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Her father, a good but not famous tennis player, taught her how to play, died being operated on for tennis elbow six years ago. Her mother continued ably to run & expand the Nuthall chain of small suburban hotels in and near London, to coach Betty's tennis.
Two years ago, Betty visited Los Angeles with the Wightman Cup team, went to parties (where Charlie Chaplin made funny faces, obliged her by trying to look like Napoleon) while the other ladies went to bed. Original, she liked honeydew melons better than anything else in the U. S., found Park Avenue the most beautiful street in the world, observed that everyone called her Betty except Mrs. Hoover. She trains for a match by skipping rope 700 times every morning, going to bed at ten, practicing rarely against her three sisters, more often against her two brothers of whom the oldest, now, sits behind her at important matches, as her father used to, advising her how to play.
Reputedly the most photographed woman in England, Betty Nuthall is less an Average Girl than one who, partly by charm, partly by shrewdness, has been able to preserve the character of an average girl in circumstances which no average girl would be likely to experience. She likes to sew, squeals when she drives a car, says she hopes to help her mother in the hotel business. But, when playing tennis, winning or losing, she follows the shrewd advice of her mother: "Smile, smile and keep on smiling . . . first, because it gets the crowd. . . ."