There were at least twenty or thirty pink message slips taped on the door. I knew it could only mean one thing. I turned to Ilana and said, “My life will never be the same.”
Chapter 25
It was sometime in 1978 when a friend told me she had just visited the Beverly Hills salon where Marilyn was working and overheard her talking about some letters of mine. She was bragging, “I could sell them for a lot of money.” The story gave me a queasy feeling that would resurface often in succeeding years. I still feel it today, whenever I think of Marilyn and how badly it all ended.
In the days before emails and texts, hotel phone charges were exorbitant and letters were how I stayed connected to people I cared about. I wrote letters on airplanes, in coffee shops, during rain delays, on hotel stationery in lonely rooms wherever my world travels took me. Shortly after my relationship with Marilyn began, she asked me to write to her from the road and I was happy to do it. My letters were expressive and affectionate, but, as I said, as time went on my feelings toward her changed. I found myself writing to her to keep her calm because I was afraid of what she might do. I sent her dozens of letters, and she apparently kept them all.
The only reason a tabloid might want to buy those letters was because I was famous, and they were evidence that, at one point in my life, I had cheated on my husband with a woman. That was a scandal, and scandals sell. Before “the Marilyn thing”—as everyone around me came to call it—I always had faith in people, or at least gave them the benefit of the doubt. For years after Marilyn, it was hard for me to trust again.
My friend’s story about Marilyn proved true. Marilyn began making threats about the letters directly to me in the summer of 1978. The catalyst was when I told her that Larry and I were thinking about putting the Malibu house on the market. She waved a stack of the letters in my face when I was visiting and said, “These would make a good book!” I asked for them back. She refused. For the first time, I wondered if that was why she had encouraged me to write her in the first place. I was later told she kept the letters in a safety deposit box.
Marilyn was never the most consistent person, but by the time her threats started I had begun hearing from friends in Los Angeles that she had been in and out of substance abuse treatment. The house was supposedly robbed twice while she was living there, and among the things that went missing was a beautiful bracelet Elton had given me. “Well, you have insurance, right?” Marilyn said. Her nonchalance made me wonder whether the house was actually robbed or she had sold the jewelry. When I began talking to her about leaving the Malibu house, she was again drinking and taking drugs, which only made her more volatile.
Things got so bad that I avoided going to the house when I was in Los Angeles. When we did see each other there was always an argument. One time when I turned to leave, she screamed and pounded my chest with her fists until I had to grab her wrists to make her stop. Another day, she took a bottle of her pills and rattled it at me, threatening to take some. She told me she wanted me to divorce Larry so we could be together again. I said, “Marilyn, please—it’s over between you and me. Can’t you see?” She wouldn’t accept it even though she dated other people after returning to L.A. Her behavior became so worrisome that I suggested that she see a psychologist I knew, and she did. After a couple of sessions, the therapist told me that the only way that Marilyn could get better and start living her own life was if I didn’t help her anymore and disconnected completely. So I tried.
In the summer of 1979, about a year after I alerted Marilyn that she’d need to find someplace else to live, I asked my business manager, Jim Jorgensen, to inform Marilyn that we were selling the house. That didn’t go over well, either. She told Jim, “Why would Billie Jean want to hurt me that way? I have never hurt Billie Jean. But I could hurt her and hurt her a lot.” I had heard that kind of threat so often by then that I asked Jim to start negotiating with Marilyn to leave the house and return the letters. At one point I had Jim relay to Marilyn that she could live in the house until it was sold and she would get half of the net profits from the sale. Larry and I had paid $132,500 for the place, which was now valued at more than $500,000, so it was a generous offer. In return, I would get the letters back, she would leave me alone, and she would have no further claims against me.
“That would be fine,” she said. For the first time, I felt a sliver of hope that we could put everything behind us, and Marilyn would get her life together. But Marilyn only became more desperate and self-destructive. She refused to allow prospective buyers into the house and took down the For Sale sign. At one point she claimed that she had some wealthy friends willing to buy the house for her. That never happened.
Jim had a lot of contact with Marilyn because he paid the bills for the house, and Marilyn phoned him so often she knew his number by heart. I assume that’s why Marilyn gave Jim’s number to the sheriff’s deputies and ambulance crew that found her slumped in her car the night she drove off a cliff on Malibu Canyon Road in 1980. She avoided serious injury that time. But in October 1980, after a night of drinking, she threw herself off the high deck of the Malibu house, a fall of about thirty feet. She was found by police officers at five the next morning, badly injured, lying on the sand by the pilings. Again, she gave the first responders Jim’s number. Marilyn had fractured her spine and she was hospitalized for a month. She spent the rest of her life walking with a cane or riding in a wheelchair.
Marilyn told Jim after both incidents that she had intended to kill herself. Jim wasn’t sure if she meant it, but we eventually learned that Marilyn had left a suicide note before her plunge off the balcony. Four months later, in February 1981, Marilyn was taken by ambulance to the Malibu medical center to have her stomach pumped because of an alcohol overdose.
How do you deal with someone as troubled as she became? Marilyn had a few friends checking on her throughout. She had always told me that she had no family besides a stepbrother, and I didn’t find out until December 1981 that that was untrue.
Larry was aware of Marilyn’s threats and self-inflicted damage. He understood, too, that she would never leave the house unless we reached some kind of financial settlement. The deed to the Malibu house was in both of our names, so we had to work it out together. In the spring of 1981, we raised our initial offer: If Marilyn would move out of the house and return my letters, Larry and I would agree to pay her $125,000 up front against half of the net profits from the sale, whenever it happened. My hope was that the cash advance could help fund Marilyn’s move. At this point, a Los Angeles attorney named Joel Ladin called Jim and told him that Marilyn had retained him and she needed the money right away. Jim said we would advance a total of $25,000 and hold the remaining $100,000 in escrow until she returned the letters and moved out.
In early April, we sent two checks totaling $25,000 to Marilyn and Ladin, which they promptly cashed. Again, we thought we had an agreement. We waited for them to return the letters and give us Marilyn’s moving date. We were still waiting during the last week of April 1981 when Jim phoned me and said, “Billie Jean, I’ve got some bad news. I just spoke to Marilyn’s lawyer and he told me the deal is off.”
Ladin was now saying that Marilyn claimed to have found more letters at the house and after he read them he decided they were worth much more than our agreement. Marilyn now wanted the full title to the house, and she wanted financial support for the rest of her life. I think I screamed when Jim told me her latest demands. The blood was pounding in my ears so hard I could barely hear the rest of what he said. As soon as I hung up, I called Larry.
“They’re going to hurt us badly,” I said. “She’s blackmailing us, and it will never end.”
It was time to get our own lawyer, so Pat Kingsley put me in touch with Dennis Wasser, a level-headed family attorney in Los Angeles who represented a lot of public figures. We hoped to continue negotiations with Marilyn’s lawyer, but Ladin wasn’t returning Dennis
’s phone calls. On April 28, 1981, Marilyn filed suit in Los Angeles County Superior Court to demand the house, half of my earnings during the seven years we were supposedly together, and lifetime support.
Her court filing was the reason all those message slips were on the door when Ilana and I returned to our condo in Florida. I had been outed. My worst nightmare had come true.
* * *
—
The legal argument that Marilyn’s side made was based on the famous “palimony” decision two years earlier against the actor Lee Marvin, which entitled his live-in girlfriend, Michelle Triola Marvin, to sue him for a portion of the money he had made when they were together, just as if they were married. The ruling had never before been applied to same-sex partners. There was a media feeding frenzy as soon as the court papers were filed. The press quickly came up with the new term “galimony” to describe Marilyn’s demands. And I was right: My life never was the same.
Marilyn’s betrayal was such an utter breach of privacy and trust, such a soul-destroying violation and trauma for me, I would never wish being outed on anybody. Nor would I ever out anybody else. I sometimes ask myself, Would I ever have been ready to come out on my own? I think so. But it should have been my choice. Nobody should have to come out unless they’re ready.
The day that the news of Marilyn’s lawsuit broke I went into shock. I felt scared, hurt, mortified, angry, sick, dazed, panicked, shamed, and exposed—and the feelings grew more acute as the days dragged on. I feared that Ilana was going to be dragged into this mess, and I was heartsick for Larry, for our families, for women’s tennis. I worried how the fallout from the lawsuit might ruin so many years of hard work or feed into derogatory stereotypes about all women athletes.
As soon as Ilana and I got inside our Grenelefe condo we bolted the door and I started making phone calls. I couldn’t reach Larry, who was on a flight, so I called Jim. I called Dennis Wasser. I called my agent, Bob Kain, the number-two guy at IMG, who handled all my television jobs and marketing deals. I spoke to Pat, who was based in Los Angeles, to start figuring out how to handle the media. Pat told me to send Ilana home to South Africa as soon as possible, so Ilana booked a flight. Looking back, I wasn’t thinking clearly and should not have agreed to that. We should have stuck it out together, though Ilana was as terrified as I was.
I knew that I, too, needed to get out of Florida right away, before the press started pounding at my door. So we both started packing immediately. The safest place I could think of was my Manhattan apartment, where no journalists could get near me, where I could be quiet and think. Ilana and I chose the same night flight to New York, but then she would connect through JFK and travel on immediately to South Africa. I needed to warn my parents about what was coming, but I couldn’t face them, so I asked Pat to call them as we were traveling.
By the time we landed in New York, Pat and Dennis Wasser had already released a press statement in order to make the morning newspaper deadlines. I was quoted saying, “The allegations contained in this lawsuit are untrue and unfounded. I am completely shocked and disappointed by the actions Ms. Barnett has taken.” The statement identified Marilyn as “a woman who worked as my secretary in the early to mid ’70’s.” It noted that she had emotional issues, including a suicide attempt.
When I read the statement, I was furious because it was released without my approval. A lawyer’s instinct is to deny everything, then try to get the case dismissed. A PR expert will tell you to do the same thing. But this felt wrong. Yes, most of the allegations in the lawsuit were false. But the assertion that Marilyn and I had been lovers was correct. I had hated lying before I was outed, and I hated it even more afterward. Dennis and Pat told me it was too late to reel back the denial, but I disagreed.
I paced the floor of my apartment that first night, and again the next day and night, often bouncing a tennis ball on my racket, wearing out a path on the floor as I went. I spoke on the phone again with Pat and Dennis, trying to assess the damage and plan my next move. I wanted to tell the truth, to face the public and speak from my heart. I wanted to acknowledge having an affair with Marilyn and admit that it had been a mistake to cheat on Larry.
“If I don’t do that,” I argued, “we’ll never be free of Marilyn and I’ll never, ever feel peace again. This is blackmail. The story won’t fade away, it will just keep coming out in bits and pieces, and I’ll have to keep covering up with denials. It will never end. So why not answer all the questions now, and get it over with?”
Pat thought I was out of my mind. “Nobody’s ever done this before,” she said. Admitting to a lesbian affair would destroy my reputation. Dennis thought it was too risky from a legal standpoint. Bob worried that I would lose my endorsements just as I was planning to retire from playing. Our back-and-forth occasionally got heated. There was no crisis management primer on how to handle this. I told Pat and Dennis, “I’ve worked with these media people all of my life, since I’ve been young, and they’ve been fair to me. I want to tell the truth. I’ve always talked to them from my heart, and I’m not going to go hide now.”
“Please don’t do this—take my advice,” Dennis said.
“I am not taking your advice,” I shot back.
Larry was the only one willing to support whatever I decided. I didn’t assume he would back me up, but he did.
“Are you sure?” I asked Larry. “It’s going to hurt you, and my parents, and a lot of other people. It’s going to hurt women’s sports. It could ruin everything we’ve done.”
“Don’t worry about other people,” Larry said. “For once in your life, Billie Jean, do exactly what you want to do for yourself.”
I called Pat Kingsley back and said, “I want you to call a press conference.”
* * *
—
When I make up my mind, there is no persuading me to back down. As soon as Pat realized that, she shifted gears. She generously dedicated her entire office staff to my case and nothing else for several days. She had the most impressive Rolodex in the business, and she started flipping through it to set up the news conference for the next day. We decided it would take place at a hotel near the Los Angeles airport. Then Pat lined up a series of interviews to get my side of the story out in different media, including exclusives with The New York Times and People magazine and a 20/20 sit-down with ABC’s Barbara Walters.
Things were moving quickly. Larry hired Henry Holmes, a law school buddy of his, to join the legal team and represent him. Marilyn had also named Larry in the suit for “preventing” her from claiming her alleged rights to the house since Larry and I owned it together. Larry said he wanted a real pit bull to fight back and Henry, who would go on to represent clients like George Foreman and Chuck Norris, was already developing that kind of reputation in entertainment circles.
By the next day, Henry had filed an unlawful detainer suit against Marilyn to evict her from the house. Then he obtained an emergency injunction to prevent her or her attorney from selling any of my letters or revealing their contents.
While that was happening, I called friends, sponsors, and business associates to say that I would understand if they wanted to distance themselves from me. I was supposed to play doubles the following week in Tokyo with the fifteen-year-old prodigy Andrea Jaeger and one of my first calls was to her parents to say I’d step aside. They and Andrea were adamant that she still wanted to play with me. I called Jerry Diamond at the Women’s Tennis Association to tell him I was going to admit the affair and to offer my resignation as WTA president. Even though he would have to bring it to a vote with the board, Jerry personally thought I should stay on and encouraged me to stay strong.
Larry flew to New York and we booked a flight to Los Angeles out of Newark instead of LaGuardia or Kennedy because I was paranoid about getting ambushed by photographers. We planned to arrive at the press conference together, and we used the time on the fl
ight to prepare the statements we would make before taking questions. As the two of us headed west, Ilana was making her way alone to the other side of the world. I wasn’t able to talk to her and I didn’t know how she was doing. I was a nervous wreck.
My poor, bewildered parents met us at the hotel. We hugged one another and said, “I love you.” There was no talk about Marilyn or the lawsuit, but I never doubted that my parents would stand up for me. They had been asked not to say anything to the press, but when a friendly reporter reached my father by phone, my dad said they backed me “100 percent.”
“We wouldn’t be much of a mother and father if we didn’t, would we?”
The hotel conference room was packed when we walked in. There were so many cameras pointed at us I lost count. Larry and I took our seats together at a table behind a thicket of microphones while my parents sat against the wall, damp eyed and grim faced. I tried not to look in their direction. Larry introduced me as “the person I love dearly,” adding, “I’ve known Billie Jean for nineteen years and I don’t think that anything that transpires will affect our relationship.”
When it was time for me to speak, I was scared to death, but I pushed forward. Larry kept his arm around the back of my chair and I squared my shoulders, concentrated on staying composed, leaned toward the microphones, and said in a steady voice, “I did have an affair with Marilyn Barnett. It has been over for quite some time…” I could hear a few gasps in the room, then nothing but the camera shutters clicking furiously as I continued: “I made a mistake, and I’ll assume all responsibility for it.” (To this day, my use of the word mistake offends some people. They thought I meant being gay was the “mistake.” What I was referring to was betraying my marriage vows.) I thanked my parents for supporting me, and Larry, “my lover, my husband and my best friend…In some ways, I think we’re closer today than we’ve ever been, and our marriage is stronger.”
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