The club isn’t exactly exclusive, although it retains an unmistakable whiff of glamour. Getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame continues to be a career highlight, nearly 67 years after the first eight were unveiled on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue.
Just ask Billie Jean King, who became recipient No. 2,807 during a ceremony Monday.
The tennis icon, activist and part owner of the Dodgers was thrilled to become the first woman to receive a star in the Walk of Fame’s sports entertainment category, added in 2023 to acknowledge contributions of athletes to the entertainment industry.
During a Q&A session with People magazine president Leah Wyar at a post-ceremony celebration, King reminisced about walking along Hollywood Boulevard with her mother as a child.
“We used to come up here and I used to look at the stars on the walk,” King said. “I never thought, ‘Oh, I’m gonna have one of those.’ I mean, it didn’t even dawn on me.”
On hand to assist with the unveiling near the intersection of Hollywood and Vine were Lakers great and fellow Dodgers owner Magic Johnson and Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis, who wore an unbuttoned Dodgers jacket. Johnson and Curtis both have stars on the Walk of Fame.
“You always fight for what’s right,” Johnson told King, 81, during the ceremony. “You lend your platform and your voice and your time and your money to bring about change.”
Added Curtis: “Billie Jean King’s contribution is power. She’s power on the courts, she’s power in the courts, she’s power in the press, power in her public advocacy, power in her fight for freedom, power to be who she is now.”
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Although King is perhaps best known for defeating male tennis player Bobby Riggs in the 1973 “Battle of the Sexes,” she has long been an activist for LGBTQ+ and women’s rights. She was the first female athlete to receive both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal and she is the founder of the Women’s Sports Foundation and the Women’s Tennis Assn.
“She’s an amazing person, and what I love about Billie Jean is that she used her platform to bring about change,” Johnson said at the ceremony. “When we talk about that ‘Battle of the Sexes,’ it was more than just you beating Bobby Riggs. You were fighting for equal pay for women and all these young ladies that are making all these millions and millions of dollars today should be thanking you for what you did for all of them.”
King’s wife, former tennis player Ilana Kloss, also attended the ceremony.
“Words cannot express how honored and grateful I am to receive this star,” King wrote on Instagram. “I may be the first woman to be awarded a star in [the sports entertainment] category, but I’m certainly not going to be the last.”
“I don’t think the women tennis players could have done what we did back in the ’70s unless we had history to draw on…. It was very tense times. It was not fun times, but it was really amazing to produce something that now is huge in women’s tennis.”
King and Johnson are two of a small handful of people associated with the Dodgers to get stars on the Walk of Fame, including legendary broadcasters Vin Scully and Jaime Jarrín. The Dodgers franchise received a star in 2008, becoming the first team in any sport to receive the honor.
