Babe: the life and legend of Babe Didrikson Zaharias

Abstract

Babe: The Life and Legend of Babe Didrikson Zaharias. Susan E. Cayleff. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995. $29.95 cloth. Babe Didrikson exploded on the national scene and became sensational front page copy when she entered eight of the ten events scheduled for the 1932 AAU National Track and Field Championships and won six events with a tie in the high jump, breaking four world records in the space of three hours of competition. She scored thirty points, eight more than the second place team. Boasting before and during the meet that she would lick [them] single-handed and win everything I enter, twenty-one year-old Babe became the darling of the national press who touted her as a versatile athlete who could master and excel at any sport she tried, and who could live up to her egotistical boasts. At the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics, she claimed gold medals with world and Olympic records in the javelin and the 80-meter hurdles and finished second in the high jump, with the gold medal going to Jean Shiley after Babe's jump of 5 feet 5 inches was disallowed due to her jumping style. Babe Didrikson alienated her Olympics women competitors, who detested her for her almost utter lack of class and team spirit, but she gained the status of a popular national hero who fit the needs and gritty spirit of the Depression period. She was a product of working class East Texas society-rough and unpolished in her social manners, devoted to her parents and family, and determined to overcome the hardships that had marked her early life. She was a female Babe Ruth, full of braggadocio and playful arrogance but with the ready reservoir of raw talent and ability to deliver. But of course, the main limitation to Babe's future in sports was the fact that she was a woman and women athletes lacked professional sports in which to gain recognition and to earn a living. In order to take advantage of her fame, she had to rely on promoters and promotions, like that of touring with Babe Didrikson's All-Americans basketball team and with a House of David baseball team or being featured in staged baseball outings against male professionals. The money was lucrative as long as Babe stood up under the demands and rigors of a nomadic life and created a flow of headlines that would keep public interest in her high. The pattern was set for what would be a hectic, fastpaced life that fed the Babe's egoism but isolated her as an individual star who was a superior athlete. She also would have her sexual identity and physicality subjected to constant speculation, as questions were raised about her femininity and gender identity. Susan E. Cayleff's solidly researched and thoroughly documented biography of Babe Didrikson Zaharias provides the social perspective and fullness of objectivity that have been missing in Babe's amazing story and career. These considerable and hard-earned qualities of biography are gained in many ways. First, Professor Cayleff has located, read, absorbed and evaluated the incredible mass of journalistic writing on Babe Didrikson Zaharias done by sportswriters and mass circulation magazine writers. Cayleff documents how important sportswriters like Grantland Rice, Westbrook Pegler, Paul Gallico, and others contributed to Babe's fame and notoriety, with the most interest and revealing discussion focusing on Gallico's obsession with her androgyny or sexual identity conflict. No other American woman athlete has had such a strong curiosity factor about her sexual identity or been subjected to such unrelenting pressure to conform to and exhibit the standard qualities of femininity. As Babe moved away from track and field competition and barnstorming exhibition sports, frequently competing against men, she realized that only golf held the promise of continued fame and success as well as the personal challenge of setting records and winning. Cayleff also conducted extensive interviews with members of the Didriksen (Babe used a different spelling of the family name) family, with Babe's competitors in track and field and in professional golf, with Betty Dodd (who had a close personal relationship with Babe from 1950 to the Babe's death in 1956), and with close friends such as Peggy Kirk Bell. …