Second Serve
{{short description|1986 television film directed by Anthony Page}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=March 2025}}
{{Infobox television
| image = Secondsrv.jpg
| image_size =
| image_alt =
| caption = Vanessa Redgrave as Renée Richards
| genre = Biography
Drama
Sport
| writer = Stephanie Liss
Gavin Lambert
| director = Anthony Page
| starring = Vanessa Redgrave
Martin Balsam
Richard Venture
Louise Fletcher
| music = Brad Fiedel
| country = United States
| language = English
| producer =
| executive_producer = Linda Yellen
| editor = John C. Horger
| cinematography = Robbie Greenberg
| runtime = 120 minutes
| company = Lorimar-Telepictures
| budget =
| network = CBS
| released = {{Start date|1986|05|13}}
}}
Second Serve is a 1986 American made-for-television biographical film starring Vanessa Redgrave as retired eye surgeon, professional tennis player, and transgender woman Renée Richards. The film is based on her 1983 autobiography Second Serve: The Renée Richards StoryRichards, Renée with John Ames. "Second Serve: the Renée Richards Story". New York City, New York, USA: Stein and Day, March 1983, {{ISBN|0812828976}} that was written with John Ames. The script is by Stephanie Liss and Gavin Lambert and the film was directed by Anthony Page. Second Serve aired on CBS on May 13, 1986.{{cite news
| last = O'Connor
| first = John J.
| title = CBS's 'Second Serve'
| work = New York Times
| date = 1986-05-13
| url = https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0DE6D8113AF930A25756C0A960948260
| accessdate = 2008-12-05}}
Plot
In 1976, Renée Richards is on the tennis court as a professional tennis player. The film flashes back to 1964, when Renée Richards is an eye surgeon named Richard Radley (both roles played by Redgrave). Radley has a successful career and a fiancée, but secretly cross-dresses at night. Unable to speak with his mother Sadie (Louise Fletcher), who is a psychiatrist, Radley consults his own psychiatrist, Dr. Beck (Martin Balsam), who advises him to grow a beard. This strategy works temporarily until Radley is drafted into the Navy, which does not allow beards. Following his discharge and a failed marriage, Radley undergoes gender reassignment surgery and becomes Renée.
Renée relocates to California, resumes her career as a surgeon and begins dating. After playing in a local tennis tournament in La Jolla, Renée is outed as transgender by a television reporter. In the ensuing controversy, Renée takes the United States Tennis Association to court, where she secures her right to play professional tournament tennis as a woman without being subjected to chromosome testing.
Cast
- Vanessa Redgrave as Richard Radley/Renée RichardsRichards' birth name was Richard Raskind but the name was changed to Richard Radley for the film.
- Whit Hertford as Young Richard Radley
- Martin Balsam as Dr. Beck
- William Russ as Josh
- Alice Krige as Gwen
- Kerrie Keane as Meriam
- Richard Venture as Dr. David Radley
- Reni Santoni as Dr. Roberto Granato
- Louise Fletcher as Dr. Sadie M. Bishop
- Jeff Corey as Dr. Harry Benjamin
Critical reception
Critic John J. O'Connor of The New York Times praised Redgrave's performance. Although noting that from a physical standpoint Redgrave is not very believable, O'Connor calls her performance "astonishingly convincing". While finding the script wanting for its tendency to reduce complexities to cliches, O'Connor also found that Second Serve "does manage, despite oversimplifications and evasions, to stick to the point. But it is the extraordinary Redgrave performance that slams the message home."
New York magazine concurred in this assessment, with reviewer John Leonard calling the film "calm and matter-of-fact, and perhaps too tidy".{{cite news
| last = Leonard
| first = John
| title = Double Fault
| work = New York
| pages = 108–9
| date = 1986-05-19
| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=6OYCAAAAMBAJ&q=%22second+serve%22+%22vanessa+redgrave%22&pg=PA108
| accessdate = 2008-12-05}} Leonard lavished Redgrave with praise for her performance, writing:
Redgrave, tall and vulnerable, athletic and bewildered, fearful and loving competitive and lonely, manages to transsex both ways. She embodies, with the fine bones of that face and the twitching of her various limbs, every internal contradiction of the polymorphously perverse."
Second Serve was not universally praised by critics, receiving negative reviews from such outlets as the Chicago Sun-Times.{{cite news
| last = Ruth
| first = Daniel
| title = Redgrave nets loss in 'Second Serve'
| work = Chicago Sun-Times
| date = 1986-05-13
| url = http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-3765779.html
| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20121022150140/http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-3765779.html
| url-status = dead
| archive-date = 2012-10-22
| accessdate = 2008-12-05}}
Redgrave was nominated for an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe for her performance and Second Serve won Emmys for hairstyling and makeup.
Notes
{{reflist}}
External links
- {{IMDb title|0091913|Second Serve}}
{{Anthony Page}}
Category:1986 television films
Category:1980s biographical films
Category:1986 LGBTQ-related films
Category:American LGBTQ-related television films
Category:American biographical films
Category:Biographical films about sportspeople
Category:Films about trans women
Category:1983 non-fiction books
Category:Films directed by Anthony Page
Category:Films scored by Brad Fiedel
Category:Cultural depictions of tennis players
Category:Cultural depictions of transgender people
Category:Cultural depictions of American people