Game, Set, Match

by Susan Ware

  Billie Jean King first learned of the lawsuit from a Los Angeles Times reporter’s query while playing a tournament in Florida. Picking up her phone messages after an early-round loss, she recalled her reaction when she heard the news: “I went into shock. My heart was pounding, my skin tingling. I thought I’d been hit by a truck. I don't think I'll ever get over the shock. I'll have to work on it for the rest of my life.” After first issuing an emphatic denial calling the allegations “untrue and unfounded,” two days later King admitted having a lesbian affair with her former secretary but insisted that it had been over for quite a long time. “I made a mistake,” she told a packed news conference, flanked by her husband, Larry, and her stunned parents, “and I will assume responsibility for it. I only hope the fans will have compassion and understanding.” Cloaking herself in heterosexual privilege at the event, she called Larry “my husband, my lover and best friend” and allowed him to drape his arm around her chair the whole time she addressed the assembled journalists.15

  Tennis players are performers, and once again Billie Jean King put on a performance: the initial denial, then public confession and acceptance of responsibility, followed by a request for understanding and space in her time of trouble. If this media strategy doesn't seem unusual to us today, it is because there is almost a script now for public figures to seek redemption when things go awry. Not out of choice but necessity, Billie Jean King was one of the pioneers of this confessional mode of handling public relations.16

  King stayed on this message relentlessly: in the obligatory post-revelations interview with Barbara Walters on ABC’S 20/20 watched by 20-30 million Americans; in the candid tell-all with Larry (“Larry and Billie Jean King Work to Renew Their Marriage—and Put Her Affair Behind Them”) in People magazine;17 and finally, as soon as it could be rushed into print, in a self-justifying autobiography cowritten with Frank Deford that journalist Selena Roberts later charitably called a “candid lie” but Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post dismissed at the time as “so blatantly self-serving that it can only win its author more enemies than friends.”18

  Still, King obsessively worried how her actions would affect other people. “You can talk about yourself as an individual, but whatever you say always affects other people, like pebbles in a pond,” she said at the time. “There’s that rippling effect. I always worry that I may be hurting someone else.” She was obviously thinking about her parents, who had already been devastated to read about her 1971 abortion in the newspaper rather than hearing about it from their daughter herself. While they stood by her in public, King’s parents remained deeply shaken by the revelations about her affair with Marilyn Barnett for years afterward.19

  Larry King never seemed fazed by the questions about his unconventional marriage and he never wavered in his public support for his embattled wife, encouraging her to go public with the truth when Marilyn Barnett sued in 1981 and pledging to stay by her side in the aftermath. “I love Billie Jean and I would say that ultimately, if she could be happy, then I would be happy too. That may be too philosophical or too detached for most people, but that’s how I feel,” he told People magazine. Some found his assertions that he bore part of the responsibility because he had been so preoccupied with business hard to fathom, and others were offended by his statement that he would have been much more upset if his wife had had an affair with another man, conveniently forgetting to mention that he had had affairs with other women. A lot of people simply assumed that Larry was gay too. But most observers had long ago given up trying to understand what kept Larry and Billie Jean’s marriage intact. “Dammit, what do people want?” Billie Jean had exclaimed in exasperation in 1975. “I just love Larry. I’ve gotten to the point I can't say anything else.”20

  Billie Jean’s response to Marilyn Barnett’s revelations was a model both of candor and obfuscation. As we now know, her relationship with Marilyn Barnett was not the passing homosexual episode she portrayed to the press, but she didn't make the link then between her individual experience and a wider lesbian sensibility. To her, sex was a private act, which could happen with either men or women. She couldn't be a lesbian, she basically asserted, because she didn't feel “homosexual”: “If you have one gay experience, does that mean you’re gay?” Even when their sexual relationship continued, King clung to the fact that Marilyn had been living with a man right before, adding, “I can't stand women who don't like men.” In her mind what she and Marilyn did was different from her image of man-hating lesbians: “Still it was very significant to me at that time that Marilyn and I were only having an isolated homosexual experience, and that we were not participating in a full homosexual life-style, because I'll admit that that insular, segregated way of living puts me off a little.” To her credit she added that a typical heterosexual suburban lifestyle had the same effect.21

  When the news of the lawsuit initially broke, the reactions from the tennis world and sports fans were positive and supportive and remained so throughout the subsequent legal battles and proceedings. The fact that King had been so brutally outed and a past relationship betrayed in such a public manner in a court of law built sympathy: even if people didn't support or condone homosexuality, they certainly could feel the pain that King was experiencing being blindsided by what she thought was a private matter. She was especially heartened by the outpouring of support she received from other female athletes, and not just from the field of tennis. And she was touched by the support that her brother Randy’s teammates on the San Francisco Giants gave him, which meant they were behind her too.22

  Press reaction, from major newspapers and sportswriters, was also generally positive, stressing that her contributions to sport far overshadowed any questions about her personal life. As a columnist in the Washington Post said, “It should matter not at all whether she rushed the net as a heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or asexualWhat matters is that she plays a swell game of tennis.… If the tragedy and pain of the Billie Jean King affair does nothing more than put a human face on homosexuality, she will have accomplished quite a bit.” Fans reacted in similar ways in letters to the editor of magazines such as women's Sports and Ms. King’s offer to resign as president of the women's Tennis Association (WTA) was quickly and firmly declined, and NBC honored its commitment to use her as a color commentator at Wimbledon the following June.23

  And yet there was an undercurrent of muted criticism about how she handled herself throughout the affair. Shelley Roberts in Newsweek called King on her transparent attempt to salvage her career by tagging the affair a mistake, noting the abject way she asked for forgiveness was “in the voice of a little girl caught making mud pies in her best pink organdy Sunday dress.” She continued, “I wish you had simply left it at, ‘Yes, I did it.’ Or ever better, you might have said that regardless of how it has turned out, the affair had been a valid experience for you.” Some sports commentators suspected that she was speaking more from her pocketbook than her heart, while others were troubled by the callous way King dismissed the years she spent with her former lover as totally inconsequential. Her statements that the affair was a mistake and would have been just as wrong with a man won her few friends in the gay community. And yet it is much easier to pass judgment from a distance than to imagine how a person might act in such a painful and exposed position. In this situation there were no winners.24

  Too proud to deny something that had happened, but enormously concerned about its impact on her career and women's tennis in general, King crafted a middle ground that accepted responsibility for her past actions but failed to put them in a wider political context. Central to this was her continued public affirmation of her marriage to Larry, who was by her side throughout the initial breaking story, the trial and subsequent court battles, and all the manufactured publicity. For some this was just a little too pat. As one reader complained to women's Sports, “Did anybody else think Billie Jean’s cover pose a little contrived, with hand showing wedding ring held up in front of her
face? Yes, Billie Jean King, we know by now that you’re married and your affair with Marilyn Barnett was a one-time mistake—you’ve told us often enough.25

  After the public revelations in May 1981, the case went to trial later that year. The legal doctrine under which Barnett claimed to have a right to sue derived from a 1976 decision by the California Supreme Court that involved actor Lee Marvin and his former live-in lover, Michelle Triola. Tagged “palimony” by the press, the decision ruled that people who lived together and then split up were bound by whatever prior agreements they had made about distribution of property and income, even if they were only verbal. In Barnett’s case, she claimed that King had promised her the Malibu house as well as substantial lifelong financial support. Not surprisingly, the press quickly dubbed the suit “galimony.”26

  The Lee Marvin-Michelle Triola case was bandied around a lot in the coverage of the King-Barnett suit, and it is useful to look at what it did and did not do. Marvin and Triola lived together from 1964 to 1970, during which time she gave up her singing career to serve as a companion and homemaker to the Hollywood star. For a year after they broke up, Lee Marvin sent her monthly support payments, but he stopped in November 1971. At that point Triola (who had legally taken the name Marvin in the last year of their relationship) sued, claiming that she had been promised support and that she was entitled to a portion of the assets Marvin had accrued during the time they lived together. The Los Angeles Superior Court dismissed her plea, claiming that the state could not enforce a contract for monetary payments between two unmarried persons. Why? Because such a relationship would constitute prostitution and therefore be illegal. That ruling was upheld on appeal.27

  In 1976 the California Supreme Court overruled both those lower decisions with reasoning that broadened the definition of nonmarital relationships: “Although we recognize the well-established public policy to foster and promote the institution of marriage, perpetuation of judicial rules which result in an inequitable distribution of property accumulated during a nonmarital relationship is neither a just nor an effective way of carrying out their policy. The mores of society have indeed changed so radically in regard to cohabitation that we cannot impose a standard based on alleged moral considerations that have apparently been so widely abandoned by so many.” Michelle Triola therefore did have legal standing to sue Lee Marvin for property assets and income earned during the time they lived together if there was an express or implied contract or “some other tacit understanding between the partners.”28

  That wasn't the end of the matter. The California Supreme Court sent the case back to Superior Court, where it finally went to trial in April of 1979, with results far less favorable to Michelle Triola. The judge denied her claim of breach of contract, finding no legal basis for her assertion that she had an oral or implicit contract with Marvin to share assets accumulated during the time they lived together: “To accede to such contention would mean that the court would recognize each unmarried person living together to be automatically entitled by such living together and performing spouselike functions, to half of the property bought with the earnings of the other nonmarital partner.” The judge did award Triola the sum of $104,000 for “rehabilitative purposes,” an outcome that allowed both Triola and Marvin to claim victory, but clearly Lee Marvin came out better.29

  It is not surprising that Marilyn Barnett’s lawyers tried to use this California case as a precedent, both in the legal system and in the court of public opinion. The idea was to show that people who lived together had the same rights and responsibilities as those who were legally married. The novelty in Billie Jean King’s case was twofold: the relationship involved two women, and one of them was married. By demanding money from Billie Jean, Barnett was in effect attaching Larry’s income and assets as well. As a columnist in the National Review put it, “She is asking the cuckold to pay for the privilege in an updated version of a Restoration comedy.”30

  Let us review the facts of the case. Barnett claimed that Larry and Billie Jean King bought the Malibu house expressly for her and promised to deed it to her eventually; when they failed to do so and instead said they wanted to sell it, she fought back. Barnett’s main bargaining chip was the collection of more than one hundred letters that King had written to her lover, which provided conclusive evidence of the sexual relationship. Showing that the tennis star was not above paying hush money, King’s lawyers offered Barnett $125,000 for the letters and her silence, but Barnett wanted more. With King’s lawyers fearful that Barnett would just keep coming back to them with higher and more outrageous demands, the negotiations fell apart. In retaliation, Barnett sued. In addition to putting in a claim on the house, Barnett also asserted that King promised to provide for all her “financial support and needs for the rest of her life in the same style and manner commensurate with the life-style of King.” In response, King’s lawyers counter-sued to begin eviction proceedings against Barnett.31

  The legal case was never about sex, titillated as the press was by revelation of the affair. King’s admission at her press conference that she had been intimate with Barnett removed the question of whether there had been a sexual relationship. Still the publicity-conscious tennis star was determined to avoid the publication of the letters at all costs. When rumors began to circulate that Barnett might sell the letters to the National Enquirer for $25,000, King’s lawyers quickly secured a temporary restraining order to prevent their publication. The judge further agreed that the letters would only be read in the judge’s chambers, not in open court. When King’s lawyers moved to have the case dismissed, however, Superior Court Judge Leon Savitch ruled that there was sufficient law to support Barnett’s case, citing the 1976 California Supreme Court decision. King’s lawyers claimed that Barnett’s lawsuit was different from the Marvin case because that involved a man and woman. In response, the judge pointed out that the 1976 case did not say anything specific about the sex of the parties, so he allowed it to go forward.32

  The case came to trial in December before Judge Julius Title of the California Superior Court, and stage one (or “set one,” as Newsweek called it) was quickly resolved in Larry and Billie Jean King’s favor. The judge ruled that there was insufficient proof that the tennis star had ever intended to deed the beach house to her lover, and he ordered Barnett to move out within thirty days. Citing Barnett’s conduct with the letters, the judge called her actions close to “an attempt at extortion.” After the decision, Barnett said, “I’m hostile toward Billie Jean, but I'll always love her.” King declined to reciprocate those feelings. “I don't know what I feel toward Marilyn. But one thing I know is, she is not my friend.” Asked if she had any ill feelings about “putting Barnett on the street,” she replied tartly, “Are you kidding?”33 A year later, in November 1982, Judge Sara Rudin of Superior Court threw out the rest of the suit (the “galimony” part), in which Barnett had sought lifetime support from her former lover, saying there were no grounds for the action. Ironically just eighteen months later the beach house was so severely damaged by a violent storm that it was condemned and torn down.34

  Revisiting the case almost thirty years later when questions of civil unions and gay marriages dominate the news, Barnett’s suit offers an interesting attempt to extend to gay people some of the legal protections enjoyed by heterosexuals, married or not. Marilyn Barnett never talked publicly about her motivations for bringing her lawsuit against Billie Jean King or connected their personal story to the larger struggle for gay rights in America. At the time she was definitely seen as the less sympathetic character—a betrayer of trust, a blackmailer, a moocher. And yet in many ways she was a pioneer in asking that relationships between two women be given the same standing in courts of law as relationships between a man and a woman. She did not prevail then, but victories in similar cases would not be all that far in the future.35

  The identity of the other person most deeply affected by the story was not publicly known at the time. In 1979 Billie Jean
King had teamed up with a new doubles partner named Ilana Kloss, a South African player thirteen years her junior. “If being around me is going to jeopardize Ilana, I don't want her around,” she said when the story broke, referring only to the possible taint that playing tennis with a known lesbian might have on the young player’s career. The subterfuge actually went much deeper: King and Kloss were already in a serious off-court relationship. In part to protect Ilana and their privacy as a couple, Billie Jean made a conscious choice to downplay the depth of her sexual orientation and portray the affair with Marilyn Barnett as an isolated, unfortunate event. Simultaneously, she took refuge in her marriage to Larry as a cover, even though she had pressed him for a divorce at several points in the 1970s. Kloss has been King’s life partner ever since, but it was years before she was willing to be publicly identified as the other half of this lesbian power couple.36

  Was there ever really a possibility that Billie Jean King would be totally forthcoming about her sexual orientation after she was so brutally outed? King’s repeated statements that the affair was a “mistake,” that it didn't mean anything to her, that she was just as comfortable with men as women, suggest not. Billie Jean hated labels of any kind, and she felt especially uncomfortable with being labeled gay at that point in her life. As a perceptive journalist later concluded, “Billie Jean King didn't want to be gay, not then, with so much at stake, not ever, given where she’d come from and who she was. It didn't fit with her plans, her self-image and all that she wanted to do to change the sport she loved.” In addition, she felt personally betrayed and humiliated by someone she had been extremely close to, with the public revelations going to the heart of an immensely private part of her life. “Any therapist will tell you that when you’re ready, you will [come out],” she said later. “To be outed means you weren't ready.”37