Documentary ignores legacy of tennis great
Althea Gibson was all but forgotten in the decade before her death in 2003. That was partially her choosing as she retreated into depression and reclusion, but it was also because the world of professional tennis had turned its back on her.
Gibson, who in the 1950s was the first African American to play and win Wimbledon and the U.S. national championship, is the subject of an often informative new “American Masters” documentary, “Althea,” by producerdirector Rex Miller that serves as a reminder of why Gibson deserves to be remembered as both a pioneer and one of the greatest tennis players ever. The 90-minute film, airing on PBS on Friday, Sept. 4, includes valuable interviews with friends, fellow players and coaches, but inexcusably fails to address the lingering issues of racism in tennis today.
Gibson’s take-no-prisoners style of play reflected her attitude toward life and was acquired when she was a little girl whose father was perfectly happy if she wanted to be a tomboy. In fact, he treated her like the son he wished he’d had, and Althea responded well.
Her father had a small cotton farm in South Carolina but couldn’t make a go of it because the crop yield was too small to bring a profit. When
she was 3, he moved the family to Harlem and Althea grew up on the streets of New York, tough, street-wise and always up for a good time at a jazz club or social gathering.
“Althea came down a hard road,” her practice partner Bob Davis says. “She was aggressive. She was instinctively aggressive.”
Gibson’s aggressiveness distinguished her on the tennis courts from the more genteel ladies who played the game at various country clubs, most of which excluded African Americans and Jews from membership. But Gibson was becoming an attraction on the amateur circuit, so she was allowed to play the clubs, even if they’d never admit her as a member.
The ladies’ amateur tennis circuit was as much about social graces off the court as it was about tennis, and Gibson was smart enough to realize she had to learn those niceties in order to advance her career.
No matter how much she adapted, though, the world of tennis was still largely white. She and other black players were able to pursue their careers as members of the American Tennis Association, founded by men like physicians Hubert Eaton and Walter Johnson, considered the godfathers of black tennis.
The ATA was much more than a booking agency, though. Eaton and Johnson put their players through rigorous training and practice at a facility in Lynchburg, Va. One of the ground rules was that you didn’t question any calls because that habit would make it harder for black players to be accepted by the white tennis establishment.
That philosophy later became anathema to black power advocates, but at the time, at least it got players like Gibson and Arthur Ashe noticed on the court.
Gibson became the first African American to play Forest Hills in 1950. She was pitted against then-Wimbledon champ Louise Brough and was said by many to be on her way to victory when the game was called because of a sudden severe thunderstorm (which toppled one of the eagle statues overlooking the rim of the New York stadium). When the match resumed the next day, Gibson was off her game and narrowly lost.
But she came back to win the U.S. nationals seven years later and the next year as well, and then went on to conquer Wimbledon, where she received her winner’s cup from Queen Elizabeth.
Despite her victories, Gibson could barely make ends meet. As Billie Jean King explains, this was the era of “tennis bums,” amateurs who never made much money regardless of how many victories they racked up on the court.
Over the years, Gibson did all kinds of things to make a living, including touring with the Harlem Globetrotters, making a records (she was a good singer and sax player) and playing golf.
Eventually she turned pro, but toward the end of her life, she was living hand to mouth in near obscurity, and depressed to the point of considering suicide, according to her longtime friend and frequent doubles partner Angela Buxton.
Buxton and others arranged for a public appeal to the tennis world to help Gibson before it was too late. She received letters from all over the world at her apartment in South Orange, N.J. The money in the envelopes, in a variety of currencies, totaled more than a million dollars.
For all the informative observations of friends and associates in “Althea,” a full sense of this complex woman and athlete remains just out of reach. Some of that has to do with the rather workmanlike filmmaking structure, but mostly, we get the idea that Althea Gibson was a difficult woman to pin down, on or off the court.
She was lionized by some African Americans as the Jackie Robinson of tennis but criticized by others for failing to take a more active, upfront role in speaking out against discrimination, as Robinson had done.
One element of “Althea” that’s oddly absent is a discussion of African Americans in tennis today. Venus and Serena Williams are not in the film, but in the past they have acknowledged their debt to pioneers like Gibson and Ashe. Both sisters have endured incidents of racism in their careers. Just this summer, a freelancer for the New York Times wrote the following:
“Williams, who will be vying for the Wimbledon title against Garbiñe Muguruza on Saturday, has large biceps and a mold-breaking muscular frame, which packs the power and athleticism that have dominated women’s tennis for years. Her rivals could try to emulate her physique, but most of them choose not to.
“Despite Williams’s success — a victory Saturday would give her 21 Grand Slam singles titles and her fourth in a row — body-image issues among female tennis players persist, compelling many players to avoid bulking up.”
Readers reacted strongly, according to a follow-up piece by the paper’s public editor, Margaret Sullivan, in which Times editors talked about why body type should be germane for stories about both male and female athletes — just the way a writer would talk, say, about Peyton Manning’s size and strength.
But the reaction to the Times story tells us that there is at least a sensitivity when the discussion focuses on African American women and body type. The issue isn’t so much whether that’s appropriate or not but that difficult issues remain in the tennis world today.
As in so many other areas of our culture, barriers may have been broken, but that doesn’t mean we have truly achieved a post-racial society. Miller’s failure to fully explore Gibson’s legacy, what she did and what still remains to be done, keeps “Althea” from being a better film.