Pod Insights My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark Bonus Episode - Hedy Lamarr and Billie Jean King About this episode Georgia covers actor and inventor Hedy Lamarr and Karen tells the story of tennis champion Billie Jean King and the Battle of the Sexes.
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Transcript 10,907 words · 3 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:06 Karen Kilgariff? Even when you hate everything, it's hard not to love Hyundai's electric EV lineup.
0:10 Georgia Hardstark? From smart safety tech to long-term warranties, Hyundai's EVs are built to impress.
0:15 Karen Kilgariff? Hyundai's electric EV lineup includes advanced safety features like Highway Driving Assist 2 and Blind Spot Collision Avoidance Assist, available on models like the Ioniq 5, Ioniq 5N, and Ioniq 9.
0:26 Georgia Hardstark? Hyundai's EVs come with America's best warranty, including a 10-year or 100,000-mile powertrain limited warranty. Learn more about Hyundai EVs at HyundaiUSA.com. Call 562-314-4603 for complete details.
0:40 Karen Kilgariff? America's best warranty claim based on total package of warranty programs. See dealer for limited warranty details. See your Hyundai dealer for further details and limitations.
0:48 Georgia Hardstark? Goodbye.
1:06 Karen Kilgariff? Hello and welcome.
1:08 Georgia Hardstark? To my favorite murder.
1:10 Karen Kilgariff? That's Georgia Hardstark.
1:11 Georgia Hardstark? That's Karen Kilgariff.
1:12 Karen Kilgariff? And this is a very special episode.
1:14 Georgia Hardstark? That's right. This is a bonus episode. Surprise.
1:18 Karen Kilgariff? That's right. It means you're getting more stories. You didn't earn it, but you deserve it.
1:23 Georgia Hardstark? So this episode is presented by Hyundai.
1:26 Karen Kilgariff? That's right. Thank you, Hyundai, for making this storytelling bonus happen.
1:29 Georgia Hardstark? So for today's theme, for this bonus episode, we thought it'd be fun to connect our stories through a shared thread. Both of them feature people who were innovators, pioneers, and just generally ahead of their time.
1:41 Karen Kilgariff? Yes, people who saw things differently and acted on it.
1:44 Georgia Hardstark? That's right.
1:44 Karen Kilgariff? And are women.
1:46 Georgia Hardstark? So thank you, Hyundai, for this bonus episode. Thanks for listening, and let's get into it.
1:51 Karen Kilgariff? Let's do it.
1:51 Georgia Hardstark? All right. I'm excited about the theme of this because it's a story I've always wanted to cover. It is about a really incredible innovator and a woman who is, by all, what's the word?
2:01 Karen Kilgariff? Accounts.
2:02 Georgia Hardstark? A badass. Thank you. So today's story is about an actress who is known as the most beautiful woman in the world. For decades, her name was synonymous with beauty, glamour, and sex appeal. She was even said to be the inspiration for both Catwoman, woman, and women. Catwoman everywhere. And Snow White.
2:20 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, wow.
2:21 Georgia Hardstark? And over those same decades, while everyone knew her name, virtually no one knew that she invented the necessary precursor to some of the most ubiquitous technology that we use today, including Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. This is the story of legendary screen actress and equally legendary inventor, Hedy Lamarr.
2:39 Karen Kilgariff? It's such a cool opportunity to be able to talk about her. But I truly think she is one of the most perfect-looking women.
2:46 Georgia Hardstark? It's ridiculous. Like, this movie, I watched the Bombshell, the Hedy Lamarr story documentary. And like, every time you see her on screen, your breath is taken away at how gorgeous she is.
2:55 Karen Kilgariff? But then, the brain.
2:56 Georgia Hardstark? Then there's a brain as well. She's a very complicated woman. And the main source I used for the story is a 2017 American Masters documentary called Bombshell, The Hedy Lamarr Story. And the rest of the sources can be found in the show notes. So Hedy is born Hedwig, bring that name back.
3:11 Karen Kilgariff? I mean.
3:12 Georgia Hardstark? Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler. She's born in 1914 in Venice, Austria. Nope, in Vienna, Austria. Her parents are both born Jewish, but it seems like she's raised not very religious or both kind of more or less secular, which is really common in Vienna at the time. And it seems like that was the place to be in that time period. Post-World War I, pre-World War II, and all the atrocities, like, this place was it. Both of her parents had come from humble roots but had gotten good educations. And her father is the manager of a major bank in Vienna. And so Hedy has a really close, loving relationship with him. And he really, like, you know, wants her to get her education and is very, like, you know, supportive of that. So one day, when she's five years old, Hedy takes her music box apart and then successfully puts it back together.
3:57 Georgia Hardstark? I never could do that second part of it.
4:00 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, it's fun to take things apart, that's for sure.
4:02 Georgia Hardstark? And this sparks a lifelong interest in engineering. So her father walks her around Vienna and points out all the technology, the streetcars, the electric cables, and explains to her how they work. And so she's just super smart right off the bat. She grows up in a part of Vienna that's heavily populated with artists and intellectuals, many of whom are Jewish, but also secular. And this means it's a fairly progressive society. Nudity and sexuality in the arts isn't really taboo, you know, like cabaret. Think of that.
4:30 Karen Kilgariff? Musical, yeah.
4:31 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. It's generally agreed upon that if Hetty had been less beautiful, maybe she would have become a scientist, but she grows up in this arts-focused culture. And because as a teenager, she starts to become incredibly gorgeous, that she just has to become a model and be in movies almost, like, you know.
4:47 Karen Kilgariff? Should we see a picture of her?
4:48 Georgia Hardstark? Yes.
4:49 Karen Kilgariff? Just so everybody knows.
4:51 Georgia Hardstark? I mean. So beautiful.
4:55 Karen Kilgariff? It's crazy.
4:56 Georgia Hardstark? She looks like Elizabeth Taylor meets.
5:00 Karen Kilgariff? Vivien Leigh.
5:00 Georgia Hardstark? Yes, exactly.
5:02 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. Those perfect kind of petite faces.
5:04 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
5:05 Karen Kilgariff? Also, God bless anyone that can do a part down the center. It cannot be me.
5:10 Georgia Hardstark? It's amazing.
5:12 Georgia Hardstark? Hetty is very good at being on film, and as somewhat a wild teenager, she enjoys all this attention. When she's 16, she walks into one of the biggest movie studios in Vienna, and within days, she's getting roles in movies. It was that easy back then.
5:24 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, when you're hot, sure.
5:26 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, when you're that beautiful. When Hetty's just 18 years old in 1933, she stars in a movie called Ecstasy, which is about a bored housewife who has a sexual awakening. And this film kind of follows her for the rest of her life. It includes a wide shot of her running naked in the woods, a topless moment, and a close-up of her face while she's basically having an orgasm, which is just like unheard of and so scandalous to everyone outside of this society that's just, you know, really progressive. This, of course, is way too much for American audiences, you know? They yank at their pearls. The film is banned in America because of the sex, and it's banned in Nazi Germany because Hetty's Jewish.
6:09 Georgia Hardstark? So this film gets a lot of attention. And it seems like Hetty had a bad experience on set as well, so it's just kind of, it sucks. Like, you wonder what her life would have been like if she hadn't done this specific film. In 1934, right after shooting this movie Ecstasy, Hetty, who is 19, marries an Austrian munitions baron named Fritz Mandl. So Fritz is older, he's divorced, he like wants this beautiful woman on his arm, essentially 19-year-old. He sells weapons to the Nazis and is extraordinarily wealthy, but he's also Jewish. But he comes from this long line of munitions barons, right? So what do you do? So Hitler won't personally associate with him,
6:51 Georgia Hardstark? but it's kind of gray area in the beginning of Hitler's regime.
6:55 Karen Kilgariff? Well, yeah, I mean, there's plenty of how many companies that still exist today exist because they did exactly that thing.
7:01 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
7:02 Karen Kilgariff? With Hitler.
7:03 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
7:03 Karen Kilgariff? Crazy. And used slave labor, all that stuff.
7:06 Georgia Hardstark? Totally. So as you might expect, from an arms dealer to the Nazis, Fritz is not the nicest man. He's extremely jealous and possessive of Hetty. He instructs household staff to listen in on her phone calls. Anytime she says the word "acting", he, they tell, have to tell him and he, she gets, you know, in trouble. She's expected to look nice at dinner parties and do little else. And she does attend some meetings with him if he needs her to look good on his arm. And at these meetings, she learns a bit about torpedoes and how they work. So she's still like chasing, you know, knowledge, even though it's kind of being banned from her life. She learns that torpedoes need to be guided by radio frequencies, but that this makes them detectable to enemies who can jam those frequencies.
7:50 Georgia Hardstark? She can't stop thinking about this idea and how one might evade detection by changing frequencies quickly enough. But her husband isn't interested in her thoughts on the matter.
7:59 Karen Kilgariff? It's all yap yap yap to him.
8:01 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. So you can imagine, like, if she had gone to college, gone to school, gotten an education in engineering and science, you know, she would have gone on to do even bigger things, but she figured it out on her own. She stays married to Fritz for about three years. Then her father dies of a heart attack. And it's just completely devastating to Hetty. So she's like, I gotta get out of this life. This isn't where I'm supposed to be. She's watched after so carefully that she has to actually have, plan an escape from the home. And she does this. First, she sews all of her jewelry into the lining of her coat. And then one night, she hires a maid who looks like her.
8:37 Karen Kilgariff? Mm-hmm.
8:38 Georgia Hardstark? One night, she puts sleeping powder in the maid's tea. And basically like puts her to bed, takes the maid's outfit, puts it on and takes off in the night.
8:48 Karen Kilgariff? Thank you so much with her coat up like this. Thank you so much.
8:51 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. You want to be like, good for her, but it's also the maid is just like wakes up in the morning.
8:56 Karen Kilgariff? Do we know for a fact that the maid wasn't in on it?
8:58 Georgia Hardstark? I mean, maybe she was like, yeah, I'll do it.
9:00 Karen Kilgariff? Dang.
9:01 Georgia Hardstark? Put me out.
9:01 Karen Kilgariff? Red flag for your job, number one. You look exactly like the lady interviewing you.
9:06 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
9:06 Karen Kilgariff? Don't do it.
9:07 Georgia Hardstark? And you get sleepy around her all the time. So she rides off into the night on her bicycle and escapes her abusive marriage. At just 21, she flees to London where she lives with some family friends. And then one night she goes to a movie and sees the MGM lion at the beginning of the movie and she's just impressed with the movie and she's like, I want to do that. So she tries to get a job with that studio. And as we know, the studio is headed by Louis B. Mayer. So it's metrical to Mayer. And he's actually in town in London at the time for a short visit and he's trying to recruit European actors who are fleeing the Nazis. Many of them don't speak great English and are desperate to get out of Europe. So he's able to sign them with like really predatory contracts. I mean.
9:52 Karen Kilgariff? That's dark.
9:53 Georgia Hardstark? It's so dark. And he's Jewish himself and he's, you know.
9:57 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, I'm sure there's a justification in some ways, but like at least I'm doing something.
10:01 Georgia Hardstark? Absolutely. You could be looked at in different ways for sure.
10:03 Karen Kilgariff? Why not just a nice contract? This is the wave of the future. I'm positive it's coming.
10:08 Georgia Hardstark? Let's hear it.
10:09 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, just that people get into that position. They're like, we're going to do some nice contracts.
10:13 Georgia Hardstark? Everyone's going to be happy.
10:14 Karen Kilgariff? They're going to be able to buy a house after this.
10:16 Georgia Hardstark? No one's going to feel used.
10:17 Karen Kilgariff? They're going to love it and they're going to love the arts. It's going to be worth it.
10:22 Georgia Hardstark? Hetty has offered one of these contracts. It's not as bad because she's already been in movies and stuff. It's $125 a week is what she's offered, which in today's money.
10:32 Karen Kilgariff? This was in the 30s?
10:33 Georgia Hardstark? Uh, yeah.
10:34 Karen Kilgariff? Six hundred dollars a week?
10:35 Georgia Hardstark? Two thousand eight hundred ninety-seven.
10:37 Karen Kilgariff? Shit.
10:38 Georgia Hardstark? So that's a lot of money a week.
10:39 Karen Kilgariff? That's like, union rates.
10:41 Georgia Hardstark? Totally. But it's not enough for her. She's like, I'm actually talented and beautiful and have experience. But she does want the job. So she storms out and like, leaves an impression that way and then finds out that mayor will be leaving London on the specific ship, the SS Normandy. So she books a one-way ticket on that ship and then make sure to run into him throughout.
11:04 Karen Kilgariff? All she has to do. She's a hot lady.
11:07 Georgia Hardstark? She puts on her tennis clothes and her bathing suit.
11:10 Karen Kilgariff? Yep.
11:10 Georgia Hardstark? And just happens to walk by him all the time.
11:13 Karen Kilgariff? And a nice red lip.
11:14 Georgia Hardstark? That's right.
11:14 Karen Kilgariff? She's done and done.
11:15 Georgia Hardstark? One night, she enters the dining room in her, you know, beautiful clothes that she had already and her beautiful face and walks in and then everyone turns to stare at her.
11:23 Karen Kilgariff? Stop, pause, look at the ceiling.
11:25 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
11:26 Karen Kilgariff? Imagine yourself on the ceiling.
11:27 Georgia Hardstark? She knows it. Like, god, that feeling.
11:30 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
11:31 Georgia Hardstark? And so, he offers her a contract for five hundred dollars a week by the end of the trip.
11:37 Karen Kilgariff? He ups it by two hundred?
11:38 Georgia Hardstark? It was one twenty-five and now it's five hundred.
11:40 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, oh, okay.
11:41 Georgia Hardstark? Which is eleven thousand five hundred eighty-eight dollars in today's money a week.
11:45 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, hell yeah.
11:46 Georgia Hardstark? So, it works.
11:47 Karen Kilgariff? Okay, great.
11:47 Georgia Hardstark? And he and his wife come up with her name, because she needs a fancy name, so it's Hetty Lamar, after a different actress who had tragically died and Lamar means the sea, so Hetty Lamar.
11:59 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
11:59 Georgia Hardstark? Because they're at the sea. I don't know. It's pretty good. When you're thinking about getting your first EV or upgrading to your next one, the big question is always the same.
12:09 Karen Kilgariff? Will this car actually work for my life?
12:11 Georgia Hardstark? Hyundai's electric EV lineup has plenty of options that fit how people actually live and drive.
12:16 Karen Kilgariff? From the ultra-fast charging and long range of the Ioniq 5, to the spacious luxurious cabin of the Ioniq 9, to the super-powerful Ioniq 5N.
12:25 Georgia Hardstark? Across the lineup, Hyundai's EVs include advanced safety technology like Highway Driving Assist 2 and Blind Spot Collision Avoidance Assist. Available on the Ioniq 5, Ioniq 5N, and Ioniq 9.
12:37 Karen Kilgariff? Hyundai's EVs come with America's best warranty, including a 10-year or 100,000-mile powertrain limited warranty.
12:43 Georgia Hardstark? With performance. Comfort and confidence built in its love at first charge with Hyundai's electric EV lineup.
12:49 Karen Kilgariff? Learn more about Hyundai EVs at HyundaiUSA.com. Call 562-314-4603 for complete details.
12:56 Georgia Hardstark? America's best warranty claim based on total package of warranty programs. See dealer for limited warranty details. See your Hyundai dealer for further details and limitations.
13:04 Karen Kilgariff? Goodbye.
13:07 Georgia Hardstark? Hetty finds her footing in a film called Algiers in which she plays a glamorous jewel thief. What should we take a look at another photo?
13:14 Karen Kilgariff? No brag, but those are the eyebrows I had in the 90s. You can tell the remnants are still there, but man.
13:20 Georgia Hardstark? Pencil thin.
13:20 Karen Kilgariff? We went that thin in the 90s.
13:23 Georgia Hardstark? Imagine she looked that good with thin eyebrows, what she'd look like with normal eyebrows, even better.
13:28 Karen Kilgariff? If she had those big, tall, laminated ones.
13:31 Georgia Hardstark? The tat, tatted on. Okay, in 1939, when she's 23, she marries a screenwriter named Gene Markey and they adopt a son together. She ends up having a lot of marriages and it's one of those sad stories like, you know, Marilyn Monroe, where they just never seem to work.
13:48 Karen Kilgariff? Such a weird time for women in marriage, though, because she's making $11,000 a week.
13:52 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
13:53 Karen Kilgariff? So she doesn't need to be doing anything. She probably has to.
13:56 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, and it seems like this dude that she married, everyone was like, him? And she was like, he's nice to me and he reminds me of my dad. He immediately starts cheating, like she even tries to make the right, you know, not some fancy actor. Not a munitions veteran.
14:11 Karen Kilgariff? A smart guy, a writer.
14:12 Georgia Hardstark? This is a safe bet.
14:13 Karen Kilgariff? You fool.
14:14 Georgia Hardstark? Nope.
14:14 Karen Kilgariff? They're the worst every time.
14:16 Georgia Hardstark? That's true.
14:16 Karen Kilgariff? They're the worst every time.
14:17 Georgia Hardstark? Every man is entitled. It's on some level. So he starts dating other actresses and the marriage ends. In 1940, Hetty now has a huge year with MGM, first appearing in the movie Boomtown, which is a massive hit. And she stars in several more movies that year, working under that brutal studio system that we've heard so much about, but she's just working her butt off. And in order to perform for long hours, she's given amphetamines. It's the, you know.
14:43 Karen Kilgariff? The usual.
14:43 Georgia Hardstark? The usual, and then given sleeping pills at night to help her sleep. But she doesn't sleep. She goes home and works on inventions. She has an invention like desk in her house.
14:53 Karen Kilgariff? Nice.
14:53 Georgia Hardstark? Where she has all her like, science things. And has one in her studio on set as well, where she can go and tinker between takes. Because she wants to do science stuff.
15:05 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
15:06 Georgia Hardstark? After her marriage to Jean fails, Hetty, she starts dating Howard Hughes.
15:10 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
15:10 Georgia Hardstark? The aviation tycoon. Do you know a lot about him?
15:12 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, I watched The Aviator, so I know everything Leonardo DiCaprio has allowed me to know about him. But incredible innovator, serious mental illness, right?
15:23 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
15:23 Karen Kilgariff? That kind of went unchecked.
15:24 Georgia Hardstark? I think so, yeah. She says he's a, quote, "very strange man."
15:28 Karen Kilgariff? Oh.
15:28 Georgia Hardstark? But they do get along really well.
15:30 Karen Kilgariff? Give us examples.
15:31 Georgia Hardstark? I know. They say something like, "Hughes a bad lover," and I'm like, "What does that mean? Does that mean, on what level?" There's so many levels where he could be.
15:38 Karen Kilgariff? He keeps making airplane noises just the whole time.
15:42 Georgia Hardstark? Right. But they do get along intellectually. He is, you know, someone she can talk to about science and interesting things like that. And he gives her access to his workforce of scientists for whatever invention she wants to make. And in fact, she helps him design a faster plane. She takes a look at what he's designed. It's got these square wings, and she's like, "That doesn't make sense." And so she finds the fastest bird and the fastest fish and sketches out a drawing of like, what the two would look like as a plane. And that kind of becomes the plane that we know today. Like, he uses it.
16:15 Karen Kilgariff? Holy shit.
16:16 Georgia Hardstark? And he calls her a genius.
16:17 Karen Kilgariff? She is a genius, it sounds like.
16:19 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. Throughout her adulthood, she's always tinkering with chemistry and with ideas. By 1940, World War II is in full swing, although America has not yet entered. And Hetty's mother has escaped Vienna and is living in London. So Hetty's trying to get her mom from London, which still isn't safe for her, to the US. But it's incredibly dangerous for those ships that are crossing to America because German U-boats can and will torpedo civilian ships making that crossing. So you have that issue. And then also, supply ships are being torpedoed and sunk. And it's kind of at a point where we're losing the war because we can't get the supplies. We can't get, you know, people out of there in time. So Hetty comes up with this idea that she had had of frequency hopping
17:04 Georgia Hardstark? with help from a professor at Caltech in Pasadena.
17:07 Karen Kilgariff? Oh.
17:08 Georgia Hardstark? Guiding the torpedoes with frequencies that constantly change that can't be jammed. So she meets a commander. Composer named George Antyle. And together, they come up with a way to make this frequency hopping system work, inspired by a method George has used and figured out of synchronizing player pianos. So you know, when you see the like dashes that are all the way across the line. So if those are in secret order, then if they jam the radio frequency, it doesn't matter only jamming it for this, you know, amount of time because it's hopping so often. So you can't jam the whole thing.
17:40 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
17:41 Georgia Hardstark? And so that way they're easier to control.
17:44 Karen Kilgariff? They always go. Yeah. Like a player piano, they just keep going.
17:47 Georgia Hardstark? Right. So George and Hetty patented this idea. They presented to the Navy, but it's rejected as being impractical. They kind of laughed them off. They were like, what do you think? This isn't a player piano. It's a torpedo. And then also Hetty is from Austria. And so they also seize the patent because it's a property. They say I'm an enemy alien.
18:08 Karen Kilgariff? Oh.
18:09 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. She's not from here. They think she could be a spy. She's made this patent and tried to give it to them.
18:15 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
18:15 Georgia Hardstark? And they're like, no.
18:16 Karen Kilgariff? We'll get you.
18:17 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
18:18 Karen Kilgariff? And then it's like, yeah, now we're on to you. Or it's like, right, you're on to me, the person who came and gave you this idea.
18:24 Georgia Hardstark? And, you know, she's not American enough for them. But then they're also like, hey, can you use your good looks and celebrity to sell war bonds?
18:31 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
18:32 Georgia Hardstark? And she does.
18:33 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, imagine how many ideas and inventions and things have been lost at time because the kind of patriarchy in this system just couldn't entertain the idea of a woman having a good idea.
18:43 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
18:44 Karen Kilgariff? Just a real loss.
18:45 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. Or had too much of an ego to like, agree and allow it. It's frustrating. Can we have our own planet, please?
18:53 Karen Kilgariff? No.
18:55 Georgia Hardstark? Thank you.
18:56 Karen Kilgariff? Make it work.
18:56 Georgia Hardstark? That sounds right. In 1943, Hetty marries a British actor named John Loder. They are together until 1947. They have two children. Everyone says he's really dull compared to her vivaciousness and intelligence. So then she has another brief marriage after that. But what?
19:15 Karen Kilgariff? I like the way you said that, like, because everyone said he was dull. She's like, fine, I'll divorce him. Like, I'll get somebody else.
19:22 Georgia Hardstark? And so Hetty has a bumpy relationship with Louis B. Mayer. I think a lot of actresses probably did. And she gets a reputation for being difficult.
19:30 Karen Kilgariff? Difficult.
19:30 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. Because she doesn't let people push her around. So in the late 40s, she produces two movies on her own, which is pretty much unheard of at the time, but she's not getting the parts she wants. And so she does it herself, which pisses off May or even more. And in 1949, she does get the movie Sampson and Delilah. It's a massive hit. It renews her career. And then right after that, she produces and stars in The Love of Three Queens. And it's just this huge, expensive production that she undertakes. It doesn't get a distribution, and she loses a lot of money from it. At this point, she's kind of struggling financially. So in 1952, when she's 38, she marries an oil tycoon named W. Howard Lee, which is like, she kind of is like, this is my life now.
20:15 Karen Kilgariff? She can.
20:15 Georgia Hardstark? Need to support my children.
20:17 Karen Kilgariff? You're gonna hit that money button if you, if it is within your reach.
20:20 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. And she like, has to move to Texas with him. And it sounds almost like a Green Acres kind of a thing. Not so much.
20:27 Karen Kilgariff? Get the movie star and get her to move back to Texas.
20:29 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, exactly. She does become estranged from her first child, the adopted son she had with Gene, her second husband. He goes off to boarding school and ultimately kind of is taken in by another family. And so it's kind of not spoken of anymore. It's just kind of sad. And so eventually Hetty's marriage to the Texan, Lee also fails, and she has two other short marriages after that. In the 1950s, she starts to struggle more profoundly with her mental health and with substance abuse, which of course had been introduced to her by professionals at the MGM studio. In the late 50s and 60s, when she's in her 40s, this all takes a huge toll, and she has several breakdowns. In the
21:08 Georgia Hardstark? 60s, she also becomes a patient of Dr. Max Jacobson, aka Dr. Feelgood, who I actually covered in episode 349. I was surprised to hear that.
21:20 Karen Kilgariff? And it was relatively recent.
21:21 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, it's called A Bit of Stew. 2022, that's not recently.
21:25 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, god damn.
21:26 Georgia Hardstark? I don't know where my brain was at the time.
21:28 Karen Kilgariff? That was, we were on Zoom. That was like, the blank years.
21:31 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, we should skip that and rewind. Just skip the whole pandemic.
21:34 Karen Kilgariff? Pretend it never happened.
21:35 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. So he does this evil thing where he tells people that he's injecting them with a vitamin shot. Vitamin B. To pep you up and it's just meth.
21:43 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
21:44 Georgia Hardstark? And gets all these people addicted to meth. So Hetty's behavior in the sixties and seventies becomes very erratic and unstable. It's hard on her kids, but her daughter says, quote, "Now I can be forgiving of that erratic behavior because she was a victim of the very system that made her famous." And she's actually arrested for shoplifting in nineteen sixty-six in this weird, like Winona Ryder style way that it's like, did she or didn't she? She gets acquitted, but it definitely tarnishes her reputation.
22:11 Karen Kilgariff? I mean, it's that kind of shoplifting where it's like, you don't need anything.
22:15 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
22:15 Karen Kilgariff? And you're clearly doing it for like the dopamine hit.
22:17 Georgia Hardstark? Right. Or she had a bunch of money on her too. It's like, was it a misunderstanding it could have been?
22:22 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
22:23 Georgia Hardstark? Or did she just like walk out thinking, I'm Hetty Lamar. I must have like a tab open.
22:27 Karen Kilgariff? Right, exactly.
22:28 Georgia Hardstark? You don't do things for yourself like that back then.
22:30 Karen Kilgariff? I think the Winona Ryder one, it reminded me of like, when somebody is a star, back then, that level of a star where literally everyone does everything for you.
22:38 Georgia Hardstark? Gives you whatever you want.
22:39 Karen Kilgariff? All the time.
22:39 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
22:40 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
22:40 Georgia Hardstark? As she gets older, she starts to struggle with her identity. She's always been appreciated primarily for her beauty. And now that it's starting to fade, you know, through her eyes, she starts to get cosmetic procedures. And in fact, she dictates to the surgeon how she thinks the procedures should be done. And she ends up making plastic surgery. She advances it by being like, you should do the incision here. You should do the incision here. Here's where you should hide this. Here's where you should enhance this. And she actually looks amazing, even after she's gotten some work done.
23:13 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
23:13 Georgia Hardstark? I mean, she looks in today's standards incredible.
23:16 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
23:16 Georgia Hardstark? But of course, the press is still relentless, still photographs her every time she leaves the house. It's kind of just worst case scenario. All the bad stories you hear from back then happens to her. And she becomes reclusive and she starts to look less and less like herself, the more procedures she gets.
23:33 Karen Kilgariff? Right.
23:33 Georgia Hardstark? So in the eighties, when she's in her seventies, Hetty struggles more, especially as her money starts to run out. But she returns to thinking about her original frequency hopping patent. And she's pretty sure it's been used. And so if you use the patent, you have to pay for it.
23:49 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
23:50 Georgia Hardstark? That's kind of the understanding when you file. The patent.
23:52 Karen Kilgariff? That's that thing about patents.
23:53 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, if the US government uses it, they have to pay you for it. And she knows that by the 60s, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Navy had been using frequency hopping. So this would mean that they had used it before her patent had expired in 1959, but she expects that they had used it before, which would mean it hadn't expired yet. And so she is owed money. So in 1990, when Hetty's 75, a reporter named Fleming Meeks, who works at Forbes at the time, is talking with his father, who's an astrophysicist at MIT. And his father tells him he had just learned something interesting from a colleague, that actress Hetty Lamar had been a brilliant and prolific inventor. So Fleming, the journalist, is hooked on this idea, and he tracks Hetty down. He coaxes her out of her shell by sending
24:38 Georgia Hardstark? her a bouquet of roses. He kind of sweet talks her and then gets this long interview with her on tape, which you can hear in the documentary, where she talks about all of her inventions, her life, all the incredible things she's been through, how she feels about them. And she talks about her suspicions that the Navy had used her patent. So the article runs that year, and it's the first time the public ever finds out about Hetty Lamar's inventions. You know, she had been keeping it to herself. Over the course of the 90s and into 2000s, frequency hopping is being used for an explosion of technologies that we now use all the time. GPS is a big one, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth. Hetty's idea is at the foundation of this
25:20 Georgia Hardstark? technology. Do we have a photo of the plans? Because I know Karen loves scientific. There you go.
25:25 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, I love a blueprint.
25:26 Georgia Hardstark? Here's a blueprint. Do with it what you will.
25:29 Karen Kilgariff? This is her just like as she's filming, and then in her dressing room, she's like, do to do, just some thoughts. What a genius.
25:36 Georgia Hardstark? I know. And that's just one of very many. So our most secure military communications are done with a satellite system that was built using Hetty's patent, though the patent had long expired. In 1997, the Navy, Millstar, which is a satellite communications company, and Lockheed Martin want to present Hetty with an award for all her work, but she declines appearing at the ceremony. She's kind of a recluse and won't leave her house. And so her son accepts the award for her. And she says, quote, "I am happy that this invention has been so successful. I appreciate your acknowledgement of you honoring me. And it was not done in vain. Thank you," end quote. So that's kind of all she gets.
26:19 Georgia Hardstark? Hetty dies peacefully in the year 2000 at the age of 85, without ever knowing for sure if her patent had been used before it expired.
26:26 Karen Kilgariff? It had.
26:28 Georgia Hardstark? It's only after that a military contractor says that he was handed Hetty's patent by a Navy official in 1955 and asked to see if it was good for anything. So he didn't know it was her patent. This was four years before the patent had expired. So just like she had thought it had been used. He used it actually to create something called a sono buoy. You know what that is? It's a buoy that communicates securely with aircraft.
26:55 Karen Kilgariff? Sure.
26:56 Georgia Hardstark? It's just, it was used.
26:57 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
26:58 Georgia Hardstark? He had been unaware of the patent implications or that Hetty had not been paid. And it only comes to light when he creates a website explicitly thanking Hetty Lamar for her inventions and says, "Without you and this invention, we would have never been able to create that initial secure communication system."
27:14 Karen Kilgariff? Wow.
27:15 Georgia Hardstark? So she was right all along.
27:16 Karen Kilgariff? Confirmed from the inside.
27:18 Georgia Hardstark? That's right. So that is the story of Hetty Lamar, who was a great beauty, of course, but also, more importantly, an innovator and an inventor.
27:26 Karen Kilgariff? Wow, I love that. That's incredible.
27:31 Karen Kilgariff? So this story begins on September 19th, 1973. A 29-year-old Southern California woman sits alone in the Astrodome's nosebleed section. She's here to study the building because tomorrow she'll be competing. She's looking at the incredibly high ceilings, the intense lighting, and she tries to imagine the booming sound of the packed house that will be there the next day. Then she looks down toward the floor level and sees herself facing off with her competitor in front of millions of people, knowing that this isn't an ordinary match. Everything is actually on the line. This is the story of the cultural moment when legendary athletes...
28:11 Karen Kilgariff? Elite feminist and LGBTQ plus icon Billie Jean King wins the Battle of the Sexes tennis match.
28:18 Georgia Hardstark? Hell, yeah.
28:19 Karen Kilgariff? Do you know about this?
28:20 Georgia Hardstark? No, I know the story not very well.
28:23 Karen Kilgariff? Okay.
28:23 Georgia Hardstark? I'm excited.
28:24 Karen Kilgariff? Let me get to the details.
28:25 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
28:25 Karen Kilgariff? So, the sources used in the show today are Billie Jean King's autobiography. It's called All In and her website, billiejeanking.com. We went to the source.
28:34 Georgia Hardstark? Got it.
28:35 Karen Kilgariff? But there are other ones and they're in our show notes. So, Billie Jean Moffett, which is her maiden name, is born in Long Beach, California in 1943. And as she grows up, she discovers her love for sports like softball and basketball. But she doesn't pick up tennis until she's a preteen, when her friend Susan asks if she wants to come with her for a lesson at Long Beach's Virginia Country Club. Did you know there are country clubs down in Long Beach?
29:00 Georgia Hardstark? No.
29:01 Karen Kilgariff? I didn't either. So, her friends and their family are members. Billie Jean is not a member of this or any other country club. Her family, self-described blue collar family. Her dad's a fireman. Her mom is a homemaker. So, tennis is basically a sport that she's just not been exposed to.
29:17 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
29:18 Karen Kilgariff? It's basically at this time for the elite.
29:21 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
29:21 Karen Kilgariff? It's a secret, secret sport. And according to her, for this first lesson, Billie Jean is not good at tennis. But something clicks inside her and later on, she's going to write, quote, "I liked the variety and mental challenge. I liked being able to hit the ball over and over. Tennis fascinated me from the first day I played with Susan using a borrowed racket." End quote. So, she is, obviously has a natural aptitude for the game. She's very competitive. She's always working to improve and because of this, she starts to win a lot. But it is 1955. So, even though Billie Jean is proving herself on the court, she's treated very differently than the young male athletes that she competes around.
30:03 Karen Kilgariff? When she's just 12 years old, she goes to the exclusive Los Angeles Tennis Club. Have you ever been there?
30:08 Georgia Hardstark? Mm-mm.
30:09 Karen Kilgariff? Me either. And she's wearing a pair of shorts her mother made for her. And she's told those shorts are in violation of the club's dress code for girls and women, which requires them to wear either a tennis dress or a tennis skirt. Gross. So then later, when the other young tennis players gather for a group photo, she is excluded from that photo.
30:29 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
30:30 Karen Kilgariff? Another time, also at the Los Angeles Tennis Club, they have lunch arranged for the top-ranked players, which Billie Jean should be involved with, but it's just for the boys. So Billie Jean and her mom eat bag lunches outside on a bench.
30:44 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, my god.
30:45 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. But wherever Billie Jean plays tennis, sexism and double standards follow. One of her teachers dox points off of her grades because, as they say, quote, "Billie Jean occasionally takes advantage of her superior ability during recess tennis games."
31:00 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, my god.
31:02 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
31:02 Georgia Hardstark? She's upsetting boys by being too good at it.
31:04 Karen Kilgariff? Yep, they get real upset.
31:06 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, my god.
31:07 Karen Kilgariff? She will later write about it, saying, quote, "Pursuing your goals as a girl or a woman often meant being pricked and dogged by slights like that." End quote. So she had to get used to it from a very young age. But as she enters her teens, she's becoming aware of how other people are completely shut out of certain spaces, like the many tournaments that she competes in that are hosted at whites-only country clubs. She writes in her autobiography, quote, "I wondered how the people of color around me felt. When I was young, I'd seen photos of how the Little Rock Nine students had to walk past an angry white mob to desegregate their Arkansas school in 1957, or how six-year-old Ruby Bridges still had to be escorted daily by four federal marshals to attend classes
31:51 Karen Kilgariff? at her previously all-white New Orleans school. I knew the stories of how Althea Gibson and Jackie Robinson broke the color barriers in their respective sports, tennis and baseball." End quote. So, growing up with this backdrop of the civil rights movement, it imprints a huge sense of justice on Billie Jean King. She will write, quote, "Even if you're not a born activist, life can damn sure make you one."
32:14 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
32:14 Karen Kilgariff? "The older I got, the more I aspired to. There wasn't just unrest in the world around us. There was a storm gathering inside of me."
32:21 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
32:22 Karen Kilgariff? End quote. I totally remember this culturally, even though I was three years old when it happened.
32:27 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
32:28 Karen Kilgariff? So I was too young, but I think it kind of lived on.
32:31 Georgia Hardstark? Totally.
32:31 Karen Kilgariff? At least the next decade.
32:33 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
32:33 Karen Kilgariff? But I seem to remember like the vibe of it. Ultimately, Billie Jean King, as she began to fight for women's rights, had to like fight publicly
32:43 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
32:43 Karen Kilgariff? against really chauvinistic men about those rights.
32:46 Georgia Hardstark? You're not just fighting it in tennis. It's you're fighting the entire world, society.
32:52 Karen Kilgariff? You're like, yeah, you become the face of a fight like that.
32:55 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
32:55 Karen Kilgariff? Which is a lot of pressure.
32:56 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
32:57 Karen Kilgariff? Billie Jean graduates high school in 1961. And just weeks later, at 17 years old, she and 19-year-old Karen Hauntz win the women's doubles at Wimbledon. And they are the youngest to ever do it, and they still are to this day.
33:10 Georgia Hardstark? Holy shit.
33:11 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
33:11 Georgia Hardstark? Seventeen.
33:12 Karen Kilgariff? Seventeen and nineteen. They just go in and like destroy.
33:15 Georgia Hardstark? Damn.
33:16 Karen Kilgariff? With this win, Billie begins to shoot up the ranks of competitive tennis. She becomes the number three player in the United States. By 1966, when she's just 23 years old, she's the top-ranked female tennis player in the world. She wins Wimbledon's women's singles for the next three years in a row. In 1967, she wins what will be the precursor to the US Open, which are the US Nationals. And the next year, she wins the Australian Open. So she's dominating.
33:45 Georgia Hardstark? Nice.
33:45 Karen Kilgariff? And between all of those gigantic wins, she marries a law student named Larry King. No relation to Larry King. What if this was like a young Larry King? Pre-suspenders Larry King. So Larry supports Billie Jean's career wholeheartedly. But the tournament circuit is tough, and it's undeniably discriminatory to women athletes. Most notably, Billie Jean and her female peers are routinely paid less prize money than their male counterparts.
34:12 Georgia Hardstark? Sure.
34:13 Karen Kilgariff? So in 1970, 27-year-old Billie Jean makes a move. She and eight other female tennis players symbolically accept a $1 contract to join the Virginia Slims Tour.
34:25 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
34:26 Karen Kilgariff? So Virginia Slims.
34:27 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
34:27 Karen Kilgariff? Infamous ladies skinny cigarette.
34:30 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
34:30 Karen Kilgariff? That we all know and love decides to start a tennis tour with women only. It's a 19 city stop tennis tournament that travels across the United States and the cash prizes for the top athletes are all for just the women.
34:43 Georgia Hardstark? Great.
34:43 Karen Kilgariff? Basically, they just get their own kind of like prize bank and give it to themselves.
34:48 Georgia Hardstark? Got it.
34:48 Karen Kilgariff? These athletes still plan on playing the marquee tournaments of the year like the US Open and Wimbledon, but by leaving the traditional tournament circuit, they're putting their careers and their reputations in this intensely male dominated sports world at stake.
35:02 Georgia Hardstark? Well, it makes sense too what they're like, you're not going to pay us enough. We're going to go somewhere else where we get paid.
35:07 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
35:07 Georgia Hardstark? See how much money you lose.
35:08 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
35:08 Georgia Hardstark? Because we're not here anymore.
35:10 Karen Kilgariff? Right. And if you don't think we're that important.
35:12 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
35:12 Karen Kilgariff? We only deserve, you know, a 10th of the pot.
35:15 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
35:15 Karen Kilgariff? Then let's see what happens.
35:17 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
35:17 Karen Kilgariff? It's a huge move and it's that kind of thing. It can't be kind of underlined enough how it was not happening.
35:24 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
35:24 Karen Kilgariff? It had not, you know, very few other places where women asserting themselves.
35:29 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
35:29 Karen Kilgariff? In those situations. So now in addition to playing top notch tennis, these women have to work basically their asses off promoting the Virginia Slims tour, making sure there's butts in seats. So they sell, so then they have the big prize tournament to be competing for. In some cities, Billie Jean and her fellow athletes hand out free tickets to random pedestrians on the street, hoping they'll come and watch and basically get interested in women's tennis. And these efforts actually pay off with thousands of spectators showing up in every city, proving to male stakeholders that there is real public interest in women's sports.
36:04 Georgia Hardstark? Nice.
36:05 Karen Kilgariff? She must be so proud today. Watching season after season, these teams take off and these female athletes just become more and more in the public eye.
36:13 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
36:13 Karen Kilgariff? It's very cool that she's around to see it. All the while, Billie Jean King continues shattering the norms. In 1970, she makes history as the first female tennis player to earn more than $100,000 in prize money in a single season.
36:27 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
36:28 Karen Kilgariff? Do you want to guess how much that is in today's?
36:30 Georgia Hardstark? 894,000.
36:32 Karen Kilgariff? 850,000. I mean.
36:35 Georgia Hardstark? It's over.
36:36 Karen Kilgariff? You just won.
36:37 Georgia Hardstark? It's over.
36:39 Karen Kilgariff? Okay, so, nice one.
36:41 Georgia Hardstark? Thank you.
36:41 Karen Kilgariff? But don't celebrate too soon, because the gender pay gap still exists.
36:45 Georgia Hardstark? Oh.
36:45 Karen Kilgariff? Just two years later, Billie Jean wins the US Open and is paid $15,000 less in prize money than the male winner.
36:52 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
36:52 Karen Kilgariff? But instead of complaining, instead of whining, it just fuels her. She appears before Congress, fighting for the passing of Title IX, which bans sex-based discrimination in schools that receive federal dollars. So she goes to the root of this discrimination.
37:09 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, I love that it's like, not even specific to her and her career at that point. It's like, here's where it began for me, and here's where it begins for so many young girls.
37:17 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
37:17 Georgia Hardstark? Let's fucking kick it.
37:19 Karen Kilgariff? Let's fuck, get out of the fucking way.
37:20 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
37:21 Karen Kilgariff? And this passes in 1972, and it remains the law of the land today.
37:25 Georgia Hardstark? Amazing.
37:26 Karen Kilgariff? Although they chip, chip, chip away at it.
37:28 Georgia Hardstark? They sure do.
37:29 Karen Kilgariff? I didn't know this, this is so compelling to me. In 1973, Billie Jean King forms the Women's Tennis Association.
37:36 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
37:36 Karen Kilgariff? So gigantic.
37:37 Georgia Hardstark? She's just, you know what I'm gonna do now?
37:39 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, she was like, we gotta tighten this stuff up.
37:42 Georgia Hardstark? I have no excuse for my laziness.
37:45 Karen Kilgariff? Listen, you do three podcasts a week, it's not easy.
37:48 Georgia Hardstark? Thank you, I was fishing for that.
37:50 Karen Kilgariff? W, and you got it. Women's Tennis Association is responsible for, among other things, the fact that women get equal pay at the US Open now. That was one of the first things that, after they came into the world, they started fighting for that. And the US Open basically gave in the year that that discussion started.
38:09 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
38:09 Karen Kilgariff? Like, basically immediately. And so the US Open was the first major tournament of any sport to award the same prize money to male and female competitors alike. And for a time like that, it was a huge, trailblazing victory for the equal rights of women. But you know, when women are making progress in the world, there's always gonna be an old bowling bag of a man who's gonna cry about it, isn't there?
38:30 Georgia Hardstark? An old bowling bag of a man.
38:33 Karen Kilgariff? And in this story, there is a true villain.
38:35 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
38:36 Karen Kilgariff? And a lot of people, there are theories that this was kind of-
38:39 Georgia Hardstark? PR.
38:40 Karen Kilgariff? Yes, it was churned up for press.
38:42 Georgia Hardstark? With photos?
38:43 Karen Kilgariff? We will.
38:43 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
38:44 Karen Kilgariff? But the thing that's funny, I'll show you that bowling bag for sure. What's funny about this is that it was such a part of the culture of, uh, women yap and get back into the kitchen type of stuff.
38:54 Georgia Hardstark? Totally. Men are for Mars, women are for Venus.
38:55 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. This ex-tennis player, whose career ended in 1939.
39:00 Georgia Hardstark? Jesus.
39:01 Karen Kilgariff? A man by the name of Bobby Riggs, he starts talking about when all of this kind of movement happens, anytime that he's like interviewed or talking, he does a lot of what they call, when you play the X something games, exposition games, what's the word I'm looking for?
39:17 Georgia Hardstark? X games?
39:18 Karen Kilgariff? No.
39:19 Georgia Hardstark? No. Exhibition?
39:21 Karen Kilgariff? Thank you, exhibition games, okay. His career had basically turned to playing exhibition games.
39:27 Georgia Hardstark? Right, he's like the Harlem Globetrotters of tennis.
39:29 Karen Kilgariff? Yes, but I don't think he was good like the Harlem Globetrotters. I mean, those guys fucking rocked. This guy, I think, was just around and had a big mouth.
39:37 Georgia Hardstark? Got it.
39:38 Karen Kilgariff? And so, uh...
39:39 Georgia Hardstark? That's all you have to do to be a man these days and to be successful.
39:42 Karen Kilgariff? That's right.
39:43 Georgia Hardstark? Be around.
39:44 Karen Kilgariff? These days?
39:45 Georgia Hardstark? Have a big mouth.
39:46 Karen Kilgariff? It's pretty much how it is. So, he just starts just spouting inflammatory sexist comments about women's tennis and the fight for equal pay in the sport, right? Because she's making progress.
39:56 Georgia Hardstark? Just shut the fuck up, dude.
39:57 Karen Kilgariff? His two big ones that he did were, he said women's tennis, quote, "stinks, you can see some pretty legs, but it's night and day compared to the men's game."
40:05 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
40:06 Karen Kilgariff? And, quote, "It's just very standard."
40:07 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
40:08 Karen Kilgariff? Another time, he's quoted as saying, "A woman's place is in the kitchen and the bedroom, and not necessarily in that order."
40:14 Georgia Hardstark? Gross, dude.
40:16 Karen Kilgariff? Right? Let's take a look at Bobby Riggs.
40:18 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, what's... He looks like fucking, what's his name? Austin Powers.
40:25 Karen Kilgariff? He's absolutely Austin Powers. He's, oh my god. I wonder if Mike Myers did that on purpose?
40:31 Georgia Hardstark? Dude.
40:32 Karen Kilgariff? Because it really is that kind of...
40:34 Georgia Hardstark? Caricature.
40:36 Karen Kilgariff? It's a caricature of a man who's like commenting on them, you have to respond simply because you won't stop doing it.
40:41 Georgia Hardstark? Right, but it's also like, you're commenting on women, like you're some kind of prize, dude?
40:46 Karen Kilgariff? It's like the concept of, I decide other people's value.
40:49 Georgia Hardstark? Right, but I don't have to do anything to make myself appealing in any way.
40:54 Karen Kilgariff? I stopped playing tennis 32 years ago, but I'm going to talk about how you shouldn't be playing tennis.
40:59 Georgia Hardstark? Totally.
40:59 Karen Kilgariff? Okay, so he's just fanning the flames of chauvinism for attention and relevance.
41:05 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
41:05 Karen Kilgariff? It's not a hard thing to do, never has been, especially as the women's movement is looming into the zeitgeist.
41:10 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
41:11 Karen Kilgariff? And men are very much put out by this concept of equality. They do not like it.
41:16 Georgia Hardstark? No, they have.
41:17 Karen Kilgariff? Never have. What? According to a quote from Billie Jean in a BBC.com article, she says that Bobby Riggs followed her around for two years, challenging her to play against him.
41:27 Georgia Hardstark? Ah.
41:28 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. Then he asks her to play on Mother's Day 1973, and in that offer, he refers to her as, quote, "the leading women's liber of tennis," end quote.
41:38 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
41:39 Karen Kilgariff? Billie Jean says, "I'm sorry, I don't know who you are." No, that's not true.
41:42 Georgia Hardstark? Oh.
41:43 Karen Kilgariff? Actually, Billie Jean King was always super classy. When she talked about Bobby Riggs, she was like, "He's a hero of mine. He's one of the greats of tennis."
41:52 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
41:52 Karen Kilgariff? Like, not in this, you know, when this kind of thing comes up.
41:56 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
41:56 Karen Kilgariff? But in general, she'd always looked up to him.
41:58 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
41:59 Karen Kilgariff? As like a hero of tennis. So it's really gross.
42:03 Georgia Hardstark? And then he just starts harassing her.
42:04 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, and kind of being like, "Oh, you think you're so big? Well, play against me, amen."
42:09 Georgia Hardstark? He's harassing and stalking her and playing it off like it's a game, like a playful flirtation.
42:14 Karen Kilgariff? Right. Basically, she just always says no and kind of "leave me alone."
42:18 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
42:18 Karen Kilgariff? So he challenges a different top-ranked female tennis player to this match on Mother's Day 1973. That player's name is Margaret Court. She's considered one of the best to ever play the game, but she had just been returning to competitive play after taking a year off to have a baby.
42:35 Georgia Hardstark? Jeez.
42:35 Karen Kilgariff? She agrees to play Bobby Riggs, not realizing how big of a spectacle he's planning on making it.
42:42 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
42:42 Karen Kilgariff? So on May 13th, 1973, with 3,500 spectators watching courtside and another 10 million watching from home, Bobby beats Margaret Court decisively in a 6-1, 6-2 game. He plays a soft, slow type of tennis, and it totally throws off the way she plays, which is like hard-hitting, fast-moving. This match will become known as the, quote, "Mother's Day massacre."
43:09 Karen Kilgariff? But you've just got to think of these like male sports reporters who are like just sitting there waiting.
43:13 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
43:14 Karen Kilgariff? I would be surprised to learn that there was any kind of equanimity in this reporting.
43:18 Georgia Hardstark? Absolutely.
43:19 Karen Kilgariff? So, everybody watches this on TV and Billie Jean does too. And as she does, she immediately understands what the stakes of this are and were. And at a time when female athletes are fighting for respect and recognition, not to mention equal pay and equal sponsorships, this loss plays right into the hands of the naysayers and the performative chauvinists and the people who are like, "We have an excuse not to give you money."
43:45 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
43:46 Karen Kilgariff? So, Billie Jean King reaches out to the gloating Bobby Riggs and says, "I will play you." They then begin to promote this Battle of the Sexes tennis match relentlessly. Billie Jean is quoted as saying, quote, "I'm taking this match very seriously. I love to win. I welcome the responsibility and the pressure. Bobby had better be ready." And according to that same BBC article, Bobby turned up to a practice session wearing a shirt with two circles cut out where his nipples were and joked that Billie Jean King would look better in it than him.
44:18 Georgia Hardstark? Ew.
44:19 Karen Kilgariff? The next day, in the final news conference, a direct speaking Billie Jean King calls him a creep. Bobby Riggs asks her to take it back. She looks him straight in the eye and says, "Creep stands."
44:31 Georgia Hardstark? That is a good comeback.
44:34 Karen Kilgariff? So, a few months later, on September 20th, 1973, Billie Jean King goes head to head against Bobby Riggs. And it's a perfect storm. Bobby's gloating sexist blather has now been repeatedly aimed directly at Billie Jean, who's not just a tennis player, but a public face of the women's movement. And this has expanded from a pop culture tennis match to a referendum on the validity of the women's movement.
44:58 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
44:59 Karen Kilgariff? They name it the Battle of the Sexes, and more than 30,000 people show up at the Astrodome to watch it.
45:06 Georgia Hardstark? The Astrodome, is that the one in UCI?
45:08 Karen Kilgariff? In Texas.
45:09 Georgia Hardstark? USC, okay. It's not in LA.
45:13 Georgia Hardstark? The Astrodome.
45:13 Karen Kilgariff? I'm right about that, aren't I?
45:15 Georgia Hardstark? It's famous, right?
45:16 Karen Kilgariff? It is. Yeah, you're right.
45:18 Georgia Hardstark? Well, look, I never said.
45:20 Karen Kilgariff? Listen.
45:21 Georgia Hardstark? I did never.
45:22 Karen Kilgariff? We can't pretend to be sports fans just because we're talking about sports.
45:25 Georgia Hardstark? Astrodome, the Staples Center, I don't know.
45:27 Karen Kilgariff? Very similar.
45:28 Georgia Hardstark? Places.
45:29 Karen Kilgariff? So 30,000 people around that area go to watch, 90 million watch it from home.
45:35 Georgia Hardstark? Holy shit, it's almost how many people listen to this podcast.
45:37 Karen Kilgariff? I mean.
45:40 Karen Kilgariff? And again, apologies to all 90 million of you. This match sets an all time record for tennis watching and it's still held to this day.
45:48 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
45:49 Karen Kilgariff? It will be one of the most watched sporting events of all time, period.
45:52 Georgia Hardstark? Holy shit.
45:53 Karen Kilgariff? Yes, because it's really kicking up all the vibes of like early 70s politics essentially.
45:59 Georgia Hardstark? About so much more than.
46:01 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, so they have these insane entrances. It's almost goes into like professional wrestling.
46:07 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
46:07 Karen Kilgariff? Billie Jean King is carried onto the court by shirtless men in one of those beds with four men at each, a man at each corner.
46:14 Georgia Hardstark? Whose idea was that?
46:15 Karen Kilgariff? Well, there was a PR person that said, oh, you're a feminist, you're not going to do this. And she went, what are you talking about? I love this idea. And like jumped up onto it. She's like, let's play this thing.
46:25 Georgia Hardstark? Good for her.
46:26 Karen Kilgariff? Meanwhile, when Bobby Riggs comes out, he, he's being pulled, there's nothing not problematic about everything about this thing.
46:32 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
46:33 Karen Kilgariff? We can all assume that, but just to state it, he's being pulled on a rickshaw by women in t-shirts that bear the Sugar Daddy Candy logo. And he's got an endorsement deal with Sugar Daddy Candy.
46:46 Georgia Hardstark? Bro.
46:47 Karen Kilgariff? So that's a whole candy company that's like, we're on the dude's side.
46:51 Georgia Hardstark? Can you imagine being his kid and being like, this is so embarrassing. My dad is so embarrassing.
46:57 Karen Kilgariff? It's so goofy, but then at the same time, there's just so many people who are like, yeah, you know, we need to teach those women a lesson.
47:04 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
47:04 Karen Kilgariff? So what's great is that they meet and they present gifts to each other, you know, as the kind of opening salvo. Bobby, wearing a Sugar Daddy sweatsuit, gives Billie Jean an oversized Sugar Daddy lollipop. And because Bobby Riggs has proclaimed in the press over and over that he is proud to be a male chauvinist pig, Billie Jean gives him a piglet. A live piglet.
47:29 Georgia Hardstark? Three photos.
47:30 Karen Kilgariff? Let's see them being carried.
47:31 Georgia Hardstark? I want to see them being carried. Oh, he's in a rickshaw.
47:34 Karen Kilgariff? He's in a little rickshaw and those are the sugar daddy women that are pushing it. But then here's-
47:39 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, she looks incredible.
47:41 Karen Kilgariff? It's not the best, so she's got more of a Cleopatra thing going.
47:44 Georgia Hardstark? But also the woman standing next to her with a fucking tight perm who's got a sign that just says, "Bye."
47:49 Karen Kilgariff? Bye. I know. What kind of time traveler woman is that?
47:53 Georgia Hardstark? Seriously.
47:54 Karen Kilgariff? Because that's a Billie Jean King shirt.
47:56 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, she's on her side.
47:57 Karen Kilgariff? She's like, "Bye."
47:58 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
47:58 Karen Kilgariff? There's some "Go Bobby Goes" in the background.
48:00 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
48:01 Karen Kilgariff? Because you-
48:01 Georgia Hardstark? This is like wrestling.
48:03 Karen Kilgariff? It's totally wrestling, boys against girls.
48:05 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
48:05 Karen Kilgariff? So it's kind of great and I love that. She's such a smart woman and she's like, "You can't cast me as the serious ball busting feminist."
48:12 Georgia Hardstark? Right. That's not what this, yeah.
48:13 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, I get what this is.
48:14 Georgia Hardstark? She's like being playful about it.
48:16 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
48:16 Georgia Hardstark? Which is a great way to like make an inroad.
48:19 Karen Kilgariff? And show you're smart.
48:20 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
48:20 Karen Kilgariff? Here's a piglet. Go away.
48:22 Georgia Hardstark? Savvy, yeah.
48:23 Karen Kilgariff? Now you have to take care of a pig? Okay. The enormous social and psychological weight of this cultural event lands squarely on Billie Jean's shoulders as the game begins. So she does falter a little bit, like Bobby scores first, then Billie Jean hits a ball out of bounds. So she stops, she gives herself a pep talk and she basically pulls out her A-game.
48:45 Georgia Hardstark? Oh.
48:46 Karen Kilgariff? She will later write, quote, "For all the pre-match hype about Bobby's skills, many folks forgot I was a versatile shot maker and a shrewd tactician too."
48:55 Georgia Hardstark? Fuck, yeah.
48:56 Karen Kilgariff? "Now I'm trying different shots, seeing what works. I'm making Bobby work for every point."
49:01 Georgia Hardstark? Hell, yeah.
49:02 Karen Kilgariff? So she basically, that same feeling, which I'm sure happened to Margaret Court-
49:06 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
49:07 Karen Kilgariff? Came of like, "No, this really matters." But instead of like tightening up, she allowed imperfection. She allowed like, "Hey, he's gonna get some points, whatever."
49:16 Georgia Hardstark? And she learned from it.
49:17 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
49:17 Georgia Hardstark? And adjusted.
49:18 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. And then she's like, "What do I need to be doing, not how do I need to be defending?"
49:23 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
49:23 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. So in the end, they play five full sets, which is what only men did back then.
49:28 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, really?
49:29 Karen Kilgariff? Women played three and men played five.
49:30 Georgia Hardstark? Okay.
49:31 Karen Kilgariff? Billie Jean decisively blows Bobby Riggs away-
49:34 Georgia Hardstark? Hell, yeah.
49:35 Karen Kilgariff? -in consecutive sets and wins $100,000 grand prize.
49:39 Georgia Hardstark? That is incredible.
49:41 Karen Kilgariff? She'll later say, quote, "I thought-" It would set us back 50 years if I didn't win that match. It would ruin the women's tennis tour and affect all women's self-esteem. God.
49:50 Georgia Hardstark? I mean, so much pressure. She had so much more to lose than him.
49:54 Karen Kilgariff? So much. It was just a dumb joke to him.
49:57 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah. But then for her to realize halfway through, not even halfway, in the beginning, like, oh, I'm actually better than him at this. What's, why am I nervous?
50:04 Karen Kilgariff? His last game was in 1939. He had to stop playing tennis because of World War II.
50:10 Georgia Hardstark? What a nice, what a nice feeling to be like, oh, wait a second.
50:14 Karen Kilgariff? Yes.
50:14 Georgia Hardstark? I've got this.
50:15 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah, I've got this.
50:16 Georgia Hardstark? This is fucking easy.
50:17 Karen Kilgariff? I'm now gonna put the ball places and make that little guy run.
50:20 Georgia Hardstark? Make him look stupid.
50:21 Karen Kilgariff? Make that little wig come off. Do you want to take a look at her winning this Battle of the Sexes?
50:26 Georgia Hardstark? Yes, please.
50:27 Karen Kilgariff? This is what she did.
50:28 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, she had a great night that night.
50:31 Karen Kilgariff? And there's the Astrodome. Look at how full it is. It's crazy.
50:35 Georgia Hardstark? Oh, God, to be there.
50:36 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
50:37 Georgia Hardstark? Time machine.
50:37 Karen Kilgariff? Fighting for girls. Oh, sorry, we're mid-quote. "To beat a 55-year-old guy was no thrill for me. The thrill was exposing a lot of new people to tennis."
50:47 Georgia Hardstark? Amazing.
50:47 Karen Kilgariff? End quote. So then she's also just being a businesswoman.
50:50 Georgia Hardstark? It's an opportunity, a big opportunity.
50:52 Karen Kilgariff? The fanfare around this match introduces countless new people to the previously elites-only sport of tennis. It's a major evolution for women in sports overall, and the power of this win will persist for decades. I mean, truly, I could not have been conscious of this happening, and I absolutely knew all about this as a young girl.
51:13 Georgia Hardstark? Same. And, yeah, I wasn't born yet, but like, much later.
51:18 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. It really set us up for terrible disappointment for the 90s and 2000s. Billie Jean King will later say, quote, "Our Battle of the Sexes match helped to advance the game of tennis and women everywhere," end quote. Now, there are people out there who try to say that Bobby Riggs threw the match because he needed the money, because he owed the mafia so much money with gambling, which... Is, of course, Billie Jean King calls those rumors ridiculous. And they are ridiculous. He was a 55 year old man. Playing a woman at the top of her game.
51:51 Georgia Hardstark? Right.
51:52 Karen Kilgariff? He will later go on to say that he completely underestimated her.
51:55 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
51:55 Karen Kilgariff? And did not realize how fast she was. Basically, he's just a fraud. But she also talks about him after the fact, like, they stayed friends. She did not get got by him in any way. She treated him like the joke he was treating her as. And they actually were able to stay friends to the point where she talked to him the night before he died and he told her he loved her.
52:21 Georgia Hardstark? Wow.
52:22 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. So it was a private relationship that was very different than the results of what the culture kind of reacted to in this game.
52:29 Georgia Hardstark? Got it. That's nice.
52:30 Karen Kilgariff? I know, isn't it? Because she's the bigger, she gets to be the bigger person. Because she's like, I destroyed you. So wonderful. We can be friends. Billie Jean King's cultural influence is, of course, undeniable. She's won 12 Grand Slam singles titles. She's been inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. She was awarded the French Legion of Honor. She became the first female commissioner in professional sports after co-establishing the mixed gender world team tennis league. And her fight on the tennis court was memorialized on film in the 2017 movie Battle of the Sexes, where Emma Stone played her. And just so everyone knows, if you don't know what a Grand Slam is, that's when you win the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open, all in the same year.
53:14 Georgia Hardstark? Jesus.
53:15 Karen Kilgariff? So you go slam. That's a very Williams sisters kind of thing to do.
53:19 Georgia Hardstark? Cool.
53:20 Karen Kilgariff? Billie Jean is also just as well known for her advocacy work for the LGBTQ plus community. And being that it's Pride Month, that's also one of the reasons that I did this story. She was, not a lot of people know this, she was outed by an ex-lover in the early 80s.
53:37 Georgia Hardstark? No way.
53:38 Karen Kilgariff? When nobody was out.
53:39 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
53:40 Karen Kilgariff? The people managing her career at the time begged her to deny that she was gay. Instead, she held a press conference and confirmed it. Becoming one of the first famous American athletes to be out as a lesbian.
53:53 Georgia Hardstark? That is incredible.
53:54 Karen Kilgariff? Or out at all.
53:55 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
53:55 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. And since then, Billie Jean King has talked at length about how confusing and painful this part of her life initially was. There was no one to follow.
54:04 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
54:04 Karen Kilgariff? Like, very few. I shouldn't say no one. There was some people out there in the culture.
54:08 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah.
54:09 Karen Kilgariff? But in the kind of, like, show business she was in.
54:11 Georgia Hardstark? Totally.
54:12 Karen Kilgariff? She was a true trailblazer once again. And she has said, quote, "I've always thought about future generations. I promised myself at 12, I would try to be number one so I could help the world be a better place."
54:23 Georgia Hardstark? 12 years old.
54:24 Karen Kilgariff? Oh, my god. "I wanted to be able to influence and do those things," end quote. In 2009, President Barack Obama presents Billie Jean King with the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom and says, quote, "What we honor are not simply her 12 Grand Slam titles." She did it 12 times.
54:42 Georgia Hardstark? 12 Grand Slams?
54:43 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah. Won 101 doubles titles and 67 singles titles. And then he said, "Pretty good, Billie Jean." It's hard to do a quote from Barack Obama
54:52 Georgia Hardstark? I know.
54:52 Karen Kilgariff? because he likes to, you know, do side commentary.
54:55 Georgia Hardstark? And it's so sad that...
54:57 Karen Kilgariff? That he's gone from our lives.
55:00 Karen Kilgariff? "We honor what she calls 'all the off-the-court stuff,' what she did to broaden the reach of the game, to change how women athletes and women everywhere view themselves, and to give everyone, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, including my two daughters, a chance to compete both on the court and in life. As Billie Jean once said, 'We should never, ever underestimate the human spirit, nor should we underestimate Billie Jean King's spirit,'" end quote. Today, 82-year-old Billie Jean King is among history's most iconic athletes. As she continues to inspire generations of young people and promote the rights of people everywhere, she's never forgotten the joy that she felt playing tennis for the very first time. She said, quote, "I just love hitting a tennis ball."
55:47 Karen Kilgariff? It's just that simple. There's no way I could have gotten through all the pressures on and off the court if I hadn't loved it. I love it. End quote. And that's the story of the legendary Billie Jean King.
55:58 Georgia Hardstark? That was amazing. I love that. And I got the feeling that day. And I wonder if the woman, the tennis player who lost?
56:06 Karen Kilgariff? Margaret Court.
56:07 Georgia Hardstark? Margaret Court, like, I wonder if, do you think they did it on purpose to kind of like hype it up? Because if it had just been them first, it wouldn't have had the hype that it did.
56:14 Karen Kilgariff? Completely. I mean, that's absolutely possible. The fact that any of this, I love the idea that this would have been like a, let's fight for women's equity in sports. Or let's fight for women's tennis, or let's get out there and give them a chance to prove themselves. It just seems so unlikely in like 1973. But I think answering this kind of like, oh, you think boys are better than girls? Like, it's this playground fight that's just been going on for so long. And she stepped up and was like, sounds good, let's do this. And then just trounced him.
56:48 Georgia Hardstark? Love it.
56:48 Karen Kilgariff? Yeah.
56:49 Georgia Hardstark? That was such a fun episode of fucking badass women.
56:52 Karen Kilgariff? I know. Like, these superstars that we all get to be, they're, they get to be our heroes.
56:57 Georgia Hardstark? Yeah, let's, um, let's try to emulate them, you guys, and do stuff for the greater good.
57:01 Karen Kilgariff? Let's be perfectly gorgeous in the face and perfectly great at tennis.
57:06 Georgia Hardstark? Sounds great.
57:08 Karen Kilgariff? Hurry up. That wraps up this special bonus episode presented by Hyundai.
57:13 Georgia Hardstark? Thank you so much for listening and thank you to Hyundai for making this episode possible.
57:17 Karen Kilgariff? Stay sexy.
57:18 Georgia Hardstark? And don't get murdered.
57:19 Karen Kilgariff? Goodbye.
57:21 Speaker 02 Elvis, do you want a cookie?
57:29 Karen Kilgariff? This has been an Exactly Right production.
57:31 Georgia Hardstark? Our senior producer is Molly Smith and our associate producer is Tessa Hughes.
57:35 Karen Kilgariff? Our editor is Aristotle Lassaveto.
57:37 Georgia Hardstark? This episode was mixed by Leona Scolacci.
57:39 Karen Kilgariff? Our researchers are Mary McGlashan and Ali Elkin.
57:42 Georgia Hardstark? Email your hometowns to [email protected] .
57:45 Karen Kilgariff? And follow the show on Instagram at MyFavoriteMurder.
57:47 Georgia Hardstark? Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
57:52 Karen Kilgariff? And now you can watch My Favorite Murder on Netflix.
57:55 Georgia Hardstark? And when you're there, hit the double thumbs up and the remind me buttons. That's the best way you can support our show.
58:00 Karen Kilgariff? Goodbye.
58:05 Karen Kilgariff? Even when you hate everything, it's hard not to love Hyundai's electric EV lineup.
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58:13 Karen Kilgariff? Hyundai's electric EV lineup includes advanced safety features like Highway Driving Assist 2 and Blind Spot Collision Avoidance Assist, available on models like the Ioniq 5, Ioniq 5N, and Ioniq 9.
58:24 Georgia Hardstark? Hyundai's EVs come with America's best warranty, including a 10-year or 100,000-mile powertrain limited warranty. Learn more about Hyundai EVs at hyundaiusa.com. Call 562-314-4603 for complete details.
58:39 Karen Kilgariff? America's best warranty claim based on total package of warranty programs. See dealer for limited warranty details. See your Hyundai dealer for further details and limitations.
58:47 Georgia Hardstark? Goodbye.
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