Bill Tilden's Pathetic Sex Life...

[don_budge]

There seems to be some interest in Bill Tilden's sex life. I like to keep his tennis philosophy, wisdom and knowledge in separate compartments myself. I know that stuff makes people a bit squeamish. Personally...my curiosity is rather limited about his sex life. I tend to be more concerned about my own.

In some of the early videos of him he looks to be a raging homosexual. Sometimes there would be a young boy in the clip that he would supposedly be giving a lesson to...it does make you cringe a bit. Definitely not my cup of tea...as the English might say. Especially when these young lads appear to be wearing hot pants...really short tennis shorts. Eeewww...whatever.

So here is a thread just for those that are interested in posting about his sex life. I will be making a series of posts about his rather pathetic personal life as well. Have at it now. Here's the opportunity.

Maybe we should open up the discussion to all tennis players sex lives just to spice it up a bit. You know...who's banging who sort of thing. How about famous people in general? I have a book entitled..."The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People" by Amy and Irving Wallace. 592 pages of scandal. Pretty titillating stuff! You'd be surprised at some of the preferences these characters had. Some real kink. A first for tennisplayer.net.

[GeoffWilliams]

If it's ok for him to have preyed on young boys, why not cannibalism? Who cares about his sex life with adults. No one should even respect him for anything at all.

[bottle]

Father Z.

Stinky, stinky. An aging former champion who played tennis several times a day but never changed his clothes or took a shower in between.

Well, he might have taken off his clothes to molest small dogs.

Think Father Zossima in THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV.

[GeoffWilliams]

Beastiality and tennis. Now that's not a thought I would have come up with! Leave to Beaver/bottle. Sometimes people will just poison you with sights, thoughts, smells, visions, etc., without compunction. Maybe if those who laud Tilden could speak to some of his victims, the lauding would stop. The real reason so many of the molesters are killed in prison is, that so many of the prisoners are there because of it.

Those who choose to forgive and forget just don't remember.

[bottle]

What victims? Do you have personal experience?

[johnyandell]

The sequencing of events I think is one thing that spared Tilden's reputation...it was toward the end of his career after his tennis reputation and analytic genius were established that the sordid details became more publicly known.

Forgot where I read it but Tilden was clearly tormented by his own nature--there was a statement he made in court that all this was not his "best" nature and he wanted a chance to do better...not very forthcoming on the surface, but revelatory I think at another level...

It may not have been death in prison but a flea bag hotel in LA with a few rackets and tennis blazers strewn around and a letter to someone saying he was hopeful of getting back on his feet if he could just get some lessions...

[GeoffWilliams]

Is a sex life that preys on young boys pathetic?



Most would call it: evil. Or criminal. Or worthy of being shot, if you are the parent or the boy.

I had a date with a young girl, about 17 years old. Sarah Ziegleman. She was later shot to death in Golden Gate park, by an insane homeless man, for walking with a black friend. During the trial, Sarah's father, who had a mansion in Mill Valley hills, smuggled a gun into the court room and killed him with it. I would not have given him a day in jail, but I knew her personally, and him. Those who trivialize what Tilden did to young boys, are in the Michael Jackson camp: who said, "I sleep in my bed with the children. It's love. It's good for them!", after he was extorted to pay $20,000,000 to a victim, with felony child molestation used by the da over his head as a charge, and that charge was then dropped, and a law enacted as a result, that no da could combine/use charges as a leverage in a civil case. Doesn't stop them from doing it though.

I have worked form many gay clients, all of whom have been honorable and treated me ok. Many more straights have not. Cheating is common. Stealing is also. Few offer even a drink of water or a toilet. I would not advocate death for molesters, as many victims do, just prison, where their proclivities can be contained to those who may enjoy them.

For those who say it's no big thing what he did, talk to some who differ with your opinion. YOu can find them in any hard time prison.

[bottle]

The experiential aspect of Geoff's post (#7) is noted by me and admired.

And I have taught in MCI Norfolk and MCI Walpole in Massachusetts.

It's true that sexual offenders dwell at the bottom of the prison hierarchy (I almost said "food chain").

The other inmates do make life even harder and more dismal for them, but some of the tormentors may have covert or not so covert sexual hangups of their own.

It's just that I don't think, exclusively from what I have read, that Bill Tilden was Jerry Sandusky. And I know next to nothing about Pete Fischer other than that he has a "c" in his last name like the late Bobby or the "c" in my last name, Escher.

When I hear a statement like, "It became increasingly well known that..." a red flag goes up for me.

Well known to whom? And what are the personal hangups of "whom?"

Steve made an extraordinary decision to separate all thoughts about Tilden into a pair of threads.

Maybe that's an instructive course, a way not to marginalize and lose Tilden's intelligence.

Certainly I had some brilliant students in my English classes in prison, even frighteningly brilliant in some cases.

All people, it seems to me, are a mixture of many different things.

Note: The most compelling statement on Tilden's sex life I've ever read occurs in the autobiography of J. Donald Budge: "He looks at a young boy the way the rest of us look at Esther Williams."

Accepting that, I have to ask, "How many young boys did Bill Tilden actually ruin?"

Every boy who stepped on a tennis court with him? If he ruined one, that would be bad enough, but I never yet have met a Tilden victim who told me about his personal ruination, and I distrust most other sources, maybe because, as I became a proudly old-fashioned newspaperman in Middletown, Connecticut, my editor, Frank Brown of San Jose, California, urged me to challenge everything.

[GeoffWilliams]

Well, that's noted. I don't see the reason to laud someone who was a predator, no matter their on court talents. Lots of other guys we could be discussing. Deep seated urges to dominate someone smaller/younger/more innocent than, cannot be changed or rehabbed.

[don_budge]

From "The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People" by Amy and Irving Wallace

NET LOSS

William Tilden, Jr. (Feb. 10, 1899-June 5, 1953)

HIS FAME:
In 1950 a poll conducted by the Associated Press proclaimed that “Big Bill” Tilden was the greatest tennis player of the first half of the 20th century, and some of the America’s leading sportswriters call him the greatest U. S. athlete in any sprt at any time. Perhaps these writers hoped to bring solace to a onetime giant-a closet homosexual revealed-who was suffering his last years in disgrace and near oblivion.

HIS PERSON:
He was Mr. Tennis to the world and to himself, a dazzling star fiercely dedicated to the game he dominated. Yet from the moment of his conception he was marked for personal tragedy. Seven years before his birth, Selina and William Tilden had watched in horror as all three of their babies-two girls and a boy-died one by one during a diphtheria epidemic. The following year Selina Tilden bore their fourth child, Herbert. Still stunned by her loss and longing for a daughter, Selina yielded Herbert’s upbringing to his father. With the appearance of another son, Selina’s maternal instincts resurfaced. She named her new baby William Tilden, Jr., but from the beginning she called him “June” (short for Junior) and he became her obsession. To keep him close, she convinced herself he was a sickly child. When June reached school age Selina refused to relinquish him, hired tutors for his lessons and deprived him of playmates. June adored his mother and absorbed every word she uttered. When she spoke to him of sex it was to warn him of the frightful venereal diseases that could result from the genital contact. Not until he was 18, when a crippling illness confined Selina to a wheelchair, was June released-to become Bill, at last.

Young Tilden moved in with two maiden relatives and was sent to school for the first time. Starting at Germantown Academy, he moved on to the University of Pennsylvania. During his freshman year in college, news of his mother’s death affected him so severely that he withdrew from Penn U. and returned to Germantown Academy as a tennis coach. There his two lifetime passions merged the need to excel at tennis and the desire to cultivate the affection and playing skills of young boys. His own game remained unspectacular until he broke through at 27. For the next six years he never lost a championship match. When he was 29, an operation that amputated the tip of a middle finger seemed only to improve his game. In 1920 he became the first American to win the men’s singles at Wimbledon, England. Between 1920 and 1930, he led the U. S. Davis Cup team to victory in seven consecutive years.

Success transformed him into an egocentric prima donna. Dubbed “Big Bill” although he was no more than 6 ft. 1 1/2 inches tall, he became arrogant, opinionated, and belligerent. He was also messy, unwashed and frequently smelly. After sweaty matches he would return to the locker room but refused to disrobe and shower in the presence of his teammates. Not one of them ever saw his naked body. He chain smoked, drank strong black coffee and ate almost nothing but steak and ice cream. With growing fame, he affected a British accent as he consorted with the world’s notables, including four U. S. presidents. In Hollywood he was partnered with Errol Flynn, Spencer Tracy and Montgomery Clift on Charlie Chaplin’s tennis court. At Clifton Webb’s he coached Greta Garbo, Katherine Hepburn and Tallulah Bankhead.

After his first arrest on Nov. 23 1946 and subsequent detention in a California honor farm for “contributing to the delinquency of a minor,” most of Tilden’s acquaintances fell away. Despite his considerable professional earnings and two inheritances, this tormented man died alone in a Hollywood side-street apartment with ten dollars in his pocket. His money had long since been dissipated on a pashalike life-style, ungrateful little boys and disastrous investments, most notably a brief stage career wherein he financed and played the lead in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

SEX LIFE:
In his autobiography, My Story, Tilden spoke of boyhood crushes on pretty girls. He claimed that upon reaching manhood he considered marriage and later suffered from unrequited love at the hands of some of Hollywood’s most famous women-all a pathetic fabrication. Actually, he recognized early on that he was “different”. At age 10, somehow escaping Selina, he embarked on a five-year fondling affair with another boy. Traumatized by his mother’s preachings, living as he did at a time when sords like pregnancy and menstruation hid behind such euphemisms as “with child” and “the curse” and homosexuality was an absolute taboo, he fought to sublimate his sexual urges in tennis. Sadly, he never enjoyed a fulfilling homosexual love affair and it is unlikely he ever had complete physical contact with another human body, male or female. Mostly he fondled his boys and masturbated privately, increasing this activity as his career faded. Although he minced onto the tennis court before launching into his powerful game, very few knew his secret. Ty Cobb called him “that fruit,” and in Lolita Vladimir Nabokav’s nymphet takes tennis lessons from Ned Litam (“Ma Tilden” spelled backwards), but no one openly exposed his problem.

Describing the incident that led to his downfall, Tilden wrote: “I met one lad on the court who showed unusual promise...Somehow we drifted into a foolishly schoolboyish relationship...Coming home from a movie....we indulged in horseplay...We were stopped by the police in Beverly Hills.” As a consequence, Tilden spent almost eight months at a California honor farm, polishing kitchen pots, setting the table and serving other inmates. Arrested a second time after he violated a five-year parole by consorting with a minor, Tilden protested, but to not avail. The youth he pursued identified Tilden unhesitatingly, using that missing fingertip as a clincher. He also testified that Tilden “was playing with my privates”. This time Tilden was sent to a road camp. Released in time for Christmas, he returned alone and abandoned to his apartment, where six lonely months later, full dressed, he stretched out on his bed to rest and quietly died. In his sensitive, definitive biography, Big Bill Tilden, Frank Deford wrote of Tilden’s Philadelphia funeral: “He was placed...at the feet of his mother, so that at last he could be her child again, for good, at peace.”

[GeoffWilliams]

Any grown man who lives with his mother you got to watch. Hitchcock knew it.

[don_budge]

Horseplay and "extraordinary decisions"...

It's just that I don't think, exclusively from what I have read, that Bill Tilden was Jerry Sandusky.

Steve made an extraordinary decision to separate all thoughts about Tilden into a pair of threads.

Maybe that's an instructive course, a way not to marginalize and lose Tilden's intelligence.

I find it strange that Jerry Sandusky and Bill Tilden both described their activities as "horse play". What kind of horses play like THAT? I have horses and have never seen such fooling around. Plus Sandusky's horse play included criminal penetration and Tilden's was allegedly limited to fondling. I guess there are levels to horsing around to.

Not to make light of the subject...but sexual morals can be subjective culturally speaking. For instance back in Tilden's days homosexual behavior was almost universally condemned...in American culture. In other cultures that may have not been the case. Some cultures actually not only condoned homosexuality but it was perhaps thought of as a cultured taste. In the performing arts and arts in general this behavior has always been viewed as more acceptable.

Geoff...since you are the one who seems most likely to condemn Tilden to death for his behavior...I would expect you to know more of the particulars than the rest lest you put someone to death wrongfully. For instance what were the ages of the lads that he ruined. The reason that I ask is this...I believe that the age of consent in America for having sex is 17 while the age of consent in Sweden is 15. So the same act could be viewed in two drastically different lights depending where it took place...depending about the ages.

I am not arguing in anyones defense...it is only that if viewed in terms of legality then we must be certain of the facts before we go off and hurt someone who is not guilty or over punishing someone for their crime. Tilden did pay his debt to society that the legal system saw as justice at the time. He also paid a stiff penalty in his life as he went from glory to the mulch pile rather quickly. His story is rather pathetic. Where does one draw the line at compassion? Is it possible to have compassion for both the perpetrator and the victim. I don't know. That may be the Christian thing to do.

As far as his victims go...one account of the reputation of the last "victim" described him as nearly a prostitute of sorts. Even in the account from "The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People" his money somehow vanished to "ungrateful little boys"...suggesting that money may have exchanged hands one way or another.

Certainly there is no case to be made to defend child molestation as you point out in the case of Michael Jackson but you might be surprised to read this book that I have referred to in this thread. So many of the rich and famous seem to acquire rather kinky tastes somehow and much of their preferences seem to gravitate toward the underaged. Supposedly there was some super-charged sex scandal that got buried a number of years ago that would have toppled the government if it had become public. It is a repeating story for the ages...this business of exploiting underaged human beings for sex. Another indication of just how far from the jungle we really have advanced.

I don't know of the circumstances or any of the victims that came across Tilden. Certainly the comment made that he looked at young boys the way most men look at beautiful women is an indication that something isn't quite right. I can see a rather odd look about him in the early instructional videos that he made often using young boys in really short tennis shorts. Knowing what we know now it sort of makes me cringe to imagine him leering at his student. So basically I am not privy to the gory details of the sordid story...of the pathetic nature of his sex life. That is not to say that I condone it either. I only look at the writings and wisdom for what they are. Real gems in the tennis world. But by the same token...tennis was long regarded for fairies and limp-wristed boys and the image and reputation of Tilden certainly might have had something to do with it.

If you are repeatedly referring to me as someone who is "lauding" Tilden as if somehow I am somehow complicit or condoning in his crimes...you can forget it. That isn't how it works. You really ragged on me in one of my initial posts on this forum when I quoted Tilden before. I didn't understand the venom of your comments at the time and I was really taken back and offended. Now I do understand your issues...and I sympathize with you as well. Please don't think for a moment that I am insensitive to your issues...they are real I am sure.

What to do about it? I don't know. But I think that bottle is right...somehow we need to separate the two.

[stotty]

Good decision.

It was a sound decision to separate the two threads. It's a mess to intertwine the two subjects in one thread. One half of Tilden's life was exceedingly excellent (you cannot ignore this) while the other half was a mess. In all aspects of his life you have to recognise the time he lived in. No one on this forum has any REAL concept what life/attitudes was like in the twenties. It's gone forever. We can only imagine and go off stuff we read.

It always fascinates me how people can view others and their actions so differently.

What I find odd is that many child abusers were abused as children themselves. So in the very early part of their lives as "the abused" we view them as individuals to be pitied and deeply cared for. But when they cross over in to being "the abusers" we abhor them and want them sent to prison for life, and tacitly approve they be beaten up and bullied during their incarceration. Work that one out. Could be we're doing something wrong here. We have potential abusers in the palm of our hands at a tender age yet are failing to do anything effective to stop the time bomb.

I'm not a fan of prisons, though recognise they way things have panned out they are essential. Modifying society is a better idea.

[GeoffWilliams]

There will never be a day when we can eliminate prisons. Too much evil in people. There's a killer in everyone, and evil thoughts if not deeds in everyone. Most often those who don't care about themselves give in to those, and end up in prison for it. Those people who continue to act as if Tilden did nothing wrong, and can be talked about as such, are siding with him on all counts, and all of his behaviors.

[bottle]

Nobody here is acting as if Tilden did nothing wrong. For better or worse, you have an either/or, Manichaean personality, maybe good for tennis, but for the rest...?

P.S. We may not be able to eliminate all prisons but we certainly could reduce our bloated number of them, largest in the world.