Born on September 28, 1913, in California and raised in San Francisco, Alice Marble was exposed to loss early in life. At the age of seven, her father died of pneumonia, and within the same year she saw her best friend killed in an accident. Later Marble was introduced to baseball by her uncle and was captivated by the sport; in turn she impressed the local minor league baseball team and became the San Francisco Seals╒s mascot. She resolved then to become a professional baseball player.
Marble╒s older brother, Dan, put a tennis racket in her hand in the hopes of interesting her in a less masculine sport. She played aggressive tennis and pioneered the women╒s serve and volley style of play. Her training pitching baseballs lent itself to a powerful tennis serve, while her quick hand-to-eye coordination and speed gave her an exceptional game at the net.
Marble practiced over the next few years by emulating other players and by spending every free moment at the public courts at Golden Gate Park. At age fifteen, Marble was raped at the park by a man whose identity she never learned. Physically she recovered quite quickly, but she suffered continued anger and humiliation throughout high school; it was ten years before she was able to have an intimate, physical relationship with another person. Marble came to believe that the attack contributed to her toughness and made her focus even more intently on tennis as a source of self-esteem.
Only three years after her introduction to tennis and still without a coach, Marble traveled to Forest Hills as northern California╒s junior champion. Then, in 1932, she started working with the woman who would be her career-long coach, manager, mentor and principal supporter, Eleanor Tennant. Working with Tennant and Harwood ╥Beese╙ White, Marble learned the game from scratch: she changed her grip from a Western grip to Eastern one╤a vital factor for success on a grass court. Marble╒s aggressive serve and volley game and her preference for shorts instead of a skirt shocked the tennis world; one headline read, ╥Marble╒s Playing a Man╒s Game!╙ Tennant, who was a popular tennis coach among the stars of southern California, introduced her to the likes of W. Randolph Hearst, Cary Grant, Clark Gable, Marlene Dietrich and Carole Lombard, many of whom became close lifelong friends.
On her first trip abroad in 1934, Marble collapsed during a match in Paris and was diagnosed with tuberculosis and pleurisy╤she was told she would never play tennis again. With Lombard╒s and Tennant╒s support, she recovered fully and returned to competition. From 1936 to 1940, she was the top-ranked woman in the U.S.; she played at Wimbledon, where she won the mixed doubles championship with Don Budge in 1937, and again in 1938 along with the women╒s doubles championship with Sarah Palfrey.
Marble became the first woman of the century to win the Triple Crown at Wimbledon in 1939╤the mixed doubles with Bobby Riggs, the women╒s doubles with Sarah Palfrey and the women╒s singles titles, all in the same tournament. With increasing fame and glamour, Marble╒s activities began to include speaking engagements. She did a brief stint as a professional singer at the Waldorf Astoria in New York and some radio sportscasting. She also designed a line of women╒s tennis apparel.
Marble turned professional in 1940 just as the nation prepared for World War II. She gave exhibition tours and clinics around the country and at many military bases. Despite intense pressure from her coach to abstain from romantic involvement, Marble had a couple of brief affairs (first with a man and then a woman); in 1942 she married a soldier she met on one of her tours. Two years later, after losing her friend Lombard in a plane crash, her painful string of tragedies resumed. Days after a car accident in which she lost the child with whom she was pregnant, she learned that her husband╒s plane had been shot down by the Germans; he had not survived.
Despondent, she tried to kill herself. Upon recovering from her attempt at suicide, however, Marble agreed to participate in an espionage plot for the U.S. Army Intelligence. In 1945 she traveled to Switzerland to investigate financial ledgers of an ex-lover who was a Swiss investment banker harboring Nazi wealth during the war. Marble was nearly killed on the mission and lost the physical evidence she had acquired, but she used her photographic memory to recall much of the needed information.
Her tournament play was cut short by World War II. Marble continued to play in exhibition matches, hold clinics and give lectures. She also coach promising new players (including another serve and volley newcomer, Billie Jean King). She was inducted into the Tennis Hall of Fame in 1964, the winner of twelve U.S. Open and five Wimbledon titles. Marble spent her last years in Palm Desert, California; she died in 1990.
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