The "Texas Tomboy"
The Life and Legend of Babe Didrikson Zaharias

Susan E. Cayleff

Reprinted from the OAH Magazine of History
7 (Summer 1992). ISSN 0882-228X
Copyright (c) 1992, Organization of American Historians

A life study of Babe Didrikson (1911-1956) presents the women's and sport historian with numerous challenges and possibilities (2). She was unarguably the most multi-talented athlete of the twentieth century, male or female. She played semi-professional basketball, softball, enjoyed a short stint as a successful harmonica-playing stage entertainer, and when she turned her will and talent to golf in the thirties, forties, and fifties, she won an unprecedented thirteen consecutive tournaments. Ironically, "Didrikson's versatility probably had its roots in the lack of opportunities for women in sports. Male athletes specialized in one sport with aspirations of turning professional in it." But Babe, proficient in two sports that had no pro ranks for women, "moved from sport to sport as opportunities presented themselves to her" and "plied her trade by taking limited engagements in everything" (3).

In addition to her world records and dominance in the high jump, eighty-meter hurdles, javelin toss and softball throw, she was an atypical American hero. Her ethnic Norwegian background, working-class ways, poor Southern origins, and gender posturing made her an unlikely character to capture the nation's imagination. Sports were her entree into front page headlines, but her clever manipulation of the press and unceasing hustling of gigs and opportunities made her a consummate self-promoter. She told tales of mythic proportion about herself which included scuttling her birth date to make her Olympic victories occur at age fifteen, not nineteen; the wrestling of a bull in downtown Beaumont, Texas; slugging it out with Baby Stribling, then middleweight boxing champion (in fact this was a staged photo session); scaling the outside walls of a multi-story Olympic dormitory to swipe a souvenir flag; typing 186 words per minute at her secretarial position at Employer's Casualty Insurance Company for whom she played sports in Dallas (her scant correspondence reveals rank typing skills and significant grammatical shortcomings); the false claim that she won seventeen, not thirteen consecutive golf tournaments (this "fact" appeared at her Memorial Museum in Beaumont); and her favorite sleight of hand--literally creating larger-than-life size myths about herself. She was, in fact, average in stature--five feet five inches and one hundred forty pounds--but would unabashedly exaggerate her height, weight, and strength. For Babe, the impact of a story justified any hyperbole. She learned story-telling skills from her seafaring father, and regaled her schoolyard buddies, teachers, athletic peers, and sportswriters with dazzling and barely believable feats.

As a personality she was charismatic and willful to the point of abrasiveness; few felt neutrally towards her. Women on the Ladies' Professional Golf Association tour which she helped co-found in 1948 were horrified--and intimidated--by her locker-room antics. She would enter and bellow, "What'd y'all show up for? See who's gonna finish second?" She knew how to psychologically immobilize her opponents and steal their limelight. Not surprisingly, her habit of monopolizing radio interviews with several athletes by belting out a tune on her harmonica did not endear her to many. Her uncanny ability to boast and make good on her predictions of her own accomplishments further infuriated her competitors. She warned the starting forward of the soon-to-be national champion Golden Cyclones women's basketball team (1930-32) that she would usurp her position within weeks. She did just that. She would predict the route of a golf ball's travel, or a final round's score, and delight the press and depress her opponents when her bravado proved true. All of these tactics gave her a competitive edge. In essence, she proclaimed, "I am the greatest!" decades before Mu-hammad Ali emerged as the king of self-congratulatory behavior.

That she was female, androgynous to the point of boyish-looking as a youth, coarsely spoken and physically brash made her fame and popularity all the more unique. In the years immediately following the Olympics, there was a double-edged reciprocity between Didrikson and the press. Her "deficient femininity" and "disturbing masculinity" sparked constant fears of lesbianism, or worse yet, the existence of a "third sex" in women's sports. Babe played a fascinating role in all of this. She revelled in the (early) persona of the boyish, brazen, unbeatable renegade, but cringed at the innuendos of abnormality. She was the consummate tomboy--beating boys at their own games. In fact, "boyishness" was tolerable and even engaging; "mannishness," on the other hand, insinuated a confirmed condition out of which she would not grow. The latter charge was the greater of the two insults and confirmed her abnormality. One Associated Press release comforted the reader that "she is not a freakish looking character . . . (but) a normal, healthy, boyish looking girl" (4). Babe was keenly aware of how these portrayals cast her outside of the female gender. Poisonous stories flowed from journalists' pens, likening her to Amazonian creatures. These renditions were so vitriolic that they evoked mother's warnings that they would "not let their daughters grow up to be like Babe Didrikson."

Yet throughout the condemnation and ridicule, Babe persevered in her attempt to earn a living at sport in an era when it was virtually impossible for a woman to do so. Thus she participated in one-on-one demonstrations that at times had almost carnival-like aspects. She pitched spring training for the St. Louis Cardinals; put on golf ball driving exhibitions with male golf-great Gene Sarazen; played donkey-softball with an all-male, all-bearded touring softball team, prompting the New York Evening Post to crow with the headline, "Famous Woman Athlete Pitches for Whisker Team;" sang and ran on a treadmill in a wildly successful albeit short-lived stint in a one-woman vaudeville-type show; and even challenged the winning horse of the Kentucky Derby to a foot race.

For these reasons, and her infinitely quotable one-liners, which shocked as much as they entertained (when asked how she drove the golf ball so hard Babe replied, "I just loosen my girdle and let 'er fly!"), Didrikson was a favorite with the press. As her brother, Bubba Didrikson, said when interviewed about his deceased sister, "They called her a sportswriter's dream because she always had time for them . . . She never rejected anyone who wanted to interview her. She was wise. She knew that they could make her or break her . . . she knew that, and she liked it" (5).

This symbiotic relationship debilitated Babe at times. Labelled a "muscle moll" by Vanity Fair in 1932, Babe perpetually battled the image of a creature not-quite-female (6). As she matured, and cultural tolerance for her tomboyishness waned (as it eventually does for young women who excel in male physical endeavors), she deliberately sought to deconstruct her inappropriate past and construct a non-threatening, normal heterosexual, feminine life script.

In this context, Babe experienced the difficulty of being a woman who defied the acceptable parameters of femininity. Middle-class cultural ideals of her era dictated sacrificial devotion to husband, children and home, attention to physical beautification, and a self-effacing demeanor (7). She consciously set about perfecting the more tolerable aspects of this ideal feminine role. According to Bertha Bowen, a friend and protector who shepherded Babe through the upper-class waters of Texas golf, they began a campaign to feminize her replete with a clothing overhaul, make-up applications, and other accoutrements of femininity such as hairdos, hosiery, and silk slips. Bowen even chased Babe through the former's Texas home with a girdle admonishing her that no decent woman would step outside without wearing one (8).

Babe realized that further success depended upon recasting herself to conform to acceptable notions of femininity. Women athletes in particular lived with conflicting ideals. A "youthful appearance became fashionable . . . and an 'athletic' image . . . made action itself a sort of fashion" (9). For women athletes this meant facing the contradiction between developing the body in what was seen as an "unfeminine" fashion versus being a "real" (culturally-constructed) woman. The public attitude, therefore, was ambivalent toward women athletes, not universally approving as many historians claim. If the woman athlete was shapely but not muscular, sporting but not overly competitive, heterosexual, and participating in a "beautiful" sport (defined by sportswriters as swimming, golf, tennis or ice-skating), then and only then did she fulfill the ideal. Babe, like so many other athletes of her era, either adopted an apologetic attitude offering "proofs" of her femininity or struggled with her identity as the criticism and innuendo mounted. In her as-told-to autobiography This Life I've Led (1955), Babe offered numerous examples of dating boys, marriage proposals and successes at housekeeping, and sewing and cooking to prove her normality. Much of this was grossly exaggerated or fictitious.

In 1938, Babe's meeting of and marriage to George Zaharias cemented her transition to appropriate womanhood. Their meeting and courtship represented the stuff reporters dream of for they were both media hounds. Zaharias, wealthy and well-known by his wrestling tag-name, "The Crying Greek from Cripple Creek," was also a sports promoter of renown. The credentials he gained as a world-class wrestler from 1932 to 1938 were impressive enough to have him inducted into the Athletic Hellenic Hall of Fame for Greek Athletes in 1982 (10). Significantly, George abandoned his own lucrative career in the ring in order to manage Babe's career. Thus she was the primary wage-earner, although interviews revealed she controlled none of her own monies. So it was that two of sports' most adept hustlers merged their considerable talents. The media idealized their relationship throughout their life together, some resorting to unabashedly sappy prose. The significance of this increases as their marital harmony decreases. Ample evidence exists that Babe's "Greek God" had, in her own words, become "a God Damned Greek." Yet Babe continued to nurture the image of herself as the happily married lady despite increasing periods of wanderlust on George's part, as well as discord and alienation. Babe's wish to present a happy front was most likely due to her desire to keep the ugly innuendos of years past from reemerging.

Her conscious self-transformation was two-fold: stereotypically-defined femininity replaced uncouth roughness and golf became her new passion and career focus. This traditionally elite sport promised ascendancy from her gritty and impoverished working-class roots, although prior to her participation, it hardly guaranteed a financial living. Women's golf was in need of a superstar player and personality in 1943 when Babe finally regained her amateur status after an agonizing series of legal stalemates aimed at barring "her ilk" from the game. And while Babe's style provided ample interest, it was often not the kind that golf's higher-ups sought. Yet despite the sport elites' ambivalence toward her, Babe revolutionized women's golf. In 1947, when Pete Martin of the Saturday Evening Post interviewed Babe, he wrote of her, "Not much has been made of the undeniable fact that the Babe has revolutionized the feminine approach to golf" (11). Other sportswriters said of her, "Babe Zaharias created big-time women's golf . . . her booming power game lowered scores and forced others to imitate her" (12). Pushed by her manager/husband and her own high standards well beyond the comfort level, Babe's practice sessions were deservedly legendary. According to Zaharias in a 1957 Look magazine interview, in order to win, Babe drove balls with taped, bloodied and sore hands and complied with his grueling schedules (13). As Babe herself often said, "I've always been a fighter. Ever since I was a kid, I've scrapped for everything. I want to win every time. If a game is worth playing, it's worth playing to win" (14). Babe devoted herself to perfecting her golf game with the same ferocity that she brought to the Olympic high hurdles and javelin toss. She was equally dominant in her newly chosen arena.

As Babe's powerful golf game and trans-Atlantic victories (in 1947 she became the first American woman to win the British Open) gained coverage in the national press, her outlets for competition grew extremely meager. Few professional tournaments existed for women and so Babe and several other women golfers set about establishing the Ladies' Professional Golf Association (LPGA) to introduce more paying tournaments. Sponsored by monies from sporting goods companies, the fledgling women's tour steadily increased its purses, credibility, and consequently, the number of women able to eke out a living in golf. Babe held office in the LPGA's hierarchy during the first several years of its operation and consistently ranked among the top money winners (15).

In 1953, her athletic career ground to a halt as she battled colon cancer in what would become a recurring struggle. Didrikson utilized sports metaphors to help her cope with her ailment. She conceptualized the disease as "a hurdle she could leap," "a hole she could birdie," and "the toughest competition of my life." By surrounding herself with familiar and successful life strategies, she coped with her ailment admirably. Unfortunately, her public visibility as a cancer self-help role model--in an era when this was virtually unheard of--was based on misinformation. Her husband and closest female friend Betty Dodd, a promising golf protegee from San Antonio who was twenty years Babe's junior, joined with physicians at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (where she was repeatedly hospitalized for cancer) in not telling her of the extent of her malignancy. Thus, falsely believing herself cured, Babe played a vital educational function for the American public who cheered her posturing as one who could "beat the beast of cancer" (16). She devoted herself to fund raising for and consciousness raising about the disease while staging a dramatic and successful comeback as a championship golfer mere weeks after her operation. Her phoenix-like rise back to the top of the sports world endeared her to a new audience. She was honored by President Eisenhower at the White House, fêted by the Texas state legislature and the American Cancer Society, and given numerous medical humanitarian awards.

Throughout her illness, which recurred in 1955 and claimed her life prematurely in 1956, Didrikson was inseparable from her "other mate," Betty Dodd. Intimates interviewed readily acknowledge the friendship and care-taking that transpired between the two women. It clearly replaced the emotional intimacy that had waned so dramatically between Zaharias and Babe. In fact, Dodd lived with the couple for the last six years of Babe's life. They were constant travel companions on the tour, music-making buddies, and a persistent source of infuriation and friction to George who had quite literally been replaced in Babe's affections. While this relationship was never admittedly lesbian, it was undeniably the emotional and physical mainstay of Babe's later life. What is so striking is Didrikson's silence about this bond. She does not mention Dodd until the last pages of her 1955 autobiography. Only accounts from hospital and newspaper records revealed the "devoted friend" who slept on a cot beside Babe's hospital bed. Dodd, interviewed repeatedly throughout the late 1980s, openly professed her love for Babe. Theirs is a classic example of a relationship between women that was life-sustaining, yet culturally-minimized due to homophobic fears.

Didrikson's life presents numerous challenges to historians and students alike. Discovering a hero with flaws, who was previously portrayed as unblemished, necessitates a new construction of her life story. Her fierce competitiveness, which served her so well on the playing field, was self-serving and at times damaged personal relationships. Her life has always been told as a series of unimpeded successful quests, much like narratives of conquering male heros in the epic genre. But when gender, homophobia, cultural beliefs about women athletes, and sex-role expectations for women in the era from 1910 to 1960 are analyzed, a far more conflictual and complex life story emerges. Didrikson furthered opportunities for others in women's sports, although not because she was gender conscious and sought to improve opportunities for others that followed after her. She co-founded the LPGA to increase her own opportunities. But she served as a path-breaking role model by virtue of her accomplishments despite her lack of self-conscious effort to do so. Her work with medical humanitarianism was more deliberately altruistic. Thus she leaves a dual legacy: as an athlete and as a public figure who endured scrutiny to help others.

Her shrine-like gravestone in Beaumont, Texas, which fittingly dominates the family burial plot, misleadingly declares the time-worn cliché: "It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game." Ironically, this epitaph embodies the legend of Didrikson as she chose to mythologize herself. It contrasts sharply with the life and values she actually lived. Hers was a life of struggle, disharmony, cultural conflict and unapproved-of intimacy; this amidst much non-introspective fun-seeking. That she worked so hard in her death-bed autobiography to portray her life as harmonious, non-conflictual and ideally bonded to husband and sports peers, speaks to her savvy desire to construct a culturally-acceptable life story. Babe's life as she actually lived it allows the historian and student of history a unique chance to unravel the palpable opportunities open to--and extreme limitations encountered by--women athletes and atypical women in general during this era. Babe Didrikson's life is an invaluable window through which larger issues in women's and sport history can emerge, crystallize, and gain meaning.

1. Vin Burke, "Former Enterprise Sports Editor Tells Story of Babe Didrikson," Beaumont Sunday Enterprise 3 May 1970, Document #11.1.12.13. Babe Didrikson Zaharias Papers at the John Gray Library Special Collections, Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas.

2. This article is derived from Susan E. Cayleff, "The Golden Cyclone:" The Life and Legend of 'Babe' Didrikson Zaharias (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1993).

3. Cindy L. Himes, The Female Athlete in American Society: 1860-1940, (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1986), 249.

4. Document #11.1.2.18.

5. Bubba and Jackie Didrikson, interview with the author, 11 August 1988. Bubba Didrikson died on 13 May 1989 at the age of seventy-three. See "Arthur Didrikson Dies in Fort Worth," Beaumont Enterprise 13 May 1989.

6. Paul Gallico, "The Texas Babe," Vanity Fair 39 no.2 (October 1932): 36, 71.

7. See Lois Banner, American Beauty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983); Mary Ryan, Womanhood in America from Colonial Times to the Present (New York: F. Watts, 1983, 3rd edition); and Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: W.W. Norton, 1963).

8. Bertha Bowen, interview with the author, 17 May 1988.

9. Donald Mrozek, "The 'Amazon' and the American 'Lady': Sexual Fears of Women as Athletes," in From 'Fair Sex' to Feminism: Sport and the Socialization of Women in the Industrial and Post-Industrial Eras, J.A. Mana-gan and Roberta J. Park, eds. (Totowa, N.J.: Frank Cass, 1978), 289.

10. AP Wire, Tampa, Florida, "Husband of Athlete Babe Zaharias Dies," Beaumont Enterprise (23 May 1984): 2D. Doct. #11.2.21.4.

11. Pete Martin, "Babe Didrikson Takes Off Her Mask," Saturday Evening Post (20 September 1947): 137.

12. Oscar Johnson and Nancy Williamson, "Babe Part 3," Sports Illustrated (October 1975): 48.

13. George Zaharias, "The Babe and I," Look no. vol. 1957.

14. Ann Fears Crawford and Crystal Sasse Ragsdale, "The Texas Babe," Women in Texas (Burnett, Tx.: Eakin Press, 1982), 275.

15. Billye Anne Cheatum, A History of Selected Golf Tournaments For Wo-men With Emphasis Upon The Growth And Development of The Ladies Professional Golf Association (Unpublished Ph.D Dissertation: Department of Physical Education, Texas Woman's University, Denton, Texas, 1967).

16. Susan E. Cayleff, "'Babe' Didrikson Zaharias' Personal and Public Battle with Cancer," Texas Medicine 82 (September 1986): 41-45.

Susan E. Cayleff is Associate Professor in the Department of Women's Studies at San Diego State University. She is the author of Wash and Be Healed: The Water-Cure Movement and Women's Health and "The Golden Cyclone:" The Life and Legend of 'Babe' Didrikson Zaharias, University of Illinois Press, 1993.