Larry Evans, American chess grandmaster and author, died from complications following gallbladder operation he was , 78

Larry Melvyn Evans was an American chess grandmaster, author, and journalist died from complications following gallbladder operation he was , 78. He won or shared the U.S. Chess Championship five times and the U.S. Open Chess Championship four times. He wrote a long-running syndicated chess column and wrote or co-wrote more than 20 books on chess.

(March 22, 1932 – November 15, 2010)

 Chess career

Early years

Evans was born in Manhattan on March 22, 1932, and learned much about the game by playing for ten cents an hour on 42nd Street in New York City^{[citation needed]}, quickly becoming a rising star. At age 14, he tied for fourth-fifth place in the Marshall Chess Club championship. The next year he won it outright, becoming the youngest Marshall champion at that time. He also finished equal second in the U.S. Junior Championship, which led to an article in the September 1947 issue of Chess Review. At 16, he played in the 1948 U.S. Chess Championship, his first, tying for eighth place at 11½–7½.^[1] Evans tied with Arthur Bisguier for first place in the U.S. Junior Chess Championship of 1949. By age 18, he had won a New York State championship as well as a gold medal in the Dubrovnik Chess Olympiad of 1950. In the latter, his 90% score (eight wins and two draws) on sixth board tied with Rabar of Yugoslavia for the best result of the entire Olympiad.^[2]

US champion

In 1951, he first won the U.S. Championship, ahead of Samuel Reshevsky, who had tied for third-fourth in the 1948 World Championship match-tournament.^[3] Evans won his second championship the following year by winning a title match against Herman Steiner.^[4] He won the national championship thrice more – in 1961–62, 1967–68^[5] and 1980, the last in a tie with Walter Browne and Larry Christiansen.^[6][7][8]

Grandmaster

FIDE awarded Evans the titles of International Master (1952) and International Grandmaster (1957). In 1956 the U.S. State Department appointed him a "chess ambassador".
Evans performed well in many U.S. events during the 1960s and 1970s, but his trips abroad to international tournaments were infrequent and less successful. He won the U.S. Open Chess Championship in 1951, 1952, 1954 (he tied with Arturo Pomar but won the title on the tie-break) and tied with Walter Browne in 1971. He also won the first Lone Pine tournament in 1971.^[9]

Olympiad successes

He represented the U.S. in eight Chess Olympiads over a period of twenty-six years, winning gold (1950), silver (1958), and bronze (1976) medals for his play, and participating in team gold (1976) and silver (1966) medals.^[10][11][12]

Best international results

His best results on foreign soil included two wins at the Canadian Open Chess Championship, 1956 in Montreal, and 1966 in Kingston, Ontario. He tied for first-second in the 1975 Portimão, Portugal International^[13] and for second-third with World Champion Tigran Petrosian, behind Jan Hein Donner, in Venice, 1967.^[14] However, his first, and what ultimately proved to be his only, chance in the World Chess Championship cycle ended with a disappointing 14th place (10/23) in the 1964 Amsterdam Interzonal.^[15]

Helps Fischer win world title

He never entered the world championship cycle again, and concentrated his efforts on assisting his fellow American Bobby Fischer in his quest for the world title. He was Fischer's second for the Candidates matches leading up to the World Chess Championship 1972 against Boris Spassky, though not for the championship match itself, after a disagreement with Fischer.
At his peak in October 1968 he was rated 2631 by the United States Chess Federation.

Chess journalism

Evans had always been interested in writing as well as playing. By the age of eighteen, he had already published David Bronstein's Best Games of Chess, 1944–1949 and the Vienna International Tournament, 1922. His book New Ideas in Chess was published in 1958, and was later reprinted. He wrote or co-wrote more than 20 books on chess.^[16]
He wrote the tenth edition of the important openings treatise Modern Chess Openings (1965), co-authored with editor Walter Korn. He also made a significant contribution to Fischer's My 60 Memorable Games (1969), writing the introductions to each of the games and urging the future World Champion to publish when he had initially been reluctant to do so.^[17] Some of Evans's other books are Modern Chess Brilliancies (1970), What's The Best Move (1973), and Test Your Chess I.Q. (2001).
Evans began his career in chess journalism during the 1960s, helping to found the American Chess Quarterly, which ran from 1961–65. He was an editor of Chess Digest during the 1960s and 1970s. For over thirty years, until 2006, he wrote a question-and-answer column for Chess Life, the official publication of the United States Chess Federation (USCF), and has also written for Chess Life Online. His weekly chess column, Evans on Chess, has appeared in more than fifty separate newspapers throughout the United States. He also wrote a column for the World Chess Network.
Evans has also commentated on some of the most important matches for Time magazine and ABC's Wide World of Sports, including the 1972 Fischer versus Spassky match, the 1993 PCA world title battle between Garry Kasparov and Nigel Short and the Braingames world chess championship match between Vladimir Kramnik and Garry Kasparov in 2000.
Evans also contributed a large amount of tutorial and other content to the Chessmaster computer game series, most notably an endgame quiz and annotations of classic chess games. His contributions to chess writing and journalism earned him many awards, including the USCF's Chess Journalist of the Year award in 2000.^{[citation needed]} He was inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 1994.
Chess historian Edward Winter criticized Evans's work, asserting that it was sloppy, dishonest, and riddled with factual inaccuracies,^[18] though these claims were denounced by Larry Parr.^[19]

Death

On November 15, 2010, Evans died in Reno, Nevada, from complications following gallbladder surgery.^[20][21][22]

Selected games

This game, against future grandmaster Abe Yanofsky, who had won the brilliancy prize against Botvinnik at Groningen the year before, was Evans's first victory against a noted player:

Daniel Yanofsky – Larry Evans, 1947

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

Position after 25. f3

Yanofsky – Evans, U.S. Open 1947, Alekhine defence B05
1. e4 Nf6 2. e5 Nd5 3. d4 d6 4. Nf3 Bg4 5. h3 Bxf3 6. Qxf3 dxe5 7. dxe5 e6 8. a3 Nc6 9. Bb5 Qd7 10. c4 Nde7 11. 0-0 Qd4 12. Bg5 a6 13. Bxe7 axb5 14. Bxf8 Rxf8 15. cxb5 Nxe5 16. Qe2 0-0-0 17. Nc3 Ng6 18. Rad1 Qe5 19. Qc2 Rxd1 20. Rxd1 Rd8 21. Rc1 Nf4 22. Kh1 Qh5 24. Kh2 Rd3 25. f3 (see diagram at left) 25 ...Rxf3!   26. Rd1 Nxh3! 27. gxf3 Nf2+ 28. Kg3 Qh3+ 29. Kf4 Qh2+ 30. Ke3 (0–1)
See the game online
In his book Modern Chess Brilliances, Evans listed four of his own wins:

• Evans vs. Berger, 1964
• Evans vs. Blackstone, 1965
• Evans vs. Zuckerman, 1967, US Championship
• Koehler vs. Evans, 1968, US National Open

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Moira Hoey, Irish actor (The Riordans, Glenroe). died she was , 88

Moira Hoey ^[1] was an Irish actress. She starred as Mary Riordan in The Riordans from 1965 until it was axed in 1979, before appearing as Nellie Connors in Glenroe died she was , 88. Mary Riordan was considered "the quintessential Irish mammy" - Irish Independent / The Irish Times.^[2][3] She played Mrs Coffey in The Irish R.M.^[4] She had roles in This Is My Father^[5] and Angela's Ashes (as moneylender Mrs Purcell)^[6] as well.

(née Deady; 1922 — 15 November 2010)

Hoey came from County Cork.^[5] She resided in Greystones, County Wicklow.^[2] She began acting by travelling around Ireland as part of fit-ups (travelling theatre troupes) and this contributed to her early fame.^[2] Deady married fellow actor Johnny Hoey (Franice Maher in The Riordans).^[2] He predeceased her, though three daughters and one son were still alive at the time of her own death in 2010.^[2] Fans often thought she was married to John Cowley who played Tom Riordan, her husband in The Riordans, and fans were also upset when seeing her with Johnny Hoey, her real-life husband.^[3]
She died at the age of 88 on 15 November 2010 in Loughlinstown Hospital, County Dublin.^[5] Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport Mary Hanafin commented on her part in Irish history: "In her role as the matriarch of The Riordans homestead, she was ever present, each Sunday, on our television screens dealing with the changing landscape and domestic issues that Ireland as a country was experiencing".^[5][6] John Boland, writing in the Irish Independent, called her "everyone's mammy and the conscience of a nation" while reflecting that this meant all the senior cast members of The Riordans were now dead.^[7] Hundreds of people attended her funeral on 18 November at Holy Rosary Church, Greystones.^[8]
In 2009 she reunited with other cast members of The Riordans for an RTÉ documentary on the programme.^[4][2]

Roles

Television

• The Riordans - Mary Riordan^[5]
• Bracken^[2] - ?
• Glenroe - Nellie Connors^[5]
• The Irish R.M. - Mrs Coffey^[4]
• Legend^[9] - ?

Film

• This Is My Father - Mrs Kearney^[9]
• Angela's Ashes - Mrs Purcell^[6]
• Headrush - Mrs Macroom^[9]
• The Tiger's Tail - Liam's mother, Maeve^[9]

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William Self, American actor and television production manager (Batman, Lost in Space, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea), died after suffering a heart attack he was 89

 William Edwin Self  was an American television and feature film producer who began his career as an actor died after suffering a heart attack he was 89.

(June 21, 1921 – November 15, 2010^[1])

Biography

Self graduated from the University of Chicago in 1943 before traveling to Los Angeles to be an actor. His first film role was Private Gawky Henderson in The Story of G.I. Joe (1945) directed by William Wellman. Self also appeared in four films directed by Howard Hawks, including Red River (1948) and the Science Fiction cult classic, The Thing from Another World (1951).^[2] Between 1945 and 1952, he appeared in over thirty films.
In 1952, Self left acting to launch a life-long career in television production. His first producing credit was Assistant to the Producer on the series China Smith starring Dan Duryea. From 1952 until 1956, Self was acting-producer (billed as Associate Producer)^[3] and then Producer of the Schlitz Playhouse of Stars. During this period, he produced two-hundred-eight half-hour episodes at fifty-two episodes per year. Many notable actors appeared as guest stars including Anthony Quinn, Peter Lorre, Vincent Price, Walter Brennan, Ronald Reagan, Rod Steiger, Charles Bronson, and James Dean.
Self moved on to produce The Frank Sinatra Show in 1957. Later that year, he accepted the post of Program Executive for CBS Television Network where his assignment was to develop new television series. The first pilot he produced was Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone.
Self was hired in 1959 by 20th Century Fox where he remained for fifteen years. During this period, Self piloted Fox television from near-extinction to become one of the top suppliers of television programming in the business.^[4] In 1966, Fox had more television hours on the air than any other supplier.^[5] Significant among Fox series were Peyton Place (1964–1969), the first Prime Time soap-opera; Batman (1966–1968), the first series based on a comic book to air in Prime Time; Julia (1968–1971), the first weekly television series to star an African American woman; and the enduring classic M*A*S*H (1972–1983). Other notable Fox series of the time included Daniel Boone (1964–1969), Twelve O'Clock High (1964–1967), Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964–1968), Lost in Space (1965–1968), The Green Hornet (1966–1967), The Ghost & Mrs. Muir (1968–1970), Land of the Giants (1968–1970), and Room 222 (1969–1972).
Self's talents were rewarded by the studio as he was promoted progressively from his original position of Executive Producer/Twentieth Century Fox Television (1962) to Vice-President/Twentieth Century Fox Television (1964) to President/Twentieth Century Fox Television (1968), and finally to Vice-President/Twentieth Century Fox Corporation.^[6]
Self left Fox in 1975 to partner with Mike Frankovich in the development and production of television and feature films.^[7] Although the partnership lasted just a little over a year, Frankovich/Self produced two feature films. These were The Shootist (1976), John Wayne's last film, and From Noon Till Three (1976) starring Charles Bronson.
Self returned to CBS in 1977 as Vice-President/Head of the West Coast. A year later, he took on a new challenge when he accepted the position of Vice President in Charge of Television Movies and Mini-Series, also for CBS. Before leaving this job in 1982, he supervised production of about fifty films and three or four mini-series per year. These included The Corn is Green (1979) starring Katharine Hepburn; All Quiet on the Western Front (1979) starring Ernest Borgnine and Richard Thomas; Guyana Tragedy (1980) starring Powers Boothe; Playing For Time (1980) starring Vanessa Redgrave; The Bunker (1981) starring Anthony Hopkins; Bill (1981) starring Mickey Rooney and Dennis Quaid; The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1982) starring Anthony Hopkins; and The Blue and the Gray (1982), an American Civil War mini-series which garnered four prime-time Emmy nominations.^[8]
Self returned to the feature film in 1982 when he was made President of CBS Theatrical Film Production. He served in this capacity for three years, supervising the making of ten movies including Target (1985) directed by Arthur Penn and starring Gene Hackman and Matt Dillon; Eleni (1985) directed by Peter Yates and starring Kate Nelligan and John Malkovich; Better Off Dead (1985) with John Cusack; and Turtle Diary (1985) starring Glenda Jackson and Ben Kingsley.
In 1985, when CBS decided to get out of the feature film business, Self established the independent William Self Productions to develop both television and feature films. In partnership with Norman Rosemont, Self produced The Tenth Man (1988) for the Hallmark Hall of Fame. It starred Anthony Hopkins, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Derek Jacobi. He also partnered with Glenn Close in producing three television movies for Hallmark: Sarah, Plain and Tall (1991), Skylark (1993), and Sarah, Plain and Tall: Winter's End (1999), all starring Glenn Close and Christopher Walken. Sarah, Plain and Tall received the highest rating of any Hallmark Hall of Fame to that date.
Self married his college sweetheart, Margaret Lucille Flynn of Spokane, Washington, in 1941. This union lasted until her death in 2007. Self had two children, Edwin and Barbara. He was a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the Directors Guild of America. He had been involved in non-profit work for many years, serving on the Board of Trustees of the John Tracy Clinic, the Motion Picture and Television Fund, and the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming.

Early life and education

Self was born at Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton, Ohio. During his youth, he lived in Dayton, Akron, Chicago, and Milwaukee. He graduated from Dayton's Roosevelt High School in 1939.
Self's father, Edwin Byron Self, worked as an Advertising Manager at the Dayton Rubber Manufacturing Company, Akron Rubber Company, Miller Brewing Company, and Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company. Edwin Self wrote a novel, Limbo City (1949), and at least three plays which opened on Broadway: Junk (1927) starring Sydney Greenstreet,^[9] Two Strange Women(1933), and The Distant City (1941). His play, The Lady and the Clown, starring Estelle Winwood, opened in 1944 at the Civic Theatre in Chicago with William Self playing a small part.^{[citation needed]} Edwin and Elizabeth (Elsie) Fundus Self, a homemaker, had two children: William and Jean LaVerne Self (later Bright).
From childhood, Self has had "enthusiasms," keen interests that started when he was young and had continued throughout his life. Some of these interests had resulted in important connections and personal friendships. Self's fascination with Rudolph Valentino, for example, began when he was only five years old and his sister took him to see The Son of the Sheik (1926). Self had said that because his sister told him that Valentino had just died, he expected to see the movie idol in his casket on screen. Valentino stayed in Self's mind. He saw all the movies and read all the books he could find. As an adult, he became friends with Valentino's personal manager, George Ullman; one of Valentino's best friends, Robert Florey; as well as with Valentino's brother, Alberto.
It was also show business that led Self to become an accomplished tennis player. In 1932, age eleven, his parents took him to New York to see a Broadway production of Show Boat. Self's father pointed out tennis champion Bill Tilden in the lobby, telling him that Tilden was the greatest living tennis player. Self didn't know anything about tennis, but he was impressed. He asked Tilden to sign his program. Back in Dayton, Self bought Tilden's book, Match Play and the Spin of the Ball,^[10] and talked his parents into purchasing him a tennis racket. With time, he would become runner-up in the Wisconsin Junior Tennis Championship, represent Wisconsin on the Junior Davis Cup team and, in 1945, win The Wisconsin State Men's Championship. Self played Varsity tennis at the University of Chicago and in his Senior Year was elected Captain of the team. When he came to Los Angeles in 1944, as an unknown and untried actor, his skill at tennis allowed him to make important contacts. He regularly played with Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Charlie Chaplin, and Jack Warner, among other Hollywood notables. He also became friends with and played Bill Tilden.
One of Self's favorite hobbies was magic. When he was thirteen years old, he won a citywide contest, mounted by the renowned magician Howard Thurston and his traveling show, to name "Dayton's Best Amateur Magician and the Person Most Likely to Become Thurston's Successor." The contest was limited to children thirteen and under. Being the winner, Self appeared at the Colonial Theatre on the stage with Mr. Thurston to perform his trick. Although he had never before performed this trick in public (a fact he had left out on his contest application), it went off perfectly. Self's photograph was taken with Thurston and a notice appeared in a Dayton newspaper. He was friends with some of the best-known magicians and magic historians in the United States, and attended many of the major magic conventions. For many years, he was a member of The Magic Castle, a professional magician's club in Hollywood. In later years he became a close friend of Howard Thurston's daughter, Jane, who had appeared on stage with her father.
Another film that sparked a life-long interest was Annie Oakley (1936), which starred Barbara Stanwyck. Self was fifteen years old when he saw the movie at the Keith Theatre in Dayton. Annie Oakley's brother, who lived in nearby Greenville, Ohio, had lent some of his Oakley memorabilia for display in the lobby. The film and the memorabilia fired Self's imagination, and his fascination with Oakley and Buffalo Bill Cody took root. He looked up Oakley's brother in Greenville and the two became friends. He also started writing an Oakley biography. To research this project, Self, age seventeen, persuaded his family to travel to Cody, Wyoming so that Self could study the Oakley scrapbooks in the small log structure which housed the Buffalo Bill Museum. He also persuaded the museum's founder and curator, Mary Jester Allen (Buffalo Bill's niece), to name him Assistant Historian. Self had letterhead stationary and business cards printed with this title, although he never did anything in the position. The book was never published, but Self went on to serve on the Board of Trustees of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center: the five-museum, five-football-fields-sized outgrowth of the original institution. Many of Oakley's grandnieces and nephews were his friends.
While in high school, he decided to take up acting. In 1938, he appeared in Roosevelt High's Junior Class play, and in 1939 he was cast in the leading role of the Senior Class play, The Eyes of Tlaloc by Agnes Emelie Peterson. He also worked behind the scenes as electrician and stage manager. Self's drama teacher, Bertha May Johns, was a great inspiration to him as well as to her other students.
Self gave up drama while at the University of Chicago, thinking he should devote himself to more serious pursuits. While there, he joined Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity. He graduated from Chicago in 1943 with a degree in Political Science.

Death

Self died on November 15, 2010 at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center after suffering a heart attack 4 days earlier.

Filmography

As Actor

• The Story of G.I. Joe (1945) - Uncredited
• Decoy (1946) - Uncredited
• Monsieur Verdoux (1947) - Uncredited
• A Likely Story (1947) - Uncredited
• Kilroy Was Here (1947)
• Marshal of Cripple Creek (1947)
• Homecoming (1948)
• A Foreign Affair (1948)
• Red River (1948) - Credited as Billie Self
• The Great Gatsby (1949) - Uncredited
• I Was a Male War Bride (1949) - Uncredited
• Father was a Fullback (1949) - Uncredited
• Battleground (1949) - Uncredited
• Adam's Rib (1949) - Uncredited
• Sands of Iwo Jima (1949)
• Malaya (1949) - Uncredited
• A Ticket to Tomahawk (1950) - Uncredited
• Three Secrets (1950) - Uncredited
• Breakthrough (1950) - Uncredited
• Operation Pacific (1951) - Uncredited
• The Thing from Another World (1951)
• The People Against O'Hara (1951)
• Deadline - U.S.A. (1952) - Uncredited
• Pat and Mike (1952)
• Washington Story (1952) - Uncredited
• The Big Sky (1952) - Uncredited
• Plymouth Adventure (1952) - Uncredited
• Battle Circus (1953) - Uncredited

As film Producer

• Ride the High Iron - (1956)
• The Shootist - (1975)
• From Noon Till Three - (1976)

As Television Producer

• Schlitz Playhouse of Stars (208 episodes between 1953 and 1956)
• The Frank Sinatra Show (ABC) (1957 and 1958)
• Adventures in Paradise (3 episodes in 1960 and 1961)
• The Time Tunnel (30 episodes in 1966 and 1967)
• The Green Hornet (26 episodes in 1966 and 1967) (In charge of production for Twentieth Century-Fox Television)
• State Fair (1976)
• The Tenth Man (1988)
• Sarah, Plain and Tall (1991)
• Skylark (1993)
• Sarah, Plain and Tall: Winter's End (1999)

As Director

• The Secret (1954: Season 4, Episode 1 of The Schiltz Playhouse of Stars)
• The Last Out (1955: Season 5, Episode 1 of The Schiltz Playhouse of Stars)
• The Careless Cadet (1955: Season 5, Episode 9 of The Schiltz Playhouse of Stars)
• The Night They Won the Oscar (1956: Season 6, Episode 7 of The Schiltz Playhouse of Stars)

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