Vanity Fair, August 1931

Check out the guy on the left. Remind you of anyone? The liquid eyes, the furry brows? He’s Francis X. Shields, who left his button-fly genes to his granddaughter Brooke. Snapped by Steichen at twenty-one, he was the star of American tennis (second only to Johnny Doeg, right). It was the year he managed to miss his Wimbledon final. He claimed a leg injury, but rumor said it was really on account of two French countesses. Anyway, he missed the next Wimbledon entirely by passing out at a bon voyage fete and waking up on a liner partway back to New York. Those massive good looks won him an MGM contract, but he lost out because he couldn’t act. Still, as his son (and Brooke’s uncle) William writes in a new biography, Bigger than Life, he always celebrated—whether he won or lost.