All In summary

On that fateful September day in 1954, when Billie Jean discovered what she wanted to do with the rest of her life, she was receiving her first tennis lesson from a man named Clyde Walker. These were free lessons that Walker gave out on a public court, as part of a publicly-funded city program. It was another stroke of luck that Walker just happened to be another adult that recognized Billie Jean’s talent and didn’t try to impose any limitations on her.

Instead, Walker quickly enrolled Billie Jean and her friend Susan Williams into local junior tournaments. Just before the first tournament, Billie Jean asked Walker if he could make her a champion. Walker said no, he couldn’t. But then he added that with hard work and determination, Billie Jean could make herself into a champion.

In 1957, 13-year-old Billie Jean saw what world-class tennis looked like. It was the Pacific Southwest Championships, and Billie Jean was among the audience that got to see Althea Gibson play like the champion she was. By this time, Althea was already a legend. In 1950, she’d been the first Black player to compete in the US National Championships. In 1956, she was the first Black player to win a Grand Slam title at the French Championships. A year later, she won Wimbledon. 

Now, a few months after the Wimbledon victory, here she was playing in Los Angeles, and Billie Jean couldn’t take her eyes off her. The way she moved, with such grace and precision, was literally jaw-dropping. Her footwork, her powerful serve, the way she could control the ball and dominate at the net, it was everything Billie Jean longed to do. Here it was in front of her: the level of excellence that she needed to achieve in order to be number one. It was inspiring, but it was also a little daunting. It was now apparent just how hard she needed to work to get to that level.

After graduating high school in 1961, Billie Jean Moffitt was enrolled at Los Angeles State College. She spent a lot of time in the library, but she wasn’t studying. She’d sit there, at one of the library’s long tables, rolling a tennis ball back and forth between her hands, trying to figure out what to do.

By this time, she’d been able to raise enough money to get to Wimbledon, where she won the women's doubles championship alongside Karen Hantze. Karen was 18 years old at the time, and Billie Jean was just 17, which made them the youngest doubles champions in Wimbledon history. It was one of the most thrilling experiences of her life. Still, when Billie Jean returned home, she found that little had changed. She still found herself getting into conversations with people who expected her to settle down, find a husband, have some kids, and not be a “tennis bum.”

Tennis is a sport that’s filled with great rivalries, where two players continually battle it out against one another, year after year. For Billie Jean, one of her main rivals was the Australian player Margaret Court. It really started with their first match in 1962, when Billie Jean, playing in only her second Wimbledon singles draw, beat Margaret in the second round. Margaret was coming into Wimbledon having already won the Australian championships and – just weeks earlier – the French Championships, known as Roland Garros. So it was a stunning upset, especially for the many people in the clubhouse who’d put money on Margaret to win.

Margaret would get her revenge the following year, when she beat Billie Jean in the Wimbledon finals. And Margaret was the one who beat her at the 1964 Wimbledon semifinals. But then Billie Jean made the fateful decision to go to Australia and work on her game with one of the best coaches in the business, Mervyn Rose. 

It can be hard to quantify just how important one period of training and coaching can be. But there’s a telling statistic we can look at. Before Australia, Billie Jean’s record against Margaret Court was one win and nine losses. Afterward, they were evenly matched, literally, with 12 wins and 12 losses each. But in the years to come, Billie Jean and Margaret would begin to find themselves on opposite sides of some very different fights. 

After her time in Australia, Billie Jean felt more confident than ever in her game. She was winning tournaments again and closer than ever to finally reaching the number one spot. That goal was finally reached in 1967, when she beat Margaret Court at the Wimbledon finals, as well as taking the women’s doubles championship alongside Rosie Casals. Now it was time.

They became known as the Original Nine. Their names were Billie Jean King, Rosie Casals, Nancy Richey, Kerry Melville, Judy Dalton, Val Ziegenfuss, Peaches Bartkowicz, Kristy Pigeon, and Patti Hogan.

These were the nine players that agreed to risk their careers in order to launch a new women’s tennis tour. Tired of having their fates be determined by a small group of men who showed little interest in their wellbeing, these women agreed that starting a series of their own tournaments was worth the risk of being suspended from the USLTA.

Billie Jean had known about Bobby Riggs since she was a kid playing and hanging out at the Los Angeles Tennis Club in the late 1950s. By that time, he’d already won three Grand Slam titles and had retired to become something of a charming hustler who liked to win money at tennis by challenging celebrities to friendly wagers.

Bobby’s hustle gained national attention in 1973 when he was able to convince Margaret Court to a big televised match. Billie Jean was rather crestfallen that Margaret had accepted the challenge. Bobby had been pestering Billie Jean for months already and she’d refused to take the bait. First, Margaret had refused to join the women’s tour. She’d called the players on the tour “money grubbers” and actually said that women aren’t equal to men and shouldn’t be paid equal money. Now she was accepting Bobby’s offer and helping to provide him with a platform to espouse his male chauvinist blatherings.

It was a long time before Billie Jean King self-identified as a lesbian. The idea never even crossed her mind until she was in college, and even then it didn’t seem real. There was always a part of her that was attracted to men. And without a doubt, she loved her husband Larry. Still though…

In 1969, after having spent weeks away from Larry while on tour outside the US, she confessed that she’d been with another woman while traveling and that it was just a fleeting thing that was over. Her main concern at the time was that her affair could somehow damage Larry’s career as a lawyer. Larry was understandably taken aback by this news, but he never let it get between them. They were still devoted to and in love with each other, even if Larry used Billie Jean’s affairs as an excuse to discreetly see other women himself.

Billie Jean had in fact been publicly outed by Marilyn. Ironically enough, this outing happened at a time when Billie Jean had recently fallen in love with another tennis player, Ilana Kloss – a woman she would eventually marry in 2018. But getting there would still take some time.

Billie Jean and Larry successfully fought the lawsuit Marilyn had filed and were able to get her evicted from the house they owned. A huge media blitz followed, where Billie Jean and Larry did interviews with the likes of Barbara Walters and explained how they were still very much in love and committed to each other despite Billie Jean’s affair with Marilyn. No, she was not a lesbian, they explained.

Billie Jean and Ilana are still involved with sports and are part owners of the Los Angeles Sparks WNBA team. But being an activist in the LGBTQ+ community has become a central part of Billie Jean's life. She was honored to be among the people President Barack Obama chose to represent the US at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

Russia continues to be a place where people in the LGBTQ+ community are persecuted. Due to these kinds of human rights issues, Obama wanted to make a point by making the official US dignitaries to the Olympics be openly gay athletes. During her brief time in Sochi, Billie Jean gave a press conference voicing her concern about the violence and oppression LGBTQ+ people in Russia were facing. As she was leaving the conference, a trembling teenage boy named Vlad worked up the courage to approach Billie Jean. He explained the horrors of abuse and bullying he faced on a daily basis while living in Sochi, both by his peers and his teachers. “I’m afraid to stay,” he explained.