle and Christian Colson, she was delighted.
‘they wanted my blessing and I could tell that they’d do a great job, so I said: “Go for it, I hope it’ll show how life was in ’73, and that today it might help somebody feel more comfortable in their own skin.’ ”
It’s been a long and sometimes surprising road for billie Jean King. but it is one that she has walked with guts. Battle Of The Sexes will be in cinemas from November 24.