Forty-four years ago this month, Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs faced off in what may be the most famous tennis match ever televised.
A movie version of the event, “Battle of the Sexes,” opened nationwide on Friday after a smaller showing in select theaters. Ms. King and Mr. Riggs are played by a bespectacled Emma Stone and a floppy-haired Steve Carell.
But that match on Sept. 20, 1973, at the Astrodome in Houston — and all the ruckus leading up to it — didn’t need much in the way of Hollywood treatment. As coverage in The New York Times reflected, it was already full of drama and pomp.