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In her tremendous 2023 memoir 'My Name Is Barbra', singer, actor, and director Barbra Streisand briefly covers her fellow Erasmus High School student Bobby Fischer. Streisand, born April 1942 in Brooklyn, and still alive at age 84, is about a year older than Fischer was; he was born March 1943 in Chicago (he died in Reykjavik, Iceland in 2008). In the 1950s, they lived in the same lower-class Brooklyn neighborhood, near the high school. (Future music superstar Neil Diamond was at Erasmus at the same time!!)
I didn't know this until I read the memoir, but Barbra's father had died, at age 35, when she was a young child, leaving her mother to care for her and her older brother on very limited income, and in poor-quality housing. Barbra related how she approached Bobby in the school cafeteria circa 1957, and spoke with him briefly, just aiming to be friendly. This was just around the time when Bobby was beginning to get noticed in the chess world. Bobby had won his worldwide-celebrated game over IM Donald Byrne (The Game of the Century, as called by IM Hans Kmoch in published accounts) at New York, in the Rosenwald Trophy tournament. Bobby would win the USA Championship in early 1958, and shoot on an unprecedented trajectory to chess success.
Barbra writes that Bobby seemed shy and distant from other students, and more comfortable alone. It came out in media reports in 1993 that Fischer's supposed father, physicist Dr. Hans-Dieter Fischer, WASN'T actually his father. At the time Bobby was conceived, in mid-1942, Dr. Fischer was in Europe, unable to follow his wife and daughter Joan to the USA, because of his supposed ties to the Communist Party. The couple had met as students in Moscow, and married there; Joan was born in Moscow. Dr. Fischer never did enter the USA. Bobby's actual father was a Hungarian scientist, working in the USA, who died when Bobby was a pre-teen. He paid some child support to Bobby's mother, and occasionally visited the family.
So, both Barbra and Bobby were fatherless youngsters, growing up poor. Both eventually hit the highest heights in their chosen professions. Bobby dropped out of Erasmus at age 16, as soon as he was legally able to do so. He became a Grandmaster at age 15, from the 1958 Candidates', was a world-class player from that juncture, and won the World Championship in 1972. Barbra graduated with very high honors from Erasmus in late 1959, passed up a chance for college, and launched her singing and acting career in early 1960. She was selected as Entertainer of the Decade for the 1960s, is one of very few members of the so-called 'EGOT' Club (winners of Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Awards), and has continued to be active and successful to the present day.
I didn't know this until I read the memoir, but Barbra's father had died, at age 35, when she was a young child, leaving her mother to care for her and her older brother on very limited income, and in poor-quality housing. Barbra related how she approached Bobby in the school cafeteria circa 1957, and spoke with him briefly, just aiming to be friendly. This was just around the time when Bobby was beginning to get noticed in the chess world. Bobby had won his worldwide-celebrated game over IM Donald Byrne (The Game of the Century, as called by IM Hans Kmoch in published accounts) at New York, in the Rosenwald Trophy tournament. Bobby would win the USA Championship in early 1958, and shoot on an unprecedented trajectory to chess success.
Barbra writes that Bobby seemed shy and distant from other students, and more comfortable alone. It came out in media reports in 1993 that Fischer's supposed father, physicist Dr. Hans-Dieter Fischer, WASN'T actually his father. At the time Bobby was conceived, in mid-1942, Dr. Fischer was in Europe, unable to follow his wife and daughter Joan to the USA, because of his supposed ties to the Communist Party. The couple had met as students in Moscow, and married there; Joan was born in Moscow. Dr. Fischer never did enter the USA. Bobby's actual father was a Hungarian scientist, working in the USA, who died when Bobby was a pre-teen. He paid some child support to Bobby's mother, and occasionally visited the family.
So, both Barbra and Bobby were fatherless youngsters, growing up poor. Both eventually hit the highest heights in their chosen professions. Bobby dropped out of Erasmus at age 16, as soon as he was legally able to do so. He became a Grandmaster at age 15, from the 1958 Candidates', was a world-class player from that juncture, and won the World Championship in 1972. Barbra graduated with very high honors from Erasmus in late 1959, passed up a chance for college, and launched her singing and acting career in early 1960. She was selected as Entertainer of the Decade for the 1960s, is one of very few members of the so-called 'EGOT' Club (winners of Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Awards), and has continued to be active and successful to the present day.
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