1920's Cultural Website

             Helen Wills Moody (Helen Newington Wills) was born in Centerville, California, on October 6; 1905.She studied at Harvard and began playing tennis at a very young age. She married twice once to Frederick Moody and then to Aidan Roark, both marriages eventually came to an end.

 

           Helen was best known during the 1920s and 1930s as a world champion tennis player. She was known as “Little Miss Poker Face” because of her serious and focused face she had while playing tennis. She played in such a powerful way with hard and fast serves and strokes. Helen Wills Moody once said, "There is no game like the direct attack. Fancy strokes, while effective to watch, do not bring the results a fast driving game does." She won her first women's national title at the age of 17 in 1923, making her the youngest champion at that time.

 

          In order to perform to the best of her abilities she refused to wear the long skirts that limited her movement on the court instead she chose to wear a shorter skirt much like the ones worn today by professional tennis players. She had an amazing career in which she won 31 Grand Slam tournament titles (singles, women's doubles, and mixed doubles) during her career, such as; eight singles titles at Wimbledon, four singles titles at the French Championships, as well as seven singles titles at the U.S. Championships. She also won two Olympic gold medals in Paris in 1924 (singles and doubles U.S. girls' singles champion in 1921 and 1922.). She had a winning streak of around158 matches from 1919 to1938 during which she did not lose a single set.

 

         She has been described as "the first American born woman to achieve international celebrity as an athlete." She appeared on the Cover of Time Magazine in 1926 and 1929 and also is in the international Tennis Hall of Fame. After retirement she became a journalist, a coach, as well as a painter. She died at the age of 92.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works cited: 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1938-Tennis-Star-Mrs-Helen-Wills-Moody-Press-Photo-/390784036004 https://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/1006.html http://www.biography.com/people/helen-wills-moody-9412974