Madeleine Blais’ biography unearths little-known history of a multitalented champion.

In my early years working at The Buffalo News, our managing editor, Foster Spencer, had an expression for a human-interest story he thought was worthy of the front page. He called it a “hey, Martha” story, one that a guy reading the paper would want to tell his wife about.

A new book about the 20th century tennis star Alice Marble delivers so many “hey, Martha” stories, I don’t know how the author, Madeleine Blais, decided where to begin. (My wife, whose name is Allison, is tired of hearing these tales, as well as curious about why I keep calling her Martha.)

Marble, who learned the game on public courts in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, won 18 major championship titles – five in singles, six in women’s doubles and seven in mixed doubles. Her power game was frequently compared to the way men played. To use a 1980s reference, her game was more like Martina Navratilova than Chris Evert.

Besides conquering the tennis world in the 1930s and ‘40s, Marble was an accomplished singer, a friend to celebrities such as Carole Lombard and Clark Gable, and eventually a radio broadcaster, sportswear designer, a magazine columnist and the author-editor of a dozen “Wonder Women” comic books.

Marble also played an important role in helping to democratize tennis by standing up for Althea Gibson, who in 1950 became the first African American to play in the national grass-court championship in Forest Hills, a year before breaking the color barrier at Wimbledon. Gibson would become the first Black player to win the French Open, Wimbledon and U.S. Open singles championships.

Marble, whose writing appeared frequently in American Lawn Tennis magazine, wrote an editorial there in July 1950 stating that Gibson should be allowed to play in the U.S. National Championships, now known as the U.S. Open. Gibson had been unable to meet the qualifications of making a strong showing in other prominent East Coast tournaments. Those were all invitationals, and Gibson had not been invited.

“If tennis is a sport for ladies and gentlemen,” wrote Marble, “it’s also time we acted a little more like gentlepeople and less like sanctimonious hypocrites…. If Althea Gibson represents a challenge to the present crop of women players, it's only fair that they should meet that challenge on the courts." …. If she is refused a chance to succeed or to fail, then there is an ineradicable mark against a game to which I have devoted most of my life.”

Gibson was admitted to the tournament, a historic moment that Marble played an enormous role in. Marble and Gibson became longtime friends.

Billie Jean King, who knew Marble and was coached by her as a 15-year-old (CHECK), has written that Marble’s advocacy for Gibson carried the same significance as when Brooklyn Dodgers shortstop Pee Wee Reese put his arm around Jackie Robinson as a show of support in front of fans in Cincinnati. (There’s a disagreement about whether the incident took place in Robinson’s first Dodgers season, 1947, or his second.)

Blais, who won a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 1980, covers a lot of ground in recounting the many and varied phases of Marble’s life and career. There have been other Marble biographies published, including Marble’s own account of her life, “Courting Danger,” but the depths of Blais’ research is apparent in “Queen of the Court.”

When Marble had passed her prime as a player, she missed the attention, and took steps to stay in the public eye. One example was her claim to have worked as a spy for the U.S. government during World War II. Blais documents facts that contradict Marble’s claims. Blais also demonstrates doubts over Marble’s claims to have married a soldier who was killed in World War II and her adoption of a boy who was killed in a car crash.

Marble had romantic relationships with men and women, including a platonic one with Will du Pont, a member of Delaware’s wealthy du Pont family. There were suspicions throughout Marble’s life that she had a romance with her longtime tennis coach, Eleanor “Teach” Tennant, but Blais finds no corroboration.

Blais’ documentation of Marble’s tennis career occasionally gets bogged down in too much detail, as when reporting every score of her matches in a given tournament, including many exhibitions. But the reader learns to skim over those and get back to the stories’ rich details.

Marble’s name is not as well-known as other early tennis luminaries, including Billie Jean King, Althea Gibson, Margaret Court or even the French star Suzanne Lenglen. I hope this book changes that.