Mack the Knife (and chess)

Most pop music aficionados know Bobby Darin.  Although he died just two weeks after I was born in 1973, I could easily name a handful of his recordings off the top of my head, the most famous of which was "Mack the Knife."  It may not be common knowledge that Darin was a chess player.

Here is a blurb from the syndicated "Glad You Asked That !" column on April 15, 1973 (this column was a joint effort of Hy Gardner, a former gossip columnist for the NY Herald Tribune, and his wife [and former secretary] Marilyn Boshnick Gardner.  They retired to Florida and started this column in 1967):
Q: What's this about Bobby Darin challenging Bobby Fischer to a chess match? Is he that good a player? -- R- Nelson, Philadelphia.
A: No. Darin bobs up with a lot of ideas, but this isn't one of them, though the TV star did get interested in the game when he was recuperating from touch-and-go heart surgery several years ago. What you may have heard about is the Bobby Darin International Chess Classic to be staged next October under the auspices of the International and the U.S. Chess federations. Offering the biggest prize money total in the history of tournament chess -- $25,000 -- it will be the first 16-man grandmaster event ever held in the Western hemisphere.

Bobby Darin had just announced his scheme to host an International Chess Tournament in January 1973:
NY "Times"  Jan. 17, 1973:
   Plans for what was described as the richest chess tournament ever, with a total of $25,000 at stake for an anticipated field of 16 grandmasters, were announced here yesterday by Lieut. Col. Edmund B. Edmond son, executive director of the United States Chess Federation.
   The tournament, scheduled to be held in October in Los Angeles, will be sponsored, he said, by Bobby Darin, the entertainer.
   “He is a real chess buff,” said Colonel Edmondson. “This is not a phony‐baloney sort of thing for publicity. He pointed out that entertainers sponsor golf tournaments and said why shouldn't I sponsor a chess tournament.”
   Colonel Edmondson said it was hoped that the field of 16 grandmasters being invited from among the world's 98 grandmasters would include at least two former world champions, at least five of the strongest American players and nine players from countries other than the United States and the Soviet Union.
   Fischer Not Expected
   Bobby Fischer, who won the world championship from Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union in a match in Iceland last year, is not expected to compete.
   In describing the planned Bobby Darin international chess classic as the richest tournament ever, Colonel Edmondson pointed out that there had been richer purses for matches, such as the $250,000 at stake in the Fischer‐Spassky match.
   Discussing the Darin tournament, Colonel Edmondson said, “The field is going to be so strong that we look upon it as certain to have in it the man who emerges as the official challenger for the world's championship in the next cycle of the international organization.”
   He referred to the Fédération Internationale des Echecs—the International Chess Federation, also known as F.I.D.E.—which oversees the three‐year cycle of elimination tournaments and matches that ends with the emergence of a challenger to the reigning world champion.
   The Soviet Union, he said, is being invited to send to the tournament any two or three of the following: Spassky, Tigran Petrosian, Vasily Smyslov and Mikhail Tal, all former world champions, and Anatoly Karpov, a 21‐year‐old he described as “the most potent Russian threat to regain the title from Fischer.”
   The colonel said the American contingent was expected to consist of at least five from among the following: Samuel Reshevsky, Lubomir Kavalek, Robert Byrne, Pal Benko, Rev. William Lombardy, Larry Evans and Walter Browne.
   Among players outside the United States and the Soviet Union he said were under consideration are Lajos Portisch of Hungary, Bent Larsen of Denmark, Vlastimil Hort of Czechoslovakia, Robert Huebner of West Germany, Oscar Panno of Argentina, Henrique Mecking of Brazil, Svetozar Gligoric of Yugoslavia, Ulf Andersson of Sweden and Fridrik Olafsson of Iceland.

 clipped from the Norwalk (Ohio) Reflector, Jan. 16, 1973

Chess Life and Review announced the tournament in March 1973.  (Ed Edmondson was a former USCF president.)

Then in September, Chess Life and Review updated its readers on this event, explaining how it's original October 1973 date had to be postponed until January 1975 - a very tragic occurrence:

Darin died of a heart condition on Dec. 20, 1973 and the tournament never happened.


Bobby Darin playing chess with Jose Ferrer

 

backstage



Darin playing chess with his wife, Sandra Dee on the set of That Funny Feeling, 1965
They divorced in 1967.