40 Candid Photos of Vintage Stars Playing Sports
What did the glamorous Hollywood stars of the Golden Age get up to when the cameras weren’t rolling? Why, try their spellbinding hands at sports, of course! Perhaps nothing eases the stress of being a world-famous celebrity than taking in 18 holes of golf or sweating it out on a tennis court. These (mostly) candid images captured Tinsel Town’s great and good showing us how it’s done.
1. James Dean
When most people think of James Dean, they probably think of the cooler-than-cool hero from Rebel Without a Cause. What they definitely wouldn’t think of is a bespectacled amateur sports ace who dominated high school in basketball, track, and baseball. But then, people contain multitudes, don’t they?
2. Frank Sinatra
This spectacular shot was taken when Frank Sinatra went out to bat at an “Out of This World” celebrity baseball series in 1948. Other photos from the event revealed Ol’ Blue Eyes lounging around with his team, The Sinatra Swooners. Another sees him showing a woman how to swing… a bat, that is!
3. Farrah Fawcett
In 1977 TV producers sought to answer the question that had apparently been on everybody’s lips: who would win a sports match between a man and a woman? And so the show Celebrity Challenge of the Sexes was born. Farrah Fawcett played a tennis match, and other head-to-heads included Robert Conrad and Penny Marshall traversing an obstacle course and Elliott Gould playing Brenda Vaccaro in basketball.
4. Sylvester Stallone
Did you know Sylvester Stallone’s late father Frank had been a professional polo player back in the day? And it seems like he passed his passion for horses onto his actor son. In fact, this shot from 1990 could’ve been taken at an exhibition match that father and son played together.
