BATTLE OF THE SEXES
Directors: Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris
Cast: Emma Stone, Steve Carrell, Andrea Riseborough, Natalie Morales, Sarah Silverman, Bill Pullman, Alan Cumming, Jessica McNamee
Rating: (PG)
★★★★ + (out of five)
I bring it up because sponsorship from the Virginia Slims brand bankrolled a breakaway women’s tennis league headed by Billie Jean King that showed that the women’s game was as marketable as the men’s and led to equal prizemoney. The other reason is that after watching Battle of the Sexes, which is set in the early 1970s, you can only shake your head in disbelief and realise that actually, we have come a long way, baby.
In 1970, Billie Jean King (Emma Stone), the No1 women’s player, discovered tournament organisers were going to trim the women’s prizemoney to boost the men’s. Disgusted, she walked, taking other players with her and forming a separate league.
About the same time, Bobby Riggs (Steve Carrell) a top men’s player from the 1950s who had become a tennis hustler (weirdly, this is all true), hit on the notion that if he, an over-the-hill player, could play the top women’s player and beat her, it would generate a lot of attention. He first played one Margaret Court (Jessica McNamee) and won.
Then, fed up with Riggs’ malarkey, King agreed to a match and found herself in a media circus, playing for the right of women everywhere to be taken seriously.
- Christine Powley
