A television producer wanted him to make a series of chess films that could be marketed throughout the world. No agreement could be reached.
Bobby was offered $75,000 plus residual royalties plus a new car simply to say in a commercial that he drove only that car, which would have been true since it would have been the only car he owned. He declined.
The most fabulous offer came to Fischer in 1974, right after the Muhammad Ali–George Foreman fight (known as “The Rumble in the Jungle”) in Zaire. The Zaire government offered Bobby $5 million to play Anatoly Karpov in their country in what would have been a month-long championship chess match. “Too short,” said Bobby. “How dare they offer me five million dollars for a month-long match? Ali received twice that much for one night!” (He didn’t.) It was after that match that Ali began calling himself “The Greatest,” and Bobby took issue with that, too. “Ali stole that from me,” said Bobby. “I used ‘The Greatest’ for myself on television before he ever used it.”
Bobby did accept one offer, but not for millions—rather, for $20,000. He was invited to be the guest of honor at the First Philippine International Chess Tournament in 1973, and in addition to the honorarium mentioned above, all of his expenses were paid. He stayed at the Tropical Palace resort on the outskirts of Manila for a month. At the tournament he made the ceremonial first move and played a mock game with President Marcos—one that ended in a mock draw after eight moves.
Journalists asked Fischer why he’d accepted the offer to come to the Philippines on his first “official” visit when he’d turned down similar offers from other countries. “I was there in 1967,” he said. “I was not yet World Champion but they treated me like a world champion.” According to Casto Abundo, a chess player who described himself as Bobby’s “Young Man Friday” during his 1973 stay, Bobby studied chess every night, already preparing himself to face whoever emerged as the winner of the Candidates match. After finishing his studying, he often took long walks at three in the morning and didn’t fall asleep till four. Film footage from the visit shows Bobby at the apex of his life. Wearing the traditional crisp white barong shirt and often sporting a lei of flowers, he looked fit and handsome and was always smiling. The Filipinos loved him; Marcos entertained him at the palace and on his yacht; Marcos’s wife, Imelda, dined with him at lunch; young ladies gathered around him constantly, as if he were a movie star. On a Bangkok stopover en route to Manila, he’d bought a number of Thai music cassettes, which he played over and over again at night while he was going over games. By the time he sailed back to the United States, his fondness for the Filipino people had intensified.
Paul Marshall, Bobby’s lawyer during the Fischer-Spassky match negotiations, has said that by the time Bobby came back from Iceland he’d received offers that could have totaled up to $10 million—but he turned down all of them. Bobby’s interest in making money was undeniable, so theories abounded as to why he acted contrary to his own financial interests. One friend chalked it up to Bobby’s winner-take-all mentality, saying, “If someone offers him a million dollars, he thinks there is a lot more available, and he wants it all.” Grandmaster Larry Evans preferred a more neutral explanation: “I think he feels that lending his name to something is beneath his dignity.” International master George Koltanowski conjectured that Bobby just didn’t trust people and didn’t want to be cheated: “There’s a word for it in German: Verfolgungswahnsinn,” he said. “It means ‘persecution mania.’ ” But perhaps the best explanation of why Bobby cast aside all financial offers came from Bobby himself: “People are trying to exploit me. Nobody is going to make a nickel off of me!” Nor, as it developed, would he make a dime off of them—in the short term, at least.
As all of these financial shenanigans were happening—offers, discussions, negotiations, acceptances, and then rejections—Bobby was going his own way but under the influence and guidance of the Church. Church officials set him up with young, amply endowed women—all Church members—but since no physical intimacy was permitted, Bobby soon grew disillusioned. After dates with eight different “candidates,” each of whom adhered to the same sexless script, he abandoned Church relationships as the avenue to an amorous life.
His connection to the Church was always somewhat ambiguous. He was not a registered member, since he hadn’t agreed to be baptized by full immersion in water by Armstrong or one of his ministers. And since he wasn’t considered a duly recognized convert, he was sometimes referred to as a “coworker” or, less politely, as a “fringer”—someone on the fringes or edges of the Church but not totally committed to its mission. The Church imposed a number of rules that Bobby thought were ridiculous and refused to adhere to, such as a ban on listening to hard rock or soul music (even though he preferred rhythm and blues) and prohibitions against seeing movies not rated G or PG, dating or fraternizing with non–Church members, and having premarital sex.
Ironically, despite Bobby’s unwillingness to follow principles espoused by the Church, his life still revolved around it. He sat in on a demanding Bible course, even though it was open only to members (the Church made an exception for him); he discussed personal and financial matters with both Rader and Armstrong; and he prayed at least an hour a day, in addition to spending time on a careful study of Church teachings. On a visit back to New York, while driving around Manhattan with his friend Bernard Zuckerman, Bobby made a reference to Satan. Zuckerman, ever sarcastic, said, “Satan? Why don’t you introduce me?” Bobby was appalled. “What? Don’t you believe in Satan?”
As he continued to tithe more and more money to the Church, he enjoyed perks only available to high-ranking members, such as occasional use of a private jet and a chauffeur-driven limousine; invitations to exclusive events such as parties, concerts, and dinners; and a continuous parade of bright and pretty women whom he couldn’t touch. He was also given access to the Church’s personal trainer, Harry Sneider, a former weight-lifting champion who took a special interest in Bobby. Sneider trained Bobby in swimming, weight lifting, tennis, and soccer, and they became friends.
With the same diligence he’d brought to the task of soaking up chess knowledge, Bobby around this time started a relentless search for general knowledge. The library at the Worldwide Church’s Ambassador College, to which he had access, was highly limited. It contained books on religion and theology, but he wanted other points of view and to explore other topics, and he never set foot back in the library after he heard it was sprayed with insecticide for termites.
Botvinnik may have been right when he suggested that Bobby suffered from a lack of culture and a thinness of education. But he was determined to catch up. He started by going to bookstores in Pasadena, and when he’d depleted their shelves, he took the bus into downtown Los Angeles and scoured the shelves of every bookstore he could find. He became a voracious reader.
There have been many theories offered over the years as to why Fischer eventually turned against Jews, including speculation that Bobby’s rhetoric was triggered by distaste he felt as a child for his mother’s Jewish friends; that he was antagonistic toward officials of the American Chess Foundation, most of whom were Jewish; that he was ultimately disillusioned with Stanley Rader, who was Jewish but had converted to the Worldwide Church of God; that he was somehow influenced by Forry Laucks’s Nazism; and that he was propelled by ideas he’d read in some of the literature that fell into his hands during the time he lived in California. Perhaps all of those factors contributed.