November 23, 1946: Two Beverly Hills police officers pull over a car that had been moving erratically. The driver appeared to be a teenage boy. An older man had his arm around him. When the officers pulled the car over, the man hurriedly changed places with the boy. The boy's fly was open. The police arrested the older man.
His name was Bill Tilden. At the time, he was 53 years old, and considered the greatest tennis player who ever lived.
William Tatem Tilden Jr. was born on February 10, 1893, to a wealthy family in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. By the time he was 22, both of his parents and 3 older siblings had all died. For the rest of his life, as one of his biographers, Sports Illustrated writer Frank Deford, explained, he spent his adult life trying to create father-son relationships with tennis students and ball boys.
He had taken up tennis at the age of 6, after seeming to already be depressed over the loss of one of the siblings.
He never competed in the Australian Open -- given the distance, many of the best American and European players didn't make the trip -- and was 0-2 in French Open Finals. But, from 1920 to 1930, he won the U.S. Open 7 times and Wimbledon 3 times. From 1920 to 1926, he helped the U.S. team win 7 straight Davis Cups.
As the "Roaring Twenties" were considered "the Golden Age of Sports," sportswriters put him on a pedestal with baseball's Babe Ruth, boxing's Jack Dempsey, football's Red Grange, hockey's Howie Morenz, track's Paavo Nurmi, golf's Bobby Jones, and racehorse Man o' War. (Basketball, as yet, was not considered big enough for its best player, whoever that would have been deemed to be, to be an equivalent to those men.)
In 1930, he won his last major, Wimbledon. He was 37 years old. But those tournaments, until 1968, were all-amateur. And he had blown through his family fortune. So he turned professional, and was rated the Number 1 professional player in the world in each of the next 3 years, making money through the depth of the Great Depression.
But age caught up with him, and by the late 1930s, he was living in Los Angeles, making money by giving tennis lessons to film actors, including Charlie Chaplin, who became a close friend, and other wealthy people.
Then came his arrest in 1946. He was numb from shock, and, not having his glasses with him, signed a confession without even looking at it. When he recovered, he asked for a lawyer. He wanted Jerry Giesler, who had achieved fame by defending Chaplin and Errol Flynn in suits resulting from their sexual escapades. Giesler wanted no part of him, since he defended only heterosexual predators.
Tilden finally engaged Richard Maddox, a young former prosecutor. Maddox had a hard time convincing Tilden that he was in serious trouble. Maddox pointed out that the scandal sheets and rumor-mongers would have a field day, imagining tennis parties at the Chaplin estate, thinking there were orgies with Chaplin, a known Communist, and "In Like" Flynn seducing the little girls, while Queer Bill seduced the little boys.
The state's case was weak, the lawyer said. If Tilden repudiated his statement, the only evidence would be the boy's statement. The boy, a precociously dissolute 14-year-old, had been expelled from several schools because of his sexual activities and general delinquency. If Tilden pleaded not guilty, Maddox said, the boy's parents would not want him to testify. And they had said they didn't want Tilden to go to jail.
But Tilden refused to plead not guilty. He said he must accept responsibility. "He was hung up on the sportsman thing," Maddox said later.
Tilden was still convinced that, with his celebrity and his famous friends, he would get no more than a tongue-lashing and a fine. Dr. J. Paul De River, a psychiatrist who examined Tilden, told the court he was "impulsively weak... passive autistic with egocentric traits... in need of special psychiatric care." He said, "Any jail sentence would of necessity be limited and would not tend to work as a curative measure, and would probably bring... more harm." He concluded, "He is... in some ways quite juvenile... This man should be regarded as someone who is mentally ill."
De River believed Tilden suffered from "an endocrine dysfunction so often seen during the evolutionary stage of life when the sex curve is on the decline." Even the prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney William Ritzi, said, years later, "The poor man was a sick individual. We realized it then, and we realize it now. It's just that society treats it differently today than in those days."
At the sentencing hearing, Tilden compounded his trouble by lying to the judge, A.A. Scott. He said he had never been involved in a situation like this before. Scott, like almost everybody in Beverly Hills, knew better. He sentenced Tilden to one year in jail. Tilden was so stunned at this, Maddox had to lift him to his feet.
De River was right: Jail was no cure. Tilden was released after serving 7 1/2 months. Both the tennis world and Hollywood wanted nothing to do with him. It was one thing if a person being gay, or a woman being a "homewrecker" or having a child out of wedlock, or if a person being a Communist was "a well-kept secret" -- that is, if everybody in Hollywood knew, but the general public did not. But once said secret was exposed, they wanted nothing to do with the person. Tilden had embarrassed them, and that was the greatest sin of all.
And so, invitation to play at a pro tournament at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel was withdrawn at the last moment. He was unable to give lessons at most clubs. Even on public courts, he had fewer clients. At first, Chaplin stood by him, allowing him to use his private court for lessons.
But he couldn't help himself, and he was arrested again in January 1949, for groping a 16-year-old hitchhiker. He was sentenced to another year, but he got out after about 10 months. Shortly before he was released, the Associated Press' poll of American sportswriters voted him the greatest men's tennis player of the 1st half of the 20th Century.
The AP's other honorees: Babe Ruth for baseball, George Mikan for basketball, Howie Morenz for hockey, Jack Dempsey for boxing, Suzanne Lenglen for women's tennis, Man o' War as the greatest racehorse; and Jim Thorpe for football and track and field, and as greatest athlete overall.
Few others honored him. Chaplin may have wanted to, but he couldn't: He had gone home to England, and, with the Red Scare having significantly ramped up in 1950, he was barred from returning to America. Almost all of Tilden's other acquaintances avoided him. Mentally, he was rapidly disintegrating. He stopped bathing and changing his clothes. When he visited Maddox, the lawyer's secretary complained that his odor was unbearable.
According to George Lott, a player and later tennis coach at DePaul University, who spoke to Deford, Tilden never made advances to players, whether other adults or his pupils. Art Anderson of Burbank, who took lessons from Tilden from the age of 11, and remained a lifelong loyal friend, reported that Tilden never made advances toward him.
Tilden would not concede that he was finished. In 1953, at the age of 60, sick and out of shape, he persuaded a former pupil to give him money for the trip to Cleveland for the U.S. Professional Tennis Championships. On June 5, 1953, preparing to leave for the tournament, he dropped dead of a heart attack at his apartment in Hollywood Dell.
The International Tennis Hall of Fame was established in Newport, Rhode Island, America's 1st great tennis center, and inducted its 1st class in 1955. It was still too soon: People remembered Tilden's fall too easily. He was inducted in 1959.
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November 23, 1946 was a Saturday. Bobby Rush, a Black Panther who was later elected to Congress as a Democrat from Illinois, was born on this day.
Baseball was out of season. No games were played in either the NFL or the insurgent All-America Football Conference. But it was a big day in college football, including some major rivalries:
* The night before, Number 9 Louisiana State (LSU) beat Fordham, 40-0 at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
* Number 1 Army had the week off. They were preparing to play Navy the next week, at Municipal Stadium (later John F. Kennedy Stadium) in Philadelphia. In a near-upset, Army hung on to win, 21-18.
* Number 2 Notre Dame beat Tulane, 41-0 at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans.
* Number 3 Georgia beat the University of Chattanooga (now the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga), 48-27 at Chamberlain Field in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Georgia won the Southeastern Conference title.
* Rivalry: Number 4 UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles) beat Number 10 USC (University of Southern California), 13-6 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. UCLA won the title in the Pacific Coast Conference, a forerunner of the league now known as the Pac-12.
* Rivalry: Number 5 Illinois beat Northwestern, 20-0 at Dyche Stadium (now Ryan Field) outside Chicago in Evanston, Illinois. Illinois won the title of the Big Nine Conference (as the Big Ten was known between the University of Chicago canceling its program in 1940 and the admission of Michigan State in 1953). They went to the Rose Bowl, and beat UCLA.
* Number 6 Georgia Tech beat Furman, 41-7 at Grant Field in Atlanta.
* Rivalry: Number 7 Tennessee beat Kentucky, 7-0 at Shields-Watkins Field (now Neyland Stadium) in Knoxville, Tennessee.
* Rivalry: Number 8 Michigan beat Ohio State, 58-6 at Ohio Stadium in Columbus.
* Number 11 Arkansas were not scheduled. They played LSU to a tie in the Cotton Bowl.
* Number 13 Rice beat Texas A&M, 27-10 at Kyle Field in College Station, Texas. Rice won the Southwest Conference title, then beat Tennessee in the Orange Bowl.
* Rivalry: Number 14 North Carolina beat Duke, 22-7 at Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Carolina won the Southern Conference title (not to be confused with the SEC or the SWC), and went to the Sugar Bowl. There, they lost to Georgia, who were then awarded a share of the National Championship.
* Rivalry: Number 15 Yale beat Harvard, 27-14 at Harvard Stadium in Boston.
* Rivalry: Number 18 Oklahoma beat Nebraska, 27-6 at Owen Field in Norman, Oklahoma.
* Rivalry: Lafayette beat Lehigh, 13-0 at Fisher Field in Easton, Pennsylvania.
* Rivalry: The University of Pittsburgh beat Penn State, 14-7 at Pitt Stadium.
* Rivalry: Virginia beat West Virginia, 21-0 at Scott Stadium in Charlottesville.
* Rivalry: Indiana beat Purdue, 34-20 at Ross-Ade Stadium in West Lafayette, Indiana.
* Rivalry: Minnesota beat Wisconsin, 6-0 at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison, Wisconsin.
* Rivalry: Mississippi State beat Mississippi (Ole Miss), 20-0 at Hemingway Stadium (now Vaught-Hemingway Stadium) in Oxford, Mississippi.
* Rivalry: Stanford beat the University of California, 25-6 at California Memorial Stadium in Berkeley.
* Rivalry: Oregon State beat Oregon, 13-0 at Bell Field in Corvallis, Oregon.
* In New York City, Columbia beat Syracuse, 59-21 at Baker Field in Manhattan. The next day, New York University (NYU) lost to Georgetown, 19-12 at Yankee Stadium in The Bronx.
* And in New Jersey, Rutgers beat Bucknell, 25-0 at Rutgers Stadium in Piscataway; and Princeton lost to Dartmouth, 20-13 at Palmer Stadium in Princeton.
There were 4 games played in the Basketball Association of America, which was in its 1st season. It became the NBA in 1949.
* The New York Knicks beat the Cleveland Rebels, 82-76 at the old Madison Square Garden.
* The St. Louis Bombers beat the Providence Steam Rollers, 65-59 at the Rhode Island Arena in Providence.
* The Washington Capitols beat the Toronto Huskies, 74-50 at the Uline Arena (now the Washington Coliseum) in Washington.
* And the Detroit Falcons beat the Boston Celtics, 54-46 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.
Although Cleveland, Washington, Toronto and Detroit currently have teams in the NBA, and St. Louis would get a new one before losing it to Atlanta, of those 8 teams, only 2 still exist: The Knicks and the Celtics.
And there were 2 games in the NHL. The New York Rangers beat the Montreal Canadiens, 3-2 at the Montreal Forum. And the Detroit Red Wings beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 4-2 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. The Boston Bruins and the Chicago Black Hawks were not scheduled.
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