--- description: As Wimbledon kicks off, a look at one of history's greatest tennis players, who was also a spy during WWII and a champion for integration. title: Meet the Women’s Wimbledon Champion Who Was Also a Spy image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdb87805971a7d935/698855aee20a8721faa8bf77/150622-alice-marble-01.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Meet the Women’s Wimbledon Champion Who Was Also a Spy  by [Eliza Berman](/author/eliza-berman/)  ## Eliza Berman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Berman is a senior editor at TIME. Jun 29, 2015 12:00 PM CUT  Caption from LIFE. With arms and legs swinging wide, Alice Marble jumps over the net to greet her beaten opponent. Caption from LIFE. With arms and legs swinging wide, Alice Marble jumps over the net to greet her beaten opponent.Gjon Mili—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  by [Eliza Berman](/author/eliza-berman/)  ## Eliza Berman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Berman is a senior editor at TIME. Jun 29, 2015 12:00 PM CUT Alice Marble’s tennis career was enough to make her a legend. She was the No. 1 female player in America between 1936 and 1940, a winner of 18 Grand Slam championships, an International Tennis Hall of Famer and the first woman to adopt the serve-and-volley style of play. Her aggressive nature on the court led some to say (critically) that she played like a man. But it’s the fascinating life Marble lived off the court that makes her more than just a memorable athlete. By the time her career got underway, Marble had overcome a great deal of adversity. In her second autobiography, _Courting Danger_, she recounted being raped by a stranger when she was 15, a trauma that she hid from her mother out of shame. Then, as her career was taking off in her early 20s, she fell ill with tuberculosis and required a year of recuperation. After putting her decorated tennis career behind her, Marble made a bit of a career pivot. DC comics approached her to solicit—as they did from many notable athletes—an endorsement for their new superhero, Wonder Woman. Instead of offering a sentence of support, she became an associate editor of the comic, establishing a new weekly feature called “Wonder Women of history…as told by Alice Marble,” in which she told the stories of women like Florence Nightingale in comic form. World War II brought new adventures, although for Marble they began with a double tragedy that led to a failed attempt to take her own life. Days after she miscarried a pregnancy, her husband Joe Crowley, a fighter pilot, was killed in action. Inconsolable, Marble reported in her memoir that she accepted without hesitation when the government approached her about operating as a spy in Switzerland—a mission revealed only after Marble’s death, when her book was published. “I felt I had nothing left to lose but my life,” she wrote, “and at the time I didn’t care about living.” Marble’s mission to obtain Nazi financial information was cut short when she was shot in the back by a Nazi operative. But the story doesn’t end there: after recovering and reestablishing herself in the U.S, she set her sights on a new cause, the racial integration of tennis. Her July 1950 editorial in _American Lawn Tennis Magazine_ advocated for fellow player Althea Gibson to be allowed to play in U.S. Lawn Tennis Association competitions; it was the first major public challenge to the establishment’s practice of segregation. “If tennis is a game for ladies and gentlemen, it’s also time we acted a little more like gentlepeople and less like sanctimonious hypocrites,” she wrote. Marble’s letter was a major contributing factor in Gibson’s invitation to play in the tournament now known as the U.S. Open. Before Wonder Woman and the Nazis, back in 1939 when Marble was at the pinnacle of her career, LIFE put her on its cover. In the story, the magazine chided the rest of the media for focusing on Marble’s glamor when in fact she was all about grit. (She did, after all, choose comfort over glamor on the court, where she eschewed the tradition of ladies wearing skirts and opted for shorts instead.) As LIFE wrote: --- > “” --- Marble was a Grand Slam-winning, spying-on-Nazis, comic book-editing champion for equality. It’s a wonder we’re still waiting on the Hollywood biopic.  _Liz Ronk, who edited this gallery, is the Photo Editor for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter_ [_@lizabethronk_](https://twitter.com/LizabethRonk "undefined")_._  Caption from LIFE. With arms and legs swinging wide, Alice Marble jumps over the net to greet her beaten opponent. Gjon Mili—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. The ball is smashed well out in front of body with the exact center of the racket. Alice does not hit the ball downward, but smashes it deep toward the baseline. Gjon Mili—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Alice Marble, 1937. Alfred Eisenstaedt—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. If hit this way, the ball will have topspin on it. Gjon Mili—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Crowd watching Alice Marble, 1937. Alfred Eisenstaedt—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Alice Marble, 1937. Alfred Eisenstaedt—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. Trademark of Tennant-taught tennis players such as Alice Marble is to receive the ball while standing well back, with the racket even farther back. Alfred Eisenstaedt—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. On the follow-through, the arm is straight out from the body, the right leg still off the ground. For these pictures the net was lowered a foot below standard height. Gjon Mili—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Alice Marble, 1937. Alfred Eisenstaedt—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. Tennant tutelage weaned National Champion Alice Marble from the Western grip which is like picking the racket up flat off the ground to the Eastern grip (pictured), which is like shaking hands with it. Alfred Eisenstaedt—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. For the serve, Marble tosses the ball straight upward. Takes a full circular behind-the-back wind-up. Gjon Mili—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3931000/alice-marble/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3931000/alice-marble/"},"headline":"Meet the Women’s Wimbledon Champion Who Was Also a Spy","datePublished":"2015-06-29T12:00:18.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T05:02:53.712Z","description":"Alice Marble won 18 Grand Slam championships -- but her life off the court was as fascinating as her tennis career was impressive","url":"https://time.com/3931000/alice-marble/","keywords":["Sports topic","tennis","photography","alfred eisenstaedt","1937","Gjon Mili"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdb87805971a7d935/698855aee20a8721faa8bf77/150622-alice-marble-01.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Eliza Berman","jobTitle":"Berman is a senior editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/eliza-berman/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdb87805971a7d935/698855aee20a8721faa8bf77/150622-alice-marble-01.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Alice Marble 1939.","caption":"Alice Marble 1939.","creditText":"Gjon Mili—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3931000/alice-marble/","name":"Meet the Women’s Wimbledon Champion Who Was Also a Spy"}}]}] ```