Alice Irene Marble, world's foremost tennis player of 1939, played on the public courts at Golden Gate Park as a teen, as did another great, Margaret Osborn DuPont.
In later years Marble lived at the duPont Point Happy Date Gardens sharing a house with her friend, another hall-of-famer, Mary K. Browne.

As a teen, Alice was great at sports overall. She played seven different sports in school and captained the baseball team. Presumably she also studied academic subjects, but I could find no evidence of this. Her brother strongly encouraged her towards tennis believing it to be more "feminine". Alice was reluctant until she met her future mentor, Eleanor Tennant. Tennant put her on a diet of rare steak, butter, and cigarettes and took her out to society.

The pace Marble and Tennant set was grueling. In 1933, during a qualifying tournament Marble played 108 games between 10 am and 7 pm, losing 12 pounds. She suffered heatstroke and had to forego the rest of the season. In 1934, Marble was picked for America's team fighting for the Wightman Cup, a U.S. versus U.K competition, but during the American-French team matches in Paris she collapsed on the court and was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Tennant paid for months of rest cure and Marble emerged with her lungs scarred, but functioning.

The USLTA tried to stop Marble from returning to sport. To convince them she beat four men of their choice one after the other. Having clearly made her point she went on to win 18 Grand Slam championships between 1936 and 1940 and was named her athlete of the year twice by The Associated Press.

In 1941, saying that "she had nothing left to prove" in amateur tennis Marble turned professional and for a tour with Britain’s Mary Hardwick and male greats Don Budge and “Big Bill” Tilden. She insisted on equal pay, and got it.

She also worked at DC Comics, and was one of the editors on Wonder Woman.

Marble claimed that just before WWII she married a pilot, James Crowley, who was killed over Germany. In the same year she suffered a car accident leading to a miscarriage. These two tragedies led her to attempt suicide. As a way of recovering she joined the US Intelligence Service as a spy and was shot in the back by a Nazi agent. No one saw any documentation for these claims, but at least one person said that she's seen the bullet scar.

Marble was a firm believer in desegregating tennis and one of the biggest public supporters of Althea Gibson.

After DuPont's death Ms. Marble settled in Palm Desert and taught tennis. Her most famous students were the astronaut Dr. Sally Ride and another tennis great - Billie Jean King, who called her "a picture of unrestrained athleticism...one of the greatest women to play the game because of her pioneering style in power tennis."