After eleven in the morning, and before the noise at the Hollywood Boulevard crossing with Vine Street, a woman approached the security guards. “But who is it?” “Give a star. Billie Jean King.” “Ahhh well,” the passerby replied. “So that is deserved.” The feeling was widespread. The one that risked his career when leaving the closet in the eighties, received the most glamorous and global recognition: a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Surrounded by friends, family, tennis players and actors, King, 81, could not deny his joy for uncovering his star, one of those that so many times stepped on a child. It is also a pioneer in this: she is the first woman to receive a star under the category of sports entertainment, created a couple of years ago by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, who manages the famous Paseo de Estrellas Rosas and Doradas.
With sneakers and sometimes with some help to get up and get on the stage, King thanked to be honored by Hollywood. “Sport is entertainment, sport is entertainment,” he said. “It is very important that the women of the sports world are honored by Hollywood,” he said. Minutes after receiving the star, in an interview with El País, King explained the reason for that importance. “Hollywood has a worldwide reach, so that has enormous importance; I always think in global terms,” he said, also bringing a certain nostalgia. “Not only that, but I am from the area, I come from Long Beach, California, below the road,” he joked, referring to the city to the southern Los Angeles and the largest sea port in the United States, where he was born and formed. “We used to come and walk along the walk to see all the stars,” he said. “But I remember that I never thought that I would ever have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I used to look at everyone else and say, ‘Oh, Minderes’, but I am delighted that they now include athletes, men and women. I know that I am the first woman, but I hope not to be the last one, but only the beginning. This will be a new beginning for women athletes.”
In the ceremony in which the star number 2,708 uncovered, on Monday at noon, King was wrapped by his wife, the gossip Iliana Kloss, but also for more women in the guild: Rosie Casals, Connie Spooner, Stacey Allaster and Maria Sharapova. The former Balcentist Magic Johnson and actress Jamie Lee Curtis, who made speakers to present it and, as the tradition sends, praise it, also attended.
Johnson and King share a passion for the sport that has spread beyond their stage on the courts: both are shareholders of the main baseball team of the city, the Dodgers. They are partners and friends. “She is one of the greatest, not only as a player, but as a person,” Johnson praises her. “It has been a flag bearer in the fight for salary equality. They should thank you,” he told King, among applause. “You have always fought for the right thing, in social fights, against racism, for inclusion.”
In addition to his many professional achievements – such as his six -time number one in the world, his 20 Wimbledon titles, his creation of the WTA, the Association of Women Tennisists, having given, his triumph in the so -called battle of the 1973 sexes against Bobby Riggs, or the reception of Barack Obama – the speakers have highlighted their relevant contribution to the social causes from their triumph sports. Jamie Lee Curtis stressed the importance of King’s legacy. “She understands that the legacy is what they say about you, but, and I quote it, ‘what defines us are the contributions we make’, and the contributions of Billie Jean King are powerful: on the track, the public struggle, freedom.”
“He risked almost everything, but not everything,” he recalled about how, at the end of the seventies, when she was married to her first husband, Larry, her secretary made public who maintained a romance and blackmail her with sue her, which made her have to make her homosexuality public and that sports contracts and millions of dollars were vanished. Curtis remembered a King phrase where she said: “When they took me out of the closet I lost all my economic support and thought it would be the end of my career. But I started living an authentic life and that life opened the doors to me, and opened them to millions and millions of people to live authentic lives.” An authentic and worthy life of a Hollywood script.
