Courting Danger: My Adventure in World-Class Tennis, Golden-Age Hollywood, and High-Stakes......

The late Marble, America's top woman tennis player in the late 1930s, had a singularly eventful life. Writing with Spur editor Leatherman, she tells of her roller-coaster court career, shepherded by her tyrannical mentor, Eleanor Tennant. A Californian and beautiful, Marble was taken up by the movie community and, as a frequent guest at William Randolph Hearst's castle, met the big stars, becoming close friends with Carole Lombard and Clark Gable. Raped at age 15, she avoided sexual situations until an affair with a Swiss banker, which Tennant broke up. During WW II she married an Army officer who was killed in Germany shortly after she had miscarried their child. Marble then became a spy, and by assignment renewed the affair with her Swiss lover, who was a suspected conduit for Nazi money sent out of the Third Reich. But her mission was thwarted by a double agent. There is nary a dull moment in this fast-moving, glamorous tale. Photos not seen by PW. (June)