This film is part of Free

Wimbledon, 1973

Wimbledon Centre Court action follows a summer wedding filled with flowers, flares and floppy hats in Geoffrey Woodward's film from 1973.

Amateur film 1973 5 mins Silent

From the collection of:

Logo for Screen Archive South East

Overview

Geoffrey Woodward's short film from 1973 starts with a bride and groom exiting a church while guests and bridesmaids chat and pose for photos with the happy couple. We then see men rolling back tarpaulins on Wimbledon's Centre Court in preparation for a ladies singles match. This is soon followed by a men's singles match which ends the film.

The 1973 Wimbledon Championships were the subject of a boycott by members of the recently formed men's player's union, the Association of Tennis Professionals. This was due to the earlier suspension of Yugoslavia's number one player, Nikola Pilić, after he refused to play in a Davis Cup tournament. Eighty-one top men's players from the ATP, including the reigning champion, Stan Smith, boycotted Wimbledon that year as a protest against Pilić's suspension. Despite the loss of sixteen top men's seeds from the tournament, attendance figures were, at that time, the second highest ever recorded at Wimbledon.