From the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Madeleine Blais, the dramatic and colorful story of legendary tennis star and international celebrity, Alice Marble
In August 1939, Alice Marble graced the cover of Life magazine, photographed by the famed Alfred Eisenstaedt. She was a glamorous worldwide celebrity, having that year won singles, women's doubles, and mixed doubles tennis titles at both Wimbledon and the US Open, then an unprecedented feat. Yet today one of America's greatest female athletes and most charismatic characters is largely forgotten. Queen of the Court 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 as a performer in the Sert Room of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York to rave reviews. World War II derailed her amateur tennis career, but her life off the court was, if anything, even more eventful. She wrote a series of short books about famous women. She turned professional and joined a pro tour during the War, entertaining and inspiring soldiers and civilians alike. Ever glamorous and connected, she had a part in the 1952 Tracy and Hepburn movie Pat and Mike, and she played tennis with the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Marlene Dietrich, and her great friends, Clark Gable and Carole Lombard. However, perhaps her greatest legacy lies in her successful efforts, working largely alone, to persuade the all-white US Lawn Tennis Association to change its policy and allow African American star Althea Gibson to compete for the US championship in 1950, thereby breaking tennis's color barrier.
In two memoirs, Marble also showed herself to be an at-times unreliable narrator of her own life, which Madeleine Blais navigates skillfully, especially Marble's dramatic claims of having been a spy during World War II. In Queen of the Court, the author of the bestselling In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle recaptures a glittering life story.
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Praise for Queen of the Court
"This deeply researched biography offers an illuminating look at a major star of her era-but it also portrays a woman whose later life was marked increasingly by loneliness, economic hardship, and perhaps some self-delusion . . . Full of indelible scenes of just how lively and unconventional a person [Marble] could be."-Daily Hampshire Gazette
"An enthralling biography of pioneering tennis player Alice Marble . . . Blais's handling of Marble's spurious claim to have served as a spy during WWII showcases the author's dogged research and empathetic analysis, pointing out travel records that contradict Marble's story and suggesting that it may have stemmed from the former champion's yearning to hold the public's attention as her star power declined. This will likely stand as the definitive account of Marble's life."-Publishers Weekly (starred and boxed review)
"Extensively researched and beautifully written . . . The author's journalistic strength shines throughout, especially navigating conflicting and inconsistent aspects of Marble's life detailed in her memoirs (was she a WWII spy? married?). The appendix includes Marble's most lasting and radical legacy: her courageous 1950 editorial in American Lawn Tennis advocating for Gibson to play in the U.S. National Championships, which helped to break the sport's color barrier. Essential addition to tennis and sports history collections."-Booklist (starred review)
"Illuminates the icon's life in this biography that details not only her rise in the sport of tennis but also her work as a writer, fashion maven, and civil rights activist . . . This book reminds readers that this sometimes forgotten figure earned her place in the chronicled events of tennis as well as in the annals of women's history overall. An informative and intriguing story of the life of a formidable woman. An essential read for anyone who loves learning about the women whom history threatens to forget or erase."-Library Journal
"An adept biographer chronicles the life of a resilient Renaissance woman and tennis champion who should not be forgotten . . . The high level of detailed research and compelling writing show why tennis player Hazel Wightman described Marble as 'the first girl who became sensational.' An engagingly thorough biography of a dazzling woman."-Kirkus Reviews
"Madeleine Blais, one of my favorite all-time writers, has brought Alice Marble back to life in all of her splendid contradictions, breaking through the mythology to restore the too-often overlooked tennis great to her rightful place in the history of women in sports."-David Maraniss, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Path Lit By Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe
"Alice Marble took up tennis on public park courts in California and became an international champion, known in her time as 'the girl who has everything,' and 'the first woman who plays tennis like a man.' Hers was a charm school-era life of sporting success, stardust celebrity, public conscience, private discontent, and lonely prevarication. The great victory of Madeleine Blais's careful, moving biography is her sensitive understanding of a formidable competitor whose greatest rival was herself."-Nicholas Dawidoff author of The Catcher Was A Spy and The Other Side of Prospect
"Alice Marble was a dazzling beauty who played like a man, a clothing designer who won Wimbledon in shorts, a writer, singer, and Hollywood hobnobber, an activist whose words broke the color barrier in tennis. Her personal life was full of mystery and myth . . . and she wanted it that way. This extraordinarily researched book chases down every strand of Marble's tangled life. Alice would have loved it, resented it, disputed it, refuted it . . . and that only makes her more fascinating."-Mary Carillo, sportscaster/commentator on NBC Sports and HBO Sports
"As the nation's current-day fascination with women's sports builds by the year, best-selling author Madeleine Blais takes us back to another place and time, to the thrilling and wonderfully entertaining life of 1930s tennis legend Alice Marble. Never heard of her? Blais takes care of that, bringing this enchanting icon of the twentieth century to life in riveting and rich detail in her meticulously researched new book, Queen of the Court."-Christine Brennan, USA Today columnist; CNN, ABC News and PBS NewsHour commentator; author of the best-selling Inside Edge
Praise for To the New Owners:
"[An] evocative memoir . . . Blais comes to her subject with two major advantages: She's a deft and witty Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist, and her husband's parents were wellconnected powerhouses . . . To the New Owners sparkles when Blais focuses on her family's frequently funny experiences . . . Blais pointedly showcases the simpler, more modest and, alas, rapidly disappearing old Vineyard she loves. Unfortunately, the changes she mourns are happening everywhere. Which makes records like this all the more valuable."-Washington Post
"For anyone who has ever been curious about life on the Vineyard, or fantasized about settling in, Blais offers a diverting portrait . . . Blais has stitched together [the memoir] from the writings and stories of others, as well as her own wistful, often wry observations . . . Throughout, Blais exhibits a veteran reporter's instinct for evenhandedness."-Boston Globe
"A bittersweet ode to a Martha's Vineyard home . . . The chapter on formidable Vineyard doyenne and Washington Post publisher Katherine Graham is the most charming in the book, positively luminous with nostalgic affection. And the broader canvas of Vineyard life-the shops, the storms, the wry local humor-is painted with exactly the kind of skill and evocation readers would expect from the author of the bestselling In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle."-Christian Science Monitor
"Blais writes with eye, mind, and heart in equal measure. I laughed aloud, teared up at least once a chapter, and sighed with recognition throughout. Coming to the end was as bittersweet as Labor Day."-George Howe Colt, author of The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home
"Madeleine Blais knows the secret of a superb memoir: a wry sense of humor and an honest sense of gratitude leaven the inevitable pain of To the New Owners. Anyone who has lived in a house and had to leave it will laugh and be moved by this brilliantly written book."-Anita Shreve, author of The Stars Are Fire
Praise for In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle:
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction
"Beautifully written . . . a celebration of girls and athletics."-USA Today
"Joyful . . . The reader gets a real sense of these girls and their dreams."-New York Times Book Review
"Tender and upbeat . . . Wonderfully wry . . . A delight to read."-Philadelphia Inquirer
"Flows like a novel . . . These basketball players show us what women can do when they work together as a team."-Atlanta Constitution
"Engrossing . . . Better than the best pep talk, this book will kindle your pride in your own unique, feminine strength."-New Woman
MADELEINE BLAIS was a reporter for the Miami Herald for years and won a Pulitzer Prize before joining the faculty of the Department 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.
