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The Road to Wimbledon
NY, Scribner's, 1946. The first memoir by the reigning queen of women's tennis in the late 1930s, Wimbledon champion in 1939 (in addition to multiple doubles titles) and the first female tennis player to win both the British and U.S. women's singles, doubles, and mixed doubles championships in the same year (also 1939). When she retired, she went to work as an associate editor for DC Comics and wrote a column about notable women in history that appeared in the early issues of Wonder Woman. In 1945, she was recruited as an Allied spy, playing celebrity tennis tournaments in Switzerland while re-connecting with a former lover to either steal Nazi financial data or photograph artwork stolen for the Nazis (depending on which story one reads); regardless, that operation ended when Marble was shot in the back running from a double agent. In 1950, she took up the cause of integrating tennis, writing an editorial for World Tennis supporting Althea Gibson's bid to play in the U.S. Open: "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.” Marble said that if Gibson were not given the opportunity to compete, “then there is an uneradicable mark against a game to which I have devoted most of my life, and I would be bitterly ashamed.” In 1952, she had a cameo in the Hepburn/Tracy movie Pat and Mike, playing herself. Her second memoir, Courting Danger, was released posthumously; a movie version is reportedly in the works. This copy is signed by Marble. Offsetting to endpages, wear to covers; very good in a good, spine-faded, price-clipped, and edge-chipped dust jacket. Uncommon in dust jacket, especially signed. [#033911] SOLD

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