Battle of the Sexes tells the story of King’s game against Riggs, and the surrounding sporting, political and sociological context. Made by English film makers James Erskine and Zara Hayes, the film punctuates historical footage of the match with interviews with King, Riggs’ son Larry (Riggs died in 1996) and King’s contemporaries on the court including Rosie Casals, Chris Evert and Margaret Court.
It wasn’t a love of or fascination with tennis that compelled Erskine and Hayes to research and document on film the match and its surrounding sociological context – neither of the film makers was born when the match took place, and Hayes confesses that she wasn’t even sure how the scoring system operated in tennis before she embarked on the project. “We wanted to make a film about sport, and women’s sport especially,” Erskine explains. “We had this vague idea of the Battle of the Sexes game, and that while some people thought of it as comic, it had seismic consequences – it was a really major event in the history of women’s sport.”
Critical to the film is the era’s context: women’s tennis was gratuitously under-rewarded, with top players including King, Court and Virginia Wade taking home a sliver of the prize money offered to male contemporaries. In 1970, a small group of female players – the so-called ‘Group of Nine’, which included King, and Australians Judy Dalton and Kerry Melville (later Kerry Reid) – had broken away from the male-dominated International Tennis Federation to form the Virginia Slims Circuit. Despite strong opposition from the tennis establishment, this renegade tour would become the basis for the Women’s Tennis Association in 1973 and eventual – albeit slow – move toward parity in prize money and promotion for women’s tennis.
Billie Jean King was originally approached by Riggs to take part in a ‘battle of the sexes’ game in early 1973; King, perhaps surprisingly given her outspoken views on women’s tennis, demurred. Margaret Court, at that time the world’s leading female tennis player – but with political and social views in sharp contrast to King – accepted Riggs’ challenge, only to lose convincingly. “Billie Jean only played the match because she realised she had to after Margaret lost,” Erskine says. Hayes notes that Court’s defeat raised the stakes – politically, if not necessarily financially – for King’s involvement. “Before Margaret lost to Bobby Riggs, Billie Jean didn’t see what there was to gain from playing him, but after Margaret lost, she knew the reputation of women’s tennis was on the line,” Hayes says.
Despite the pressure on her to rehabilitate the reputation of women’s tennis, King seemed remarkably calm. Erskine puts this down to King’s legendary determination to win. “I don’t think Billie Jean was nervous about losing,” he says. “On a sporting level, she was determined to win. But I’m sure she was nervous that something might go wrong.”
Riggs was a colourful character, with a reputation for gambling and provocative public statements. While he portrayed himself as unreconstructed male chauvinist, Erskine agrees that Riggs was more interested in making money the match than putting women’s tennis back in its place. Erskine and Hayes looked into recent allegations that Riggs had deliberately thrown the match as a means of paying off mob debts, but found no substance to the claims. “We spoke to a lot of people about that, and no-one believes the story, especially Riggs’ coach, though for some people it’s an easy story to believe.”
In making the film, Erskine and Hayes were delighted to track down lost footage of Court’s original encounter with Riggs (the so-called ‘Mother’s Day Massacre’), which was eventually discovered in a vault in New York. Hayes was also perversely amused to watch footage of the King-Riggs match, with its illustrative commentary on the social attitudes of the day. “What was surprising was the level of casual sexism that was just accepted,” Hayes says. “It was really shocking – even on the night of the game, you had the commentators saying that if Billie Jean could just cut her hair and get rid of her glasses, she’d actually be quite attractive!”
Billie Jean King remains an iconic figure in the world of women’s sport, and a champion of gay and lesbian rights – late last year, King was included in the official US delegation to the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia as a public slight to the Russian Government’s recent ‘anti-gay’ legislative activities – and her legacy is both understood and appreciated in the contemporary women’s tennis scene. King, for her part, has claimed that she has always been a reluctant political figure; Erskine and Hayes aren’t so sure. “Billie Jean will say that she’s reluctant, but she’s a natural – she really wears her heart on her sleeve,” Erskine says. “I honestly believe that she hadn’t been a sports player, then in whatever industry she’d been involved in, she’d have transcended it to make a difference,” Hayes says.
BY PATRICK EMERY
