Road Show

With the enthusiasm of kids opening a lemonade stand, the tennis firm of Pauline Betz & Sarah Palfrey Cooke went into business. Sarah's tennis-playing husband, Elwood, had lined up 34 dates from New York to California. It looked like a good bet: the first pro competition between the two women who had ruled U.S. amateur tennis for six years. But Pauline and Sarah decided to give the customers something extra--a comedy act. When they played at schools (Barnard, Smith, Duke, etc.) Sarah, the straight man, appeared on court looking for Pauline, who then charged out in a man's size 44 trunks (she takes a woman's size 12), a sweater dyed a "nauseating orange," only one shoe, and a raincap flopping on her red hair. Her racket was warped to about the shape of a spoon. The slapstick tennis lesson began.

They had written the script themselves. Sample: after a careful explanation of the correct stance, Sarah hits a ball far to the right of Pauline, who ignores it, then does a double take: "Oh, are you supposed to run after it?" Sarah tells Pauline: "You're holding your arm wrong." Replies Pauline: "I can't do much about it. I was born with my arm attached to my shoulder." When they quit clowning and played tennis, the crowd usually breathed a sigh of relief.

In Birmingham, they drew 1,200 customers (400 more than the pro troupe of Tilden, Budge & Co. drew last year). Early in the tour, Sarah showed the effect of being out of competition a year. She won only four of the first twelve matches, was unable to match Pauline's energetic retrieving and superlative backhand. But business was good and both girls had fun. In a Buick convertible, their only big capital investment for the tour, they drove from Houston to Milwaukee to Chicago to Kalamazoo.

Last week, with $11,000 to show for two months' work, the two leading ladies of tennis ended their first U.S. tour at Dayton. The score in matches: Betz 16, Cooke 12 (six were called because of darkness). Next stop: England, where they are guaranteed $2,000 a week apiece.

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