Frank Shields

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Frank Shields hitting a backhand in the 1930s

Francis Xavier ("Frank") Shields (November 18, 1909, in New York City - August 19, 1975 in New York City) was an outstanding amateur American tennis player of the 1920s and 1930s.

1 Tennis career
2 Marriages
3 Acting career
4 International Tennis Hall of Fame
5 Career highlights
6 External links

[edit] Tennis career

Between 1928 and 1945 he was ranked eight times in the U.S. Top Ten, reaching Number 1 in 1933 and Number 2 in 1930. He competed for the Davis Cup in 1931, 1932, and 1934, winning 19 of 25 matches, and was the non-playing captain in 1951, when the team won four matches.

[edit] Marriages

His first wife was Rebecca Tenney; they were married in 1932 and divorced in 1940, on the grounds of his "habitual intemperance."

His second wife, whom he married in 1940 and later divorced, was the Italian Princess Donna Marina Torlonia di Civitella-Cesi. She was a daughter of Marino Torlonia, 4th prince of Civitella-Cesi and the American heiress Mary Elsie Moore (1888 - 1941), and a sister of Don Alessandro Torlonia, 5th Prince di Civitella-Cesi, the husband of the Spanish Infanta Beatriz de Borbón. Shields had two children by Marina Torlonia: a son, Francis Alexander Shields (the father of actress Brooke Shields), and a daughter, Cristiana Marina Shields.

His third wife, whom he married in 1949, and also later divorced, was Katharine Mortimer, a daughter of financier Stanley Grafton Mortimer Sr. and the former wife of Oliver Cadwell Biddle. By his third marriage he had two children,Katharine Shields and William Xavier Shields. He also had a stepdaughter, Christine Mortimer Biddle.