A new Sundance documentary is reopening one of tennis history’s most dramatic chapters — the unraveling of Billie Jean King’s marriage and the moment her then-husband learned the secret that would soon shock the nation.
The film, Give Me the Ball!, premiered Jan. 27 and pulls viewers inside the Kings’ turbulent private life, from early college romance to the scandal that forced Billie Jean to publicly address her sexuality long before she was ready.
Larry King, now 81, says he was blindsided.
“I didn’t know that this was going on,” he says in the documentary. “Billie Jean never mentioned it to me until the day before it hit the press.”
That press frenzy hit in 1981, after Los Angeles hairdresser Marilyn Barnett filed a palimony lawsuit that exposed her relationship with the tennis superstar. News outlets erupted. Cameras swarmed. Billie Jean King, one of the most famous athletes in America, was pushed to admit the affair on live television.
Larry stood next to her that day. But the damage was already done.
Billie Jean met Larry at Cal State in the early 1960s. They married young, in 1965. At the time, she was a rising tennis star, not yet the global force who would change women’s sports forever.
“We had a great time and fell in love,” Billie Jean says in the film. “I didn’t have much experience with sex at all. One girl kissed me in college. That was it.”
Larry remembers being captivated from the start.
“I thought she was the cat’s meow,” he says. “But Billie Jean wanted to change the world. And I tried to fit into that plan. It wasn’t the life I wanted.”
As Billie Jean’s fame exploded — especially after the seismic Battle of the Sexes match in 1973 — the pressure inside the marriage intensified. Her activism for equal pay, women’s rights, and athlete representation became a full-time mission.
“She wanted children,” Larry says. “But something always felt off.”
The tension boiled over when Billie Jean had an abortion early in the ’70s. Larry told the public before she was ready.
“I wasn’t gonna tell anybody,” she says. “It was really bad between us.”
Despite years of conversations about divorce, the couple stayed legally married until 1987. By the time Billie Jean began a relationship with Barnett, she and Larry had agreed to what he calls “an open kind of relationship.”
Even then, he says he didn’t see Barnett as competition.
“It would have bothered me a lot more if she had male friends,” he admits. “I didn’t really look like I was competing with them.”
But when Barnett’s lawsuit hit the courts — and then the front pages — everything changed.
“It wasn’t right for Larry and I to stay married,” Billie Jean says. “I hadn’t figured out who I was, and he shouldn’t have been suffering through that. I kept pleading with him to divorce me, and he wouldn’t.”
The fallout forced Billie Jean to become the first openly gay professional female athlete in history. It cost her millions in sponsorships. It became a defining moment in LGBTQ sports history.
“I was so confused,” she says in the film. “But I had to face it.”
The documentary shows that time has softened the pain. Larry and Billie Jean remain close. Larry has been married to Nancy King since 1990. Billie Jean has been with former tennis player Ilana Kloss for decades; the pair quietly married in 2018.
“Larry and I, we’re still friends,” Billie Jean says. “He and Nancy have two children. We’re the godmothers. Ilana and I are so happy now.”
Give Me the Ball! continues screening at the Sundance Film Festival through Feb. 1.
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Billie Jean Barnett was nothing, is nothing, will stay nothing…