The Battle of the Sexes

November 22, 2017 | By Richard Thater
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I was one of the 90 million viewers who watched the televised match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs on Thursday, Sept. 20, 1973—the highly touted “Battle of the Sexes.”

I felt let down after watching the program. The hoopla surrounding the spectacle reminded me of the wrestling matches that were popular on television. As a young player aspiring to some level of social sophistication, I believed the presentation showed tennis in a poor light, almost as if it were a B-Level vaudeville act.

I imagined a poster headlining that “Male Chauvinist Pig Tackles Angry Libber.”

I am happy to report that watching the new movie “Battle of the Sexes,” forced me to rearrange my thoughts about Billie Jean King, Bobby Riggs and their 1973 event.

The movie is great entertainment, while also offering thoughtful insight into the players and American cultural values of the 1970s.

The film tastefully addresses Billie Jean King’s emerging sexuality, and the pain it caused her and her then husband Larry. It takes a hard look at Riggs’s gambling, and the personal losses he suffered as a result of that lifestyle.

I experienced a few queasy moments watching the movie. Riggs easily defeated Margaret Court in their much ballyhooed Mother’s Day Massacre match in 1973. When I saw her curtsey after being gifted with roses from Riggs, I blanched. I never saw even one curtsey on Downton Abbey. King writes that watching the curtsey she knew that “disaster had struck, and that the match was over before it even began.”

My stomach churned a second time watching Riggs disrupt a Gamblers Anonymous meeting, telling the members that their problem wasn’t gambling, but losing. He was appropriately hustled out before he could put forth his plan on how to improve the members’ lives.

And being reminded of the men’s clothing we wore back then required a double Tums treatment. The collars on shirts we wore hung nearly as low as a Trump tie.

Probably the best re-creation of the times is how the movie portrayed the actual match. Emma Stone and Steve Carell are reported to have worked long and hard to look and move like their real life models. I think it would be hard to spot the difference if newsreels from the 1970s were shown next to the movie’s version of the match on a 12 -inch black and white TV set.

In her book Pressure is a Privilege, Billie Jean King writes that she “never thought that women were better than men, but that men and women had the same entertainment value, which is why they should be paid equally.”

King has always maintained before and after the match against Riggs, that for her, it was a one-and-done. By winning, she proved everything she needed to prove.

I have heard another side to this story. In the late 1970s, I was at a charity event and had a chance to spend some time with a top five player who was a longtime friend of Riggs. His story was that Riggs claimed he was tricked by King’s entourage, that his understanding was that he had agreed to play three matches against Billie Jean. He would lose the first, win the second, and then play the third match for real. Contemporaries of Riggs say he never cheated on a tennis court, but that his off-the-court ethics could be shifty. I’m thinking we should suspect that some alternative facts are in play here.

When you watch the film, try to stay until the credits finish flashing at the movie’s end. Don’t miss the touching coda that tells us that Billie’s husband remarried and has two children, and that Billie Jean and her partner, Ilana Kloss, are the godparents.

In closing, we learn that Billie Jean King and Bobby remained friends. On the night before Riggs’s death from prostate cancer in 1995, they spoke by phone and shared that they loved each other.


Richard Thater

Richard Thater is a long-time teacher and player on New York City courts. He is PTR-certified in both Junior and Adult Development, and has played in senior tournaments in the Greater New York area. Richard currently teaches at the West Side Tennis Club. He may be reached by phone at (917) 749-3255 or e-mail RichThater@aol.com.

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