Ultimately a Love Match

A tennis court has been erected on the floor of the Forum, and VIPs are sipping champagne from plastic flutes. Others high in the stands hold signs proclaiming “I’m for Billie” and “Pigs for Riggs.”

ABC Sports logos suggest a special match is about to go down, but the logos are circumscribed with bright pink and teal swirls, the colors ABC employed during its “Happy Days”/”Battle of the Network Stars” heyday.

Goldie Hawn is there but, despite the 1970s trappings, this is not the giggly, jiggly blond of “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In.” It is December 2000, and Hawn, head of her Cherry Alley production company, is on hand to oversee the climactic scene of the $10.5-million ABC movie, “When Billie Beat Bobby,” chronicling the 1973 defeat of huggable hustler Bobby Riggs by tennis champ Billie Jean King.

The original “Battle of the Sexes,” as it was known, took place in the Houston Astrodome, but the Forum serves as a substitute for restaging this “Gladiator”-like spectacle. Wielding her racket, then 29-year-old King slew her 55-year-old sexist pig, securing herself a place in history as a 5-foot, 4-inch, 135-pound gladiator for human rights. King also won an unprecedented 20 Wimbledon titles, six of them singles. She turned professional in 1968, one of the first female players to do so, and in 1971 became the first woman athlete to win $100,000 in a single year.

More than a sporting match, even more than an entertainment event witnessed by 50 million viewers, King’s clobbering of Riggs was the catalyst for a sexual revolution, demonstrating to American males that women are a power to be reckoned with, worthy of equal rights and opportunities. Many American women who had previously turned their backs on feminism opened their eyes to opportunities they hadn’t before realized were available to them.

As the film points out, feminism in 1973 was still considered a dirty word by many, with anti-feminist Hawn serving as a more palatable example of what women were supposed to be. Having just graduated from “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” to feature films, where she again played giggly, jiggly dumb blonds, Hawn was the ultimate good-time gal: fun, free and nonthreatening to men.

“I remember the press saying to me, ‘Don’t you feel irresponsible that you’re this dumb blond while women are burning their bras?’ ” Hawn recalled. “I didn’t understand that because I was already liberated. I could be and do whatever I wanted because I was proud of myself and just having fun.”

Hawn never intended her TV movie to be an advertisement for women’s lib. She recruited writer-director Jane Anderson (“The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader Murdering Mom,” “If These Walls Could Talk 2”) to infuse a wacky twist to what could otherwise have been a boring political movie of the week.

“Jane takes a kind of ‘cheeky’ approach,” Hawn said, “allowing you to look back at that time period and say, ‘Can you believe that it really used to be like that?’ ”

Executive producer Peter Sussman (whose company, Alliance Atlantis, produced recent Judy Garland, Jacqueline Susann and Joan of Arc biopics) says “When Billie Beat Bobby” is more than a film about tennis--it’s a social satire allowing for a ruthless mocking of the ‘70s. Partner Ed Gernon considers the project to be “vintage Jane Anderson, where you take a slice of history and look at it from a completely skewed angle.”

“It’s a funny movie,” agreed Anderson, whose take on the story is so non-lib that there is even a suggestion that Riggs might actually have had a shot at winning the competition had he not so overexerted himself promoting his sponsor: Sugar Daddy lollipops. “It would have been a closer game, definitely much more dynamic,” she said. “But Billie truly was his match, not just physically but mentally.”

‘I Really Wanted Her to Win,’ Hunter Recalls

During her research, Anderson obtained footage from the match that contained extensive crowd shots, enabling her and production designer Nina Ruscio to re-create the most minute details. “I made lists of what I wanted,” said Anderson. “For instance, champagne being served in plastic goblets, the T-shirts, the programs and also the variety of humanity.”

She also began taking tennis lessons to develop a clearer understanding of the game. Among her instructors: Martina Navratilova, who gave her eager pupil a lesson on a public court in Hollywood.

For the role of King, Anderson immediately thought of Holly Hunter, with whom she had worked on “Texas Cheerleader Murdering Mom.” More than that project, it was Hunter’s high-energy, Oscar-nominated portrayal of a spunky network news producer in the 1987 feature “Broadcast News” that convinced Anderson that Hunter was the perfect choice to play King.

“Billie is a very tough character to cast because she is such a dynamo,” Anderson said. “I needed to cast an actress who could get that unstoppable energy, and at the same time also deliver the political stuff she spouts without [sounding like] Joan of Arc.”

Hunter was just 15 and living outside Atlanta with her five brothers when she watched the match. “I really wanted her to win,” she recalled. “It was a huge thing.”

As she began rehearsing, Hunter found herself struggling in her attempt to play championship-level tennis. “The hardest part was walking onto the tennis court and feeling like a tennis player,” she said.

Meeting King in New York City the day before the 2000 U.S. Open helped Hunter gain some much-needed confidence. During her week and a half with King, and while reviewing tapes of King’s matches, Hunter took mental notes on every move the champ made, the way she held her racket, the way she brushed her hair out of her face, the way she wiped her sweaty hand on her dress.

“All of those things influenced me incredibly and are in the movie,” Hunter said. To master King’s grips and swings, the actress trained extensively with former Wimbledon doubles champion Peggy Michael, but when Hunter was offered tennis lessons by King, the actress initially balked.

“I was staunchly opposed to [King’s] giving me a lesson,” Hunter said. “I wanted to protect her and I wanted to protect myself. Because I’m an actress, there are things I know about what goes on with making a movie that Billie doesn’t know.”

With the assurance of King, Hunter eventually consented to a lesson on a court in Central Park. Hunter found the experience daunting. “She’s an incredible teacher, but it was almost impossible to look across the net at her,” Hunter said. “I just hoped that my limbs would all work.”

With the addition of a bushy black wig, glasses and a exact recreation of King’s skimpy Astrodome tennis skirt, Hunter became King. “It was like I was her,” said Hunter, who now includes King among her closest friends. “She’s one of the astonishing people in my life. I adore her.”

Riggs ‘Would Have Loved All This Attention’

Now 57, King lives in Chicago with her companion of many years and served as a consultant on the film. At the April 4 premiere at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, she received a standing ovation.

King awarded Hunter’s performance high marks. “She got all my mannerisms down,” King said. “It was scary. Her brain must have been going a mile a minute watching every move I made.” But even more emotional for King was watching Ron Silver resurrect her old pal Bobby Riggs, who succumbed to prostate cancer on Oct. 25, 1995, at age 77.

“I wish Bobby were still alive,” King lamented. “He would have loved all this attention.”

Sitting in a director’s chair just off the Forum court, the 54-year-old Silver is made up to look eerily identical to Riggs, with fake sideburns, black glasses and artificial rotted, yellowed teeth. Seemingly in character, he puts down his newspaper as Hawn struts by in high heels. Puckering his lips, Silver makes overtly sexist smooching sounds, which Hawn ignores.

Silver’s resume lists an impressive ensemble of real-life figures, including Robert Shapiro (CBS’ “An American Tragedy”), Henry Kissinger (TNT’s “Kissinger and Nixon”) and Alan Dershowitz (“Reversal of Fortune”), to name a few. He is working for director Michael Mann as Muhammad Ali’s manager Angelo Dundee in “Ali” while developing a one-man show based on the life of Sigmund Freud.

Silver said he relishes opportunities to meet the men he’s playing (Shapiro, Kissinger and Dershowitz all assisted in Silver’s portrayals of them), but Riggs’ death made that impossible. Instead, Silver reviewed several tapes of Riggs and consulted closely with Riggs’ coach and best pal, Lorni Kuhle (played in the film by actor-tennis ace Vincent Van Patten).

“Everybody I’ve met has some anecdote to share about Bobby that reveals his bluster and bravado--his showmanship,” Silver said. “He wanted to be in the limelight, but he was also deeply affectionate and kind and had a very exuberant vitality for life. I’ve fallen tremendously in love with Bobby Riggs.”

All involved agree that “When Billie Met Bobby” is not a movie about good versus evil but rather a love story between two mismatched tennis pros. “I think Billie had a tremendous amount of affection and respect for Bobby, and he for her,” Hunter said. “I wanted to bring that [to the film], and that was easy to do with Ron.”

Final Phone Call Eliminated by ABC

The most emotional scene between the two--a phone call King made to a bedridden Riggs just days before his death, during which the former adversaries expressed their love to one another--was considered by producer Gernon “essential to complete the arc between these two characters.” But the scene was cut by ABC despite the strong objections of Anderson, Hawn and the other producers.

“I must tell you I love ABC, but I miss that scene,” Hawn said. “I did my best to try to get it back in, but sometimes you’re fighting city hall. It was very touching, very sad, and I think maybe they didn’t want to end on a sad note. But the idea of those two coming back together showed that she was always by his side--even all those years later. It was really the coda to this movie: that love can prevail, that your opponents are also potential loved ones.”

King thinks often of that conversation, because it was the first time Riggs came to understand exactly how much he contributed to society by losing the match. “He said, ‘We really did make a difference, didn’t we?,’ ” King remembered. “Bobby finally got it.”

After Riggs’ loss, Kuhle says, his friend went through a six-month depression, never recapturing the glory of that day. King, meanwhile, was about to experience a media blitz, for which she was unprepared, upon being very publicly outed as a lesbian.

During the years that followed, King rejected dozens of offers to dramatize that painful chapter of her life, but now King says she is ready to see that story told.

“At the time, all they wanted to do was sleaze,” she said. “But now . . . maybe. I feel I have one important thing left to accomplish . . . although I’m not sure what that is yet. Holly and Jane have become such great friends that it would be wonderful to work with them again. So who knows?”

Hunter, for her part, would welcome a rematch. “Boy, I’d die to play Billie Jean again,” she said. “That would be like this [movie] was a rehearsal.”

*

“When Billie Beat Bobby” will air tonight at 9 on ABC. The network has rated it TV-14-L (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 14, with an advisory for coarse language).