THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT

Julie Heldman

“I began to realize that it was important for me to stand up not just for our Tour, but for women’s rights in general.”

Interviewed by Judy Waxman, Oral Historian, July 2025

JH:  My name is Julie Heldman. I was born on December 8, 1945, in Berkeley, California.

JW:  Great. So briefly, tell us a little about your childhood. You know, ethnic background, siblings, interests.

JH:  I was born into a tennis family. My mother started playing tennis obsessively after I was born. A few months after I was born, [she] ended up becoming the Texas State Champion. Went on to play lots of tournaments and then decided that she really wanted to start her own magazine and started what became the world’s largest, most influential magazine, which was called World Tennis.

My father was a national junior tennis champion in 1936, was a terrific tennis player. Our dinner table conversations were about tennis, though both my parents were highly successful academically. So I was brought up in a household where it was important to succeed and where the two main areas were tennis and academics.

I ended up going to a wonderful private school in New York City starting when I was 12, and it was called the Dalton School. Still is. And I got a wonderful education there. I skipped two grades, so I wasn’t really a part of friendships because kids who are 12 are not really friends of kids who are 14. But I ended up playing tennis.

I have an older sister who is a year and four months older than I am. Her name is Trixie now. She changed her name to Trixie. And we were sent away to tennis camp starting when I was 8 years old. We spent 10 to 12 weeks away at camp every summer playing tennis 10 hours a day. So it was a very obsessive background.

My family is Jewish. The place we were sent away to was filled with players whose parents were Polish or Ukrainian immigrants in Hamtramck, Michigan. They were very, very different background from us, but we had in common that we all were playing for the Hoxsey Tennis Camp in order to succeed.

JW:  When did you get involved in the women’s movement and what was that about?

JH:  I got involved in the women’s movement through tennis. I played tennis throughout my childhood and adolescence. I won the US National 15 and under and the US National 18 and under. And then I went on to be ranked as high as 2 in the country and 5 in the world and played on what was then the only circuit that was available, which was amateur tennis, which meant you could not accept any money.

But in 1968, money began to come into tennis through some changes politically. But as soon as money came into tennis, the tournaments that had been available to women were no longer available, because there was money and the men were taking all the money and the people who were running the tennis association were all men.

This was both nationally and internationally, so that by the second year of what was called open tennis, which meant open to people who accepted money, by the second year, there were virtually no tournaments at all for women. And three of the top women players in the world were Americans who approached my mother, who was not only the editor of World Tennis Magazine, but also a very famous and accomplished promoter.

And they asked her if she could do something to try to help the situation where there were no tournaments available for women. Specifically, there was a tournament to be held in Los Angeles, which is used to be one of the most important tournaments on the amateur tour, which had then turned professional. And the tournament had money for women, but in the most demeaning way. It was 12 to 1 the amount of money for men that was being given to women.

And so these three women who went to my mother were Billie Jean King, Rosie Casals and Nancy Richey. And they said, we want to help, we want to boycott, well Billie and Rosie said they wanted to boycott, the Los Angeles tournament, but boycotting really wasn’t a possibility because plenty of women wanted a place to play, even if they were demeaned with very little or no money at all.

So instead, my mother founded a tournament to be held three or four weeks after this meeting at the U.S. open. And the tournament was to be held in Houston, Texas, where my parents were moving from New York. And it was to be with the top eight women that my mother could get to play at the tournament.

And she went to talk to the man who was running the tournament in Los Angeles. His name was Jack Kramer, who was a very famous tennis person at the time. She said, “Would you have a problem if we run a women’s pro tournament at the same time as yours?” He said, “No, no, I’m not that kind of guy. No problem.”

But as the women were beginning to come into Houston to fly in to start the tournament – which had the outrageously large amount of prize money of $5,000 for everybody – as they were about to fly in, it turns out that Jack Kramer had gone to the United States Law and Tennis association and said they shouldn’t have a sanction, [which] meant that the United States Tennis association approved of the tournament.

And if you had a sanction, then the players would be fine. If you didn’t have a sanction, then they could be suspended from playing in tournaments in America and around the world. So the women were being threatened that the sanction would be taken away by the Men’s Association.

But my mother called back all the women finding out what was happening, and said, “Come anyway. I’ll pay the airfare if need be. But what we’ll do is we’ll find a way to run the tournament.” And the very first day of the tournament, there was a big meeting at the tennis club where the tournament was to be, in Houston.

And the meeting was, how could there be a way of avoiding this suspension where the players would be prevented from playing in any other tournament, which is what we had done all of our lives was play tournaments.

And my mother came up with an idea, which was that there was a kind of way in which you could become a contract professional. There were several men’s organizations which were paying the men players a lot of money, but there wasn’t the kind of money available for women.

So my mother said, “Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll make you contract professionals. Well, sign a contract so you’ll be paid $1 each, and when that happens, then you will no longer be under the United States Tennis association, and they will no longer be allowed to suspend you.”

The women players looked at this and said, okay, what’s our chances? We can either sign as contract professionals, or we cannot sign, play the tournament and be suspended by this Men’s Tennis association for life.

JW:  You’re suspended for life?

JH:  For any amount of time they wanted to do that for. I was not part of that meeting because I wasn’t planning to play. I had a bad injury. But the eight women who were there all agreed to sign this contract. Later that day, I went over to the club because I was in Houston, too, and I went over and found out what’s happening. And I was then ranked number five in the world.

So I said, I will sign up, too. I’m willing to be one of these nine women who are standing up for the right to make a living doing what we do best. And we all kind of thumbed our nose at the Men’s Tennis association, but we were all concerned what this meant, could they harm us? But what it really meant.

The first tournament was wonderfully successful. Women played their matches, and patrons came in and bought tickets and watched the good play. And at the end of that tournament, the nine original players met and decided that Gladys Heldman, my mother, should run a tour just for women, starting immediately. There were two tournaments that happened within a period of a month, but there were no tournaments out there.

So my mother started a women’s pro tour, ran it, organized it, got the players, got the local promoters and the tour became eventually what is the most successful women’s sport in the world, which is professional women’s tennis. The nine players who stood up in the beginning became known as the Original 9. Eventually, in fact, 51 years later, we were inducted into the International Tennis hall of Fame for having stood up for the rights of women players. But that’s many years later.

During the pro tour, which started in January, I mean, it started for real. It had been several tournaments in the fall of 1970 but started in January of ‘71. It was that some of the tournaments were very successful. Some of them were duds, but they were started in such a hurry in order to put the tour together.

And the money became better and better and better as the tour went along and the women’s pro tour, we started being asked questions like, “Are you part of the women’s movement?” And my answer for me in the beginning was, “I’m just here to try and make the most money possible doing what I do best.”

But within months after the beginning of the tour, I was faced with people who said to me, “Do you realize that you’re role models for women everywhere to stand up for their rights?” And I began to realize that it was important for me to stand up not just for our tour, but for women’s rights in general.

So that in the beginning, I was kind of a reluctant advocate for the women’s movement. But after that, I and many others became spokespeople, standing up for what we had done and saying that there were rights for other people in other parts of society to make their own livings doing what they did best.

JW:  How long did you play tennis then?

JH:  I played tennis until the year I turned 30, which was 1975. By then, I was injured. It was time to quit. After I quit playing tennis, I did broadcasting for NBC, HBO, CBS. I was the first woman to broadcast men’s tennis. In fact, I broadcast the finals of Wimbledon between Jimmy Connors and Arthur Ash, which was a very seminal thing.

Other people have claimed they were the first to broadcast men’s tennis. But if you look back at the history, the evidence shows that I was hired because I was a good broadcaster, and I started out doing the broadcasting of the women at the US Open. But then NBC decided that I could broadcast, I was a fine enough broadcaster that I could broadcast other sports.

My broadcasting did not last that many years. A famous woman tennis player went after me to get me fired by NBC. And basically that shut me down. That was 1975, the year I turned 30. I did some journalism and then I applied to law school. I went to UCLA Law School and did extremely well. Ended up in the top 10% of the class. I was named Outstanding Graduate by the UCLA Law School Alumni Association.

After that I practiced law for a couple of years and then I went into business with my husband, and we built a company then. He was the CEO, I was the president, and we started out really from scratch and we got a company that did well enough that we went public.

You asked an important question –  how was I an activist and what did I do as an activist? Basically I was known in the world of tennis and in broadcasting for tennis. After that I kind of took the success that I had gotten and turned it towards other areas of my life.

My mother was a full time business person with various aspects. I was used to the idea that women are out there in the world succeeding. And so I went on to do that without- there’s certainly the women that were affected in the, in the workplace, but by being highly successful I kind of rammed through that and made my own success.

JW:  I want to ask you about the pay. So you were there early when women were getting some pay and is it equal now? How long did it take?

JH:  In the very beginning the prize money was very small and it was not in any way comparable to the men. But it was so significantly more than before the women’s pro tour started that it was the only place to play. In fact, while we were playing in America for draw for total prize money in a tournament of $10,000 or $30,000, within a year [it was] for $100,000.

One of my friends was playing a tournament in the south of France where she got to the finals of Wimbledon, the women’s doubles and got $18. So we were the only place where money was happening. There was a fight to get equal prize money in the tournaments that were with, between, with both men and women.

In those early eras there were very few tournaments that were both men and women. And certainly the most famous ones on the tennis tour were the four majors which are Wimbledon, the US Open, the French Open and the Australian Open, which are now sometimes called the Grand Slams.

In those tournaments in the beginning when there was prize money there was extreme difference between the men and the women. Billie Jean King began to advocate early on for equal prize money. And so a major reason why the women’s pro tour did as well as it did is we had a sponsor which was a cigarette company that had a women’s cigarette brand, which was called Virginia Slims.

And the man who was the chairman of the board of that company, which was Philip Morris, was a great friend of my mother’s. And they both belonged to the same country club. And he advocated with his friends at the country club to be involved in tennis. And one of his friends from the country club was a CEO of Bristol Myers. And in the summer of 1973, he provided equal prize money for the men and the women at the US Open, which is way ahead of its time.

None of the other majors or other tournaments jumped in to do the same for years. But eventually, all four majors have joined in for equal prize money. The kind of prize money that’s there now, I don’t know the total prize money for women at those, but I do know that if you win one of the four majors, you win $3 million. So there’s quite a bit of difference between our very first tournament where the total prize money was $5,000.

JW:  $5000, I guess, was something then.

JH:  It wasn’t much. We were not able to travel around. In the first winter, there were tournaments in Detroit, in Oklahoma City and Philadelphia. But in order to get an airfare around, you needed to be able to pay your expenses. Now, tennis players travel around with coaches and physiotherapists and sports psychologists. Back then, we traveled alone. We made our own arrangements.

And in the very first year when there were $5,000 tournaments, there wasn’t enough money to be able to have a hotel, for instance. So we were staying at the houses of people who were involved in putting the tournament together. But $5,000 was certainly so much better than there had been before for the previous two years that it sounded like a great start.

But within four months of starting the tour, there was a $45,000 tournament. So there began to be real money, and eventually all the tournaments were being played in public locations where tickets were sold and anybody could come in, and it became a worldwide sport. But in terms of whether there’s equal prize money between the men and the women, there isn’t.

Still, the men’s pro tour is more able to get promoters who will put more money up. I say, as there are tournaments with both men and women, even when there’s the equally best of the men and the best of the women, there’s typically a prize money differential.

On the other hand, the amount of money that’s available to women pros right now makes some women very, very rich. There’s kind of a fall off on both the men’s and women’s tour between the top 10 or the top 20 who are able to make really serious money and below that.

And when you get down to 100, there are tournaments which are not the top-level tournaments with very little money and people are struggling to get by, to break through. But at the top level, there’s still a difference between the amount that the top men can make and the top women can make.

There are other ways too in which money can be made. And some of it is if you’re towards the top of either tour, you can make money by having sponsorships. And the famous one from five, seven years ago was Naomi Osaka who won four majors during a two- or three-year period.

And she’s got some Japanese and US heritage and plays from Japan though she grew up in America and one year she made $57 million, including from sponsorships. You have to be kind of fit into a category where the sponsors want to have you being, want to be having you do their advertising for them.

JW:  Right. But in terms of the sport itself, you’re saying there’s still a differential between men and women.

JH:  There is. And there is even a move afoot the last year or two where the men’s and women’s tours are talking about instead of having to have been this separate women’s tour – they got started in 1970 because there was no other choice – there’s a movement afoot of joining the two again.

But whether that will happen or not, I don’t know. Again, a lot of the tours are run by business people who are promoters and they have to believe that they will be able to make more money if they join the two. And there are already three or four more major, not major, but top tournaments that have joined men and women together.

So that’s, it’s a move afoot, but there is still definitely a difference. The men’s pro tour is able to raise more money from sponsors than the women’s pro tour is. There’s still inherent misogyny, there’s still saying, well, you’re going to go get pregnant so we won’t pay you as much.

And it’s an interesting change on the women’s pro tour that at Wimbledon this year, there were nine women who had already given birth. So women are coming back and their husbands are traveling with them, which was not known in my era. But men are willing to say, wait a minute, we’re making a whole lot more money if you play tennis, so go back to doing what you do best. So that’s an interesting change in that direction.

JW:  Do you have any sort of concluding statement you’d like to make?

JH:  The outcome of somebody who was active in the 70s is that I’m married. We have a daughter, and she is such a feminist. And that, I think, is part of coming from her, her grandmother and her mother, who both stood up for women’s rights. And I’m very proud that she is that way and that we made a mark on women’s tennis.

But also that in a lot of ways, we were somebody that we were women who could be looked up to by other women for having stood up for our rights when we were being threatened. And we wouldn’t have done it without my mother. We wouldn’t have done it without the support of a cigarette company, which we went to bed with the devil, and they saved us. We really were able to make a mark that other people could look at and say, yes, they did something good.