Gorgeous Gussie

The other major sports star of 1949

Gorgeous Gussie

I’ve debated with myself for a while about writing this piece. I think I need to do it.

If you aren’t aware, Gussie Moran was a very talented woman tennis player back in 1949. And she was known for, umm, something somewhat controversial.

Now, I want to make something clear from the start. Gussie was a star tennis player. She came into the 1949 Wimbledon tournament ranked 4th in the world, and, by all accounts, had the talent to be number one.

It was this account in Life that made her famous:

From Life, April 25, 1949, pages 91, 92, and 94

Now, regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, this should give you an idea of just how different 1949 really was. Rather than writing about Moran’s tennis playing abilities — such as her straight set victory over Nancy Chaffee in the US Indoor Championship only a month earlier — the Life article focused only on her looks and femininity.

That focus seems to have naturally led to her most famous moment, one many of you have probably already heard of:

From Fort Worth Star-Telegram, June 20, 1949, page 16

From The Roanoke Times (VA), June 21, 1949, page 19

From The State (Columbia, South Carolina), June 22, 1949, page 13

And… yeah, I could go on. This was a huge news story, and papers all over the United States covered it.

I think Wikipedia has the best description of precisely what happened:

Now, I’m not an expert in women’s fashion. However, I think I can understand what happened.

I’m pretty sure there was a combination here of the athletic desire to win and a desire to play up the “gorgeous Gussie” character. If you watch video of women’s tennis in the late 1940s, you’ll be surprised by the long skirts and relative lack of athleticism. Moran almost certainly wanted to wear a shorter skirt to give her a mobility advantage over her opponents. And, since the American media was already playing up her looks, she might as well take advantage of that, right?

The problem, though, is that her outfit wound up interfering with her ability to play. This description, also from Wikipedia, sounds absolutely horrid:

And she simply couldn’t play it down, either. In fact, the British press was even worse than the American press:

From The Daily Mirror, June 20, 1949, page 4

Sadly for Gorgeous Gussie, the dream didn’t last long. Moran’s tournament came to an early end when she played against Gem Hoahing, an amazing British player of Chinese ethnic origins who was only 4 foot 9:

From The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 25, 1949, page 15

Sadly, we don’t have any video of that match. Moran, at 5’7”, was about as tall as my wife, and was a tad heavier. It must have been amazing to watch a 4’9” skinny Asian girl dominate the talented Moran on the court.

So why write about this?

Well, it gives you an idea of what the sexual politics of the times were like. Whether you’re conservative, liberal, or somewhere in between, I’m certain you can agree with me that those were different times. There’s this underlying feeling in the magazines and newspapers of the times that women were objects to be seen — and I don’t think we see that more clearly anywhere than in how Gussie was treated. Again, from Wikipedia:

It breaks my heart to read this, especially since it’s so obvious that she had such a talent for the sport. It seems that nobody back then cared about talent if you were a girl.

This was also one of the biggest sports stories of the summer. It’s mostly gone forgotten since. I’d heard of Gussie Moran before, but only because of a sports trivia computer program my dad bought back when I was 10 years old or so. Sadly, Gussie’s tennis talents have been largely forgotten, and she is mostly known because of her skirt and underwear.

And, finally, this story gave us the sort of newspaper images you simply would not see today:her

From The Boston Globe, June 24, 1949, page 1

Let me draw your attention to the fact that The Boston Globe printed this picture on the front page. In short — you couldn’t escape the power of Goregous Gussie in 1949 even if you tried.