Too, as always, there was the problem of money. Those still close to Bobby asked the obvious question: If he was one of the best players in the world, or certainly in the United States, why couldn’t he make a living practicing his profession? While the average American salary at that time was $5,500 annually, Bobby, who certainly didn’t consider himself average, had made barely $1,000 for a year’s work. His prize for playing in the Candidates tournament had been only $200. If there just wasn’t substantial tournament money to be had, why couldn’t the American Chess Foundation sponsor him? It backed Reshevsky, even sending him to college. Was it because Bobby wasn’t devoutly Jewish, while Reshevsky was Orthodox? Virtually all of the directors of the foundation were Jewish. Were they exerting subtle pressure on him to conform? To go back to school? Did they not respect him because he was “just a kid”? Was it because of the way he dressed?
Telegrams and phone calls kept pouring into Bobby through the end of November and the first weeks of December. Some of the correspondents asked whether he was going to defend his United States Championship title in the Rosenwald tournament. He really didn’t know. A letter finally arrived in early December that announced the pairings. It listed the twelve players who were invited—Bobby included—and detailed who’d play whom on which dates, and what color each player would have in each round. Bobby went into a slow fume. Public pairing ceremonies were the custom, he loudly pointed out, in all European and most international tournaments.
The Rosenwald organizers, catching Bobby’s implication that they’d colluded to make the pairings more favorable for some, expressed outrage at his protest. “Simple,” said Bobby in response, “just do the pairings over again … this time publicly.” They refused, and the sixteen-year-old Bobby threatened a lawsuit. The New York Times picked up on the dispute and ran a story headlined CHESS GROUP BALKS AT FISCHER DEMAND. The fracas escalated, and Bobby was told that a replacement player would take his place if he refused to play. Finally, the contest of wills ended after officials agreed that if Bobby would play this time, they’d make the pairings in public the following year. It was enough of a concession for Bobby, and he agreed to play. Ultimately, he’d won the battle.
In the past, Bobby had been perturbed by the constant criticism he received for his mode of dress. For example, an article in the Sunday newspaper supplement Parade, read by tens of millions, published a photograph of him giving a simultaneous exhibition with the caption: “Despite his rise to fame, Bobby still dresses casually. Note his dungarees and [plaid] shirt in contrast to his opponents’ business suits and ties.” Such potshots, he felt, diminished him—however subtle they might be. They detracted not only from who he incontestably was—a grandmaster and the United States Champion—but who he believed he was—the strongest player in the world.
Later, Pal Benko, whom Bobby had played in the Candidates tournament, would claim to be the one who talked Bobby into changing the kind of clothes he wore. He introduced Bobby to his tailor in the Little Hungary section of Manhattan so that the teenager could have some bespoke suits made. How Bobby could afford custom-tailored clothing is a mystery. Possibly, the money came from an advance he received for his book Bobby Fischer’s Games of Chess, which was published in 1959.
When Bobby arrived at the Empire Hotel in December 1959 for the first round of the U.S. Championship tournament, he was dressed in a perfectly tailored suit, a custom-made white shirt, a Sulka white tie, and Italian-made shoes. Also, his hair was neatly combed, completing an image makeover so total that he was barely recognizable. Gone were the sneakers and ski sweaters, the mussed hair, the plaid cowboy shirt, and the slightly stained corduroy trousers. Predictably, the press began talking about “the New Fischer,” interpreting Bobby’s sartorial upgrade as a sign that he’d crossed into young manhood.
Bobby’s competitors tried to hide their astonishment at the teenager’s transformed appearance. As play progressed, though, they were stunned in a different way. By the end of the tournament, the suavely bedecked Bobby had played all eleven games without a single loss. Fischer had not only retained his title as United States Champion, he’d accomplished something unprecedented: For the third year in a row, he’d marched to the title without being defeated in any of the pairings.
There was a financial windfall, too. Bobby received $1,000 for his tournament win—and the Fischer family’s pocketbook bulged further when Bobby’s maternal grandfather, Jacob Wender, passed away, leaving $14,000 of his estate to Regina. It was enough—if invested wisely—for the frugal Fischers to live on for several years.
Indeed, Regina was prudent in her plans for the money. Joan had already married a man of means and was at the beginning of a nursing career, so Regina wanted to make sure that whatever income the inheritance generated would take care of Bobby and herself. She set up a trust fund with Ivan Woolworth, an attorney who worked for the Fischers pro bono. He was made the sole trustee, charged with investing the money in the best and most profitable way he could devise. Under the plan, Regina received $160 per month to help cover her personal needs. Since she was planning to move out of the apartment to attend medical school, perhaps in Mexico or in East Germany, she wanted the rent to be paid for Bobby for as long as he remained at 560 Lincoln Place. So he received $175 per month—enough to cover the rent, gas, and electric—plus a little extra. Additional money was added to the trust by Regina and Bobby over time, and the interest on the money invested allowed Bobby to live rent free for years, with some pocket money left over for himself.
Despite the small annuity, Bobby, to get by, had dinner almost every night at the Collins home and took advantage of lunch and dinner invitations from chess fans and admirers. Until he grew much older, he was never known to pick up a restaurant check, suffering what a friend called “limp wrist syndrome.”
In March of 1960 seventeen-year-old Bobby flew to Mar del Plata, the seaside resort on Argentina’s Atlantic coast, south of Buenos Aires. Known for its art deco architecture and expansive boardwalk, the city had a proud tradition of hosting international tournaments. Argentinean players were as enthusiastic about the game as the Russians and the Yugoslavs, and Bobby was treated with respect wherever he went. The only downside of being in Mar del Plata was the incessant rain and the cold wind from the sea. Regina, ever irrepressible and somehow aware of the adverse weather, shipped a pair of galoshes to her son and admonished herself for not insisting that he take his leather coat when he left the States.
Bobby thought he’d easily walk through the Mar Del Plata tournament until he learned that David Bronstein and Fridrik Olafsson were also going to play, in addition to the twenty-three-year-old grandmaster from Leningrad, Boris Spassky. But it wasn’t Spassky or Olafsson who really worried Fischer. It was Bronstein.
A week before he left for Argentina, Bobby and the author of this book had dinner at the Cedar Tavern in Greenwich Village, hangout of avant-garde artists and Abstract Expressionists, and one of Bobby’s favorite eating places. The night we were there Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline were having a conversation at the bar, and Andy Warhol and John Cage dined at a nearby table—not that Bobby noticed. He just liked the pub food the restaurant served—it was a shepherd’s pie kind of a place—and the anonymity that came from sitting among people who preferred gawking at art celebrities to taking note of chess prodigies.