Rollo
Dec 14th, 2010, 10:55 PM
Kay Stammers Menzies was best know in the 1930s for her glamorous looks, but she was also a dangerous left who had the rare distinction of beating Helen Wills Moody. World War Two left her little time to develop her tennis game, but Kay was still the British #1 for 1946 and 1947 after the war.
Below is her obituary from the New York Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article782601.ece
The Times
December 27, 2005
Kay Stammers
Dashing Wimbledon who was feted for her film-star looks and style
April 3, 1914 - December 23, 2005
KAY STAMMERS was a glamourous tennis champion of the 1930s, who enjoyed some media attention and international popularity aftershe won the Wimbledon women’s doubles matches with Freda James in 1935 and 1936. Although defeated in the Wimbledon singles final by Alice Marble in 1939 it was considered that, but for the outbreak of the Second World War, she would have subsequently won the tournament.
Katharine Esther Stammers was born in St Albans, where she learnt to play tennis with her family on the grass court at home. When she was 17 she beat Helen Wills and was one of the youngest to play at Wimbledon. By 1934 Stammers was third in the LTA rankings.
In 1935 she beat the reigning champion Dorothy Round in the Bournemouth championships, won the French Open title and the Riviera doubles championships, partnering King Gustav of Sweden, who was then 77 years old.
With film-star good looks and style — she learnt to fly at the London Aeroplane club — she became a press icon. In 1934, the Daily Herald called her “charming as well as brilliant” and Californian newspapers, when she won the Pacific Coast championship in the same year, termed her “an attractive little southpaw invader”. She also reached the quarter-finals of the US Open.
Left-handed with a good forehand, Stammers provided exciting and attacking tennis, her clothes were also much detailed in the newspapers. She designed her own shorts in uncrushable linen cut full to 4in above the knee, and wore them with an open-necked shirt, turned down Byron-style. While playing on the West Coast of the US, she visited the Hollywood studios and had a screen test. She dated John F. Kennedy and was photographed with him at the Kennedy family Hyannis Port compound. She said that JFK was “spoilt by women. I think he could snap his fingers and they’d come running. And of course he was terribly attractive and rich and unmarried — a terrific catch really . . . I thought he was divine.”
In 1939 Stammers married Michael Menzies, then in the Welsh Guards. After the war, she continued playing tennis and captained the Wightman Cup team. She moved with her husband to New York, where he had been appointed head of Hill Samuel.
After her divorce from Menzies in 1975, she married Thomas Bullitt, whom she had met on the American tennis circuit. Bullitt, who had been educated in England, came from one of Kentucky’s oldest families and had been an aide to Montgomery during the war.
The couple lived at Oxmoor Farm, near Louisville, Kentucky, which had been in the Bullitt family for ten generations. Stammers laid out and developed an English garden and indulged a passion for racehorses, helping to run the annual steeplechases on the estate course in aid of children’s charity and, under the Oxmoor Charities Corporation, helped to plan schooling for event riders and summer concerts.
Bullitt predeceased her in 1991. A daughter and two sons survive her from her first marriage.
Kay Stammers, tennis player, was born on April 3, 1914. She died on December 23, 2005, aged 91.
Below is her obituary from the New York Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article782601.ece
The Times
December 27, 2005
Kay Stammers
Dashing Wimbledon who was feted for her film-star looks and style
April 3, 1914 - December 23, 2005
KAY STAMMERS was a glamourous tennis champion of the 1930s, who enjoyed some media attention and international popularity aftershe won the Wimbledon women’s doubles matches with Freda James in 1935 and 1936. Although defeated in the Wimbledon singles final by Alice Marble in 1939 it was considered that, but for the outbreak of the Second World War, she would have subsequently won the tournament.
Katharine Esther Stammers was born in St Albans, where she learnt to play tennis with her family on the grass court at home. When she was 17 she beat Helen Wills and was one of the youngest to play at Wimbledon. By 1934 Stammers was third in the LTA rankings.
In 1935 she beat the reigning champion Dorothy Round in the Bournemouth championships, won the French Open title and the Riviera doubles championships, partnering King Gustav of Sweden, who was then 77 years old.
With film-star good looks and style — she learnt to fly at the London Aeroplane club — she became a press icon. In 1934, the Daily Herald called her “charming as well as brilliant” and Californian newspapers, when she won the Pacific Coast championship in the same year, termed her “an attractive little southpaw invader”. She also reached the quarter-finals of the US Open.
Left-handed with a good forehand, Stammers provided exciting and attacking tennis, her clothes were also much detailed in the newspapers. She designed her own shorts in uncrushable linen cut full to 4in above the knee, and wore them with an open-necked shirt, turned down Byron-style. While playing on the West Coast of the US, she visited the Hollywood studios and had a screen test. She dated John F. Kennedy and was photographed with him at the Kennedy family Hyannis Port compound. She said that JFK was “spoilt by women. I think he could snap his fingers and they’d come running. And of course he was terribly attractive and rich and unmarried — a terrific catch really . . . I thought he was divine.”
In 1939 Stammers married Michael Menzies, then in the Welsh Guards. After the war, she continued playing tennis and captained the Wightman Cup team. She moved with her husband to New York, where he had been appointed head of Hill Samuel.
After her divorce from Menzies in 1975, she married Thomas Bullitt, whom she had met on the American tennis circuit. Bullitt, who had been educated in England, came from one of Kentucky’s oldest families and had been an aide to Montgomery during the war.
The couple lived at Oxmoor Farm, near Louisville, Kentucky, which had been in the Bullitt family for ten generations. Stammers laid out and developed an English garden and indulged a passion for racehorses, helping to run the annual steeplechases on the estate course in aid of children’s charity and, under the Oxmoor Charities Corporation, helped to plan schooling for event riders and summer concerts.
Bullitt predeceased her in 1991. A daughter and two sons survive her from her first marriage.
Kay Stammers, tennis player, was born on April 3, 1914. She died on December 23, 2005, aged 91.