Billie Jean King

Director James Erskine's PBS-aired American Masters documentary presents Billie Jean King as both sports hero and feminist icon. Billie's brother, Randy Moffitt, starts off by remembering their working-class childhood with an athletic father who passed his love of sports on to Billie, a tennis player even in grade school. Because a country club was beyond the family's financial means, Billie worked to earn the money for her first racket and took free lessons at the public park. She soon came to view tennis as “an elite sport” dominated by white players, and vowed to change that (by later encouraging Venus and Serena Williams, she would keep her promise). In the 1960s, she won her first Wimbledon and attracted a following that included future Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Although King's husband, Larry, supported her efforts, she took criticism for her assertive attitude. “I take no prisoners,” she explains, “but it's terribly lonely sometimes.” She also played for free until the sport turned professional, but men garnered most of the prize money, so King banded together with other women to launch their own tournament. This venture brought her into contact with former champion Bobby Riggs, who set out to prove that a woman could never beat a man; Riggs would overpower Margaret Court, but find more than his match in King during the famed “Battle of the Sexes,” a contest that Chris Evert says, “transcended tennis.” The next several years would prove more difficult after a former assistant outed King as gay, necessitating disclosures about her private life that she felt ill-prepared to make, but she rose to the challenge, ultimately becoming a gay rights advocate. A solid biographical profile, this is recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (K. Fennessy)