'Morning. It's the weekend, so this is a Crisis Center, as we move towards the conclusion of the ATP tournaments in Basel, Lyon and St Petersburg, with points still at stake for the race to the Tennis Masters Cup, and the WTA tournament in Linz, in the run-up to the ladies' season-ending Championships in Madrid. Please use this thread to discuss today's tennis matches, and other tennis-related discussions, with OT chat mostly belonging in the last Deuce Club thread.
Continuing with the theme from earlier in the week, of iconic tennis images, I received an e-mail from regular poster skip1515, suggesting today's picture. He says: "Hopefully, when we had lunch I didn't appear old enough to remember this first hand, but if Gorgeous Gussie Moran and her tennis panties aren't iconic then nothing is. Tinling would have had it no other way, may he rest in peace (and not be forgotten)." I'm not old enough to remember it first hand either, but it's a fascinating image.
This picture was taken during a third round women's singles match at Wimbledon on 22nd June, 1949, during a match in which Moran beat Britain's Betty Wildford, 6-2, 6-4. The outfit she's wearing, which was designed and made up by Teddy Tinling, a former player who turned fashion designer, shows the lace-trimmed briefs and feminine-looking tennis dress for which Gertrude (aka Gussie) Moran and Tinling became famous.
I quote here from Tinling's 1983 autobiography, "Sixty Years in Tennis". He said:
"The story of Gussy (sic) Moran and the lace-edged panties that I made for her in 1949 still remains one of the most unlikely happenings of the many legends of tennis. Gussy's panties caused shock waves that reverberated from Alaska to Antarctica. On the way they even led the English vicar of St Andrew's Church, Buenos Aires, to preach a sermon, the theme of which was the sinful implications of wearing this unsuspecting garment."
"Thirty-four years later, it is still almost impossible to understand how a yard of lace, added to a player's normal undergarment and barely seen at five-minute intervals, could cause such a furore. Yet the "Gussy sensation" was tantamount to a stripper appearing suddenly on Wimbledon's Centre Court. Even this might not cause the same buzzing of intercontinental cables."
Tinling attributes the sensation to a combination of factors - the almost exclusively masculine nature of the press corps at the time and their tendency to focus on "shock" factors (Suzanne Lenglen's natural silhouette under filmy clothes caused a similar form of prurient indignation back in 1919), the tendency for even small happenings at Wimbledon to resound well beyond its boundaries, and the austere nature of the clothing worn by women players in the late 1930s and immediate post-war years - a natural enough reaction to the unisex fashions of the era. Tinling set out to campaign for femininity in tennis in his designs - dresses rather than severe shorts and culottes, and became known for his attractive creations.
Tinling relates that when the wonderfully feminine-looking Gussie arrived from California, she asked him to take care of her Wimbledon clothing. Post-war "utility" restrictions meant that it was difficult to source suitable feminine fabrics, but he managed to find what was then something of a luxury - some soft, knitted rayon for the dress, which was trimmed with satin. The panties were an afterthought. Gussie was used to wearing shorts, and so had nothing to wear under her dress. Tinling first refused ("I do not think your underclothes are my responsibility") but was persuaded to make up something from the leftover dress fabric. The lace was coarse cotton lace - there to be bold, but not as dainty as it looked from afar.
Gussie's dress was "kilt-length", one inch from the floor when the wearer is kneeling. This meant that the lace-trimmed panties were only glimpsed every few minutes. It was reported that the lace "drew the eye to the sexual area", and this shocked the Establishment. But most spectators loved it. Photographers spent their time on court lying flat, waiting for a glimpse of the elusive lace, and the ensuing publicity somewhat began to detract from the tennis, while "Gorgeous Gussie" became an overnight sex symbol.
According to Teddy Tinling, none of his colleagues in the Wimbledon Establishment ever mentioned the panties to him.
-- Rosangel