Queen of the Court ― The Extraordinary Life of Tennis Legend Alice Marble

In August 1939, Alice Marble graced the cover of Life magazine, photographed by the legendary Alfred Eisenstaedt. She was a worldwide celebrity, having that year won singles, women’s doubles, and mixed doubles titles at both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, an unprecedented feat, then and now. Today, one of America’s greatest female athletes and most charismatic characters is largely forgotten. Alice Marble, by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Madeleine Blais, places her back on center stage.

Born in 1913, Marble grew up in San Francisco; her favorite sport, baseball. Given a tennis racket at age 13, she took to the sport immediately, rising to the top with a powerful, aggressive serve-and-volley style unseen in women’s tennis. A champion at the height of her fame in the late 1930s, she also designed a clothing line in the off-season and sang love songs in the Sert Room of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York to rave reviews. World War II derailed her tennis career, but her life off the court was, if anything, even more eventful and impactful. Though shielded in mystery, she was likely recruited as a spy during the war to help recover stolen art. Ever glamorous and connected, she had a part in the 1952 Tracy and Hepburn movie Pat and Mike and played tennis with the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Marlene Dietrich, Clark Gable, and Carole Lombard. However, perhaps her greatest legacy lies in her successful efforts, working largely alone, to persuade the all-white U.S. Lawn Tennis Association to change its policy and allow African-American star Althea Gibson to compete for the U.S. championship, thereby breaking tennis’s color barrier.

In sparkling prose, the author of the bestselling In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle recaptures a glittering life story.

Madeleine Blais was a reporter for the Miami Herald for years and won a Pulitzer Prize before joining the faculty of the School of Journalism at the University of Massachusetts. She is the author of To the New Owners, In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle, Uphill Walkers, and The Heart Is an Instrument, a collection of her journalism. She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.