Lisa Lane, a prominent figure in American chess history who won two titles as the country’s women’s champion and became the first chess player to feature on the cover of Sports Illustrated, passed away on February 28 at her Putnam County, New York, home. She was ninety years old.
The death was officially reported and confirmed by the Kent, New York, town clerk’s office.
Ms. Lane improved her chess skills slowly. She noticed students playing the game in the lobby during her first year at Philadelphia’s Temple University. She started playing as much as she could right away.
She had won the US women’s title in just two years.
Her late start and quick progress in a game that takes years to learn, along with her youthful beauty, helped her win and pushed her into the spotlight. Everywhere she went, remarks were made on her looks almost as much as her chess skills, if not more so.
She had an appearance on the game set “What’s My Line?” in May 1961, when four judges attempted to guess what she did by asking her questions. One panelist, author, and Broadway director Abe Burrows said, “Because she is so pretty, we ruled out anything logical,” when they failed to learn that she was a professional chess player and the women’s national champion.
Her status in the game was further solidified by a 1961 cover story for Sports Illustrated, television looks, and stories in national newspapers.
Celebrity was a mixed bag for Ms. Lane. She was able to host concerts where people would pay to play her because of the attention, which also helped her secure sponsorships to help pay for her tournament visits.
However, her status received more weight than her skills. She was described as “a very serious young woman, but beautifully serious, or seriously beautiful” in the Sports Illustrated part. “She’ll beat you straight up or shake your balance with a blink of eyelids,” read the end of a profile published in The American Weekly, a Sunday newspaper addition.
Ms. Lane holds a copy of the 1961 Sports Illustrated issue with a cover profile of herself, at her Carmel, N.Y., home in 2019. She was the first player of chess to appear on the cover of the magazine.
The fact that women made far less money than chessmen did not sit well with Ms. Lane.
She and Gisela Kahn Gresser tied for the title of co-champions at the 1966 US women’s championship. The competition had a total prize pool of $600. A few weeks before, there was a $6,000 prize pool for the United States Championship, which was restricted to men only.
None of the other female winners show interest in joining Ms. Lane in a protest asking for more money. Gathering several understanding males, she held a picket at the women’s championship with ads that said, “One Man Is Worth Ten Women.” and “A King Without a Queen, What Good Is It?”
According to Ms. Lane’s Sports Illustrated profile, she had never met her father, a leather blazer with a horse racing habit. He went from her life by the time she was a year and a half old.
Lisa’s mother supported her and her older sister Evelyn by working two jobs, but it was hard and the family did not have much money. The daughters boarded with various families over the years and regularly switched schools.
In the beginning, Lisa did well at school with the interruptions. But things changed as she got older. Sports Illustrated reported that while Lisa was a student at Roxborough High School in Philadelphia, her teachers were perplexed by her actions and had sent a guidance therapist to visit her mother. The guidance therapist believed that Lisa was specifically marking wrong answers on tests, possibly because she believed that looking stupid would make her more popular.
Lisa worked several jobs after falling out of school. She began dating an older man. But she chose to return to school since she didn’t feel like she belonged with his buddies. She studied at Temple University and primarily attended basic courses.
Shortly after learning the game of chess, she killed a woman who had come in front of her Car by Mistake. Although she was not found guilty or punished, she quickly dropped out of college and used the little money she had to start a poetry store with a buddy in central Philadelphia. She spent most of her time in coffee shops where chess players gathered because the place was not very crowded.
Ms. Lane during a 1959 chess match in Philadelphia. Later, she started and ran the Queen’s Pawn Chess Emporium, her chess store in New York City, for several years.
She was offered to Attilio Di Camillo, one of the best players in the nation, at the Franklin Mercantile Chess Club by one of those players, Arnold Chertkof. She was studying and playing chess for up to 12 hours a day after he started instructing her.
Mr. Di Camillo and Mr. Chertkof invited Ms. Lane to New York City one day in late 1957 so that Mr. Di Camillo could participate in the United States Championship. She never returned after closing the poetry store.
She witnessed Bobby Fischer, at 14 years old, beat Mr. Di Camillo to win his first United States Championship in New York. Mr. Di Camillo then promised her that she could win the US women’s championship in two years if she put in a lot of effort. She did win the 1959 title, therefore he was correct.
She married business executive Walter Rich nine days later. The union terminated in divorce in less than two years.
Ms Lane moved to a Greenwich Village flat shortly after that. In due course, she established and operated her chess store, the Queen’s Pawn Chess Emporium, in Sheridan Square for several years.
Mr. Fischer and Ms. Lane became friends, and on the event, the two would come to her flat to play chess. But he was dismissive of women in chess, calling them “all fish,” a derogatory epithet for a weak player. “You could say Lisa is the best of the American fish,” he continued. (In 1972, he made the cover of Sports Illustrated.)
As the champion of the United States, Ms. Lane won a spot in the 1961 candidates’ tournament hosted in Yugoslavia, which chose an opponent for the women’s world title. She placed 13th overall in a tie. She participated in the 1964 competition as well, placing 12th.
Following the 1961 competition, Ms. Lane entered a tournament in Hastings, England, but she withdrew after getting off to a bad start. She later admitted to being homesick and, more than that, lovesick since she had fallen in love with Neil Hickey, the author of the American Weekly story that featured her.
The media took notice of the admission. An item titled “Lisa Lane, Chess Player, Quits Tournament Because She’s in Love” was published in the New York Times.
After getting married in 1969, the pair moved to Carmel and started a natural food business.
She didn’t have any kids with Mr. Hickey, a longtime TV Guide reporter. Though he lived, he passed away three weeks after her. It took some time for all the survivors’ details to become known.
Ms. Lane was quite clear when she was at the height of her success that she should have had a larger salary. In 1961, she said, “I am the most important American chess player,” to The Times. “A young, beautiful girl will draw people to the game. For this reason, chess should help me. I’m bringing it fame and, eventually, capital.