It is late at night time on the Marshall Chess Membership in New York Metropolis, early Nineteen Sixties. Smoke wafts between shadowed males taking part in chess beneath lamplights. However what stands out most on this historic {photograph} is the only younger lady, exhaling the fog of conflict over an illuminated chessboard as she prepares to maneuver a black piece.

She gained her first U.S. Girls’s Championship two years after studying the principles of the sport.

Two-time U.S. Girls’s Champion and WIM Lisa Lane was one of many first ladies chess gamers to draw fashionable media consideration in america to what’s generally known as “the sport of kings.” She was the primary chess participant, of any gender, to be featured on the quilt of Sports activities Illustrated in 1961, over a decade earlier than GM Bobby Fischer did in 1972. She died on February 28, 2024, in Carmel, New York, on the age of 90. Her loss of life was confirmed by the city clerk’s workplace in Kent, New York.

“Lisa Lane confirmed the world that chess may be glamorous and that girls may be as aggressive as males,” wrote WGM Jennifer Shahade in her ebook Chess Queens. The glamor lower each methods: media typically fixated on her bodily look and private life, with chess being a secondary focal point. That first Sports activities Illustrated piece targeted on her presence on the board: “At such moments she appears a really severe younger lady, however fantastically severe, or severely stunning, a aspect of female loveliness that Hollywood has fairly uncared for.” This sort of depiction would observe her for a couple of decade in written and televised media protection.

Within the limelight, she was additionally an early advocate for equal pay and recognition of girls in chess. “I am crucial American chess participant,” she advised The Occasions in 1961. “Individuals will probably be interested in the sport by a younger, fairly woman. That is why chess ought to assist me. I am bringing it publicity, and finally, cash.” 

Lisa Lane confirmed the world that chess may be glamorous and that girls may be as aggressive as males.

—Jennifer Shahade

Lisa Lane, the primary chess participant to make the quilt. Picture: August 7, 1961 cowl of Sports activities Illustrated.

NM Bruce Pandolfini, who brushed paths with Lane round 3 times throughout the Nineteen Sixties and 70s, advised me: “She was actually, in America, the second-best-known chess participant. Not around the globe, however after Bobby Fischer, atypical [U.S.] residents in all probability knew her earlier than anyone else.” He known as her “an actual chess icon.”

As U.S. ladies’s champion, she’d appeared on tv a number of instances. On To Inform the Fact in 1960, 4 panelists needed to discern who was the actual Lisa Lane amongst three ladies by asking a collection of questions. Deciding on the precise one from the impostors, panelist Kitty Carlisle remarked: “She’s awfully fairly to have devoted eight to 10 hours to chess!”

She’s awfully fairly to have devoted eight to 10 hours to chess!

—Kitty Carlisle, To Inform the Fact

In 1961, on the CBS sport present What’s My Line?, a panel of males needed to guess her occupation. Nationwide chess champion did not come up, and a panelist stated: “As a result of she’s so fairly, we dominated out something mental.” Within the 60s, this sentiment would reiterate itself in several methods: that her look and chess skill had been astonishingly incompatible.

She attracted loads of consideration. “I get numerous love letters from different chess gamers,” she advised Sports activities Illustrated. “I learn them, I snicker, after which I file them. Letters from grandmasters go on high.”

I learn them, I snicker, after which I file them. Letters from grandmasters go on high.

—Lisa Lane

Shahade advised me:

She had this love-hate relationship with the media and the press. On the one hand, she was open about the truth that she deserved to get numerous consideration as a result of she was bringing so many extra individuals into the game… this, along with her equal pay initiative, was forward of her time…. She embraced it on one degree, however then alternatively, she additionally appeared to get irritated by the repetition of the questions, not simply from the media however from the general public at massive.

She had this love-hate relationship with the media and the press.

—Jennifer Shahade

The publicity that adopted her did deliver extra consideration to chess, however it additionally got here at the price of repetitive (at finest) and sexist (at worst) questions. Blended in with the furor about her appears to be like was the phrase, “She performs like a person!”

Within the post-2020 period, it is tempting to attract a parallel between Lane and the fictional character Beth Harmon from the Queen’s Gambit. The charming woman who navigated a sport dominated by males, who grew to become a champion only a few years after studying the principles—Lane actually did these items. However it might be a stretch to say she was the mannequin for Harmon.

Walter Tevis, the creator of the ebook the Netflix present was primarily based on, claimed that Harmon wasn’t primarily based on any particular individual. Pandolfini, who labored with Tevis on the novel in 1982 earlier than it was revealed and in addition consulted for the Netflix collection manufacturing, stated the ebook’s creator was actually conscious of Lane, GM Nona Gaprindashvili, Vera Menchik, WIM Rachel Crotto, and WIM Gisela Kahn Gresser.

However he additionally stated: “The Beth Harmon of the novel will not be Lisa Lane. Lisa Lane was very enticing, very glamorous. Beth Harmon will not be glamorous within the novel. She is within the Netflix collection… however we should not confuse the 2 characters. They’re completely different.” Placing apart the unique novel, the Netflix collection does painting Harmon as a powerful and glamorous chess participant.

There are clear variations between Lane and Harmon too: Lane wasn’t an orphan, didn’t play a world champion in a proper sport, and did not undergo from substance abuse, for instance.

She was born Marianne Elizabeth Lane on April 25, 1933, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her mom labored two jobs and Lane by no means knew her father, a leather-based glazer and horseracing fanatic who left earlier than she turned two. She and her sister, Evelyn, boarded with many households and often modified faculties. 

After finishing two years of highschool, she dropped out. Through the interval that adopted, she stated she’d held 13 jobs in a matter of two years. Feeling misplaced among the many extremely educated buddies of her boyfriend on the time (an older man), she enrolled as a particular pupil at Temple College, and he or she largely took highschool courses there.

That relationship ended, and within the spring of 1957, she found chess whereas on a date in a espresso store known as the Artists’ Hut. She would have been 23 or 24 years outdated, a late bloomer—although she herself erroneously recalled being 19 at the moment. She performed there recurrently and met Arnold Chertkof, who launched her to Attilio di Camillo, a high U.S. participant. She caught the chess fever, and he taught her.

She studied as much as 12 hours a day and performed chess on a regular basis. She was fiercely aggressive and hot-tempered (“I hate anybody who beats me,” she as soon as stated). On the Franklin-Mercantile Chess Membership, she was accused of throwing an ashtray at somebody after a sport. She rebutted: “I by no means hit that man with an ashtray.” Apparently, she threw it on the desk, not him, and it occurred to interrupt, and a chunk flew up and hit him. Collateral injury.

I by no means hit that man with an ashtray.

—Lisa Lane

In late 1957, Di Camillo left to play the U.S. Championship in New York and invited Lane alongside. She closed the poetry store she’d opened in central Philadelphia and went. The truth is, 14-year-old Fischer gained his first nationwide title at this match, beating Di Camillo alongside the way in which. Lane later grew to become buddies with Fischer, who’d go to her condominium in Greenwich Village to play chess.

Di Camillo advised her: “Should you’re prepared to work, you may be the ladies’s champion in two years.” Apart from a matter of some days, she grew to become champion nearly precisely two years later.

Should you’re prepared to work, you may be the ladies’s champion in two years.

—Attilio di Camillo

She gained the U.S. Girls’s Championship in 1959 and would maintain onto it till 1962, when Gresser regained the title for the fifth time (of 9 whole). She’d tie for first with Gresser in 1966 for her second title. As U.S. ladies’s champion, she participated within the 1961 Girls’s Candidates Match (completed thirteenth) in addition to the Candidates in 1964 (completed twelfth). She was additionally on the U.S. ladies’s workforce within the 1966 Girls’s Chess Olympiad.

She was one of many perfect ladies gamers of her time within the U.S. Although she did not fairly break into the highest of the world stage, her stardom impressed women who would examine her. Diana Lanni, for instance, spoke about Lane’s affect on her explicitly in Chess Queens.

Lane married twice. She first married Walter Wealthy, who labored in promoting, 9 days after turning into U.S. ladies’s champion, however divorced lower than two years later. Her second marriage, to Neil Hickey, a reporter who interviewed her for The American Weekly, triggered an uproar. In 1962, she dropped out of the Hastings Worldwide Chess Congress mid-tournament, saying she could not focus as a result of she was in love. Tabloids had been throughout it in Europe and the U.S., with a Day by day Mirror headline studying “WOMEN CAN’T FORGET THE LOVE GAME,” and he or she was met again in New York with a barrage of newspaper reporters.

Lane was annoyed with the shortage of funding and alternatives for girls in chess on a number of occassions. In 1963, she wasn’t invited to attend the Girls’s Chess Olympiad. Typically, the highest two ladies had been, and he or she was second behind Gresser. The explanation was that Gresser and Mary Bain, a lower-rated lady participant, may afford the bills on their very own. “Since when did it’s important to be a millionairess to symbolize your nation in sport?” Lane requested the Related Press after her spot was taken.

Since when did it’s important to be a millionairess to symbolize your nation in sport?

—Lisa Lane

In 1966, the primary prize for the U.S. Girls’s Championship was merely $600, in comparison with $6,000 in the principle occasion. She recruited a number of males from her chess membership (“The Queen’s Pawn,” which she opened in Greenwich Village) for a protest, with one signal, amongst others, studying “One Man Is Price Ten Girls?” However the protest was largely unnoticed, and different ladies did not take part.

She grew to become disenchanted with chess, or a minimum of organized chess. And so, on the age of 33, she left it. Lane advised Shahade a long time later: “I do not assume the issues I did in chess forty years in the past are crucial issues in my life” and “I suppose I used to be good copy.”

Shahade, for this text, advised me: “She was forward of her time. It simply wasn’t essentially the precise time for her to be in chess. To start with, there was the equal pay and the shortage of respect for girls, however then there additionally simply wasn’t sufficient respect for the publicity initiative that she was doing. It was big, and it did not appear to be individuals cared as a lot as they need to have.”

She was forward of her time. It simply wasn’t essentially the precise time for her to be in chess.

—Jennifer Shahade

She and Hickey moved upstate, the place she ran a well being meals retailer in Carmel, New York. That they had no youngsters, and he died three weeks after she did. She was inducted into the World Chess Corridor of Fame in 2023.

Lane advised Sports activities Illustrated in 1961: “It sounds silly to say it… as a result of even one of the best males gamers do not appear to have the ability to make their residing by chess, and no lady ever has. However I believe that I might be able to achieve this, and a minimum of somebody ought to attempt.”