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Son of a onetime Labor M. P., Frederick John Perry started his tennis career in a suburban parlor. He took up table tennis at his home in Baling, became proficient enough to win the world's championship at Budapest in 1929. In 1930, when he was 20, his mother, to whom he was devoted, died after a long illness. Her son's nervous and physical condition was then so poor that doctors despaired of keeping him alive unless he discovered some absorbing outdoor interest. Perry took a six months' leave from his job in a London sports shop, turned seriously to tennis, which he had taught himself on a public court in London by hitting a ball against a wall. By the time the six months were over, he had won a minor tournament at Chiswick Park, trounced Italy's No. 1, Baron Morpurgo, at Wimbledon, been selected for England's Davis Cup team, and defeated Jack Crawford in their first meeting at Bournemouth. That autumn Perry toured the U. S. and South America with a British team, winning the Argentina championship. The next year he reached the semi-finals at Wimbledon, defeated Sidney Wood and Jean Borotra in Davis Cup play, beat seven of the first test players of the U. S., was defeated by Ellsworth Vines in the semi-finals of the U. S. Singles.
Last year in the final of the U. S. Singles at Forest Hills, Perry met Jack Crawford who held the Australian, French and All-England titles and was expected to add the U. S. title. When Crawford lost that match and when Ellsworth Vines turned professional shortly afterward, Perry became indisputably the best amateur tennist in the world. Since then he has beaten Crawford five times. After defeating him in the Wimbledon final this year, he put the finishing touches on his record by beating both Sidney Wood and Frank Shields in the singles match of the Davis Cup challenge round (TIME, Aug. 6). On the tennis court, Perry's demeanor is more like that of Jean Borotra than of any other player of the last decade. He uses nervous, snapping strokes, starts his racket near the ball, curtails his follow-through. His most outstanding shot is a forehand drive executed on a rising ball as he runs toward the net. He volleys with more power than finesse, serves hard but without either the finality or the waste of energy that characterizes U. S. players like Vines or Shields. Two years ago Perry's word when he missed a shot was "Nuts." He has since learned to express his disappointment more politely but still shakes his racket, bounces a ball hungrily between serves, rolls on his back when he falls down. Such gestures have often been mistaken by critics as an indication of frivolity. Actually they are the inevitable manifestations of a character in which the salient quality is solemn, almost neurotic determination to win.
At 25, Perry has been three times around the world. He has 50 tennis trophies, including spears and shields from Africa. He smokes a pipe, never drinks. He drives a car cautiously, avoids travel by plane. Slightly ashamed of his skill at table tennis, he now plays only onboard ship. He plays tennis eight months every year, does not practice before a match because it does his game no good. His fiancee is British Cinemactress Mary Lawson, a onetime tap dancer, who is 5 ft. tall, wears size 2 shoes, plays no tennis at all. Last week she was at Shepherd's Bush making a picture called Schooldays in which she plays the