Second Act

A group photo from the 8th Women’s World Chess Championship Tournament, which took place in the winter of 1949–1950 in Moscow, Russia after the title was vacant since the death of Vera Frantsevna Menchik in 1944. Seated (from left to right): Ingrid Larsen, Róża Maria Herman, Viacheslav Vasilyevich Ragozin, Vera Sergeevna Chudova, Gisela Kahn Gresser, María Teresa Mora Iturralde, and Fenny Heemskerk; standing (left to right): Chantal Chaudé de Silans, Eileen Betsy Tranmer, Clarice Benini, Elisaveta Ivanovna Bykova, Vera Nikolaevna Tikhomirova, Mona May Karff, Józsa Lángos, Nina Hrušková-Bělská, Lyudmila Vladimirovna Rudenko, Edith Keller-Herrmann, Kira Alekseyevna Zvorykina and Olga Nikolaevna Rubtsova. Among the participants, only Valentina Mikhaylovna Borisenko-Belova is not portrayed in the picture. For International Master Clarice Benini — who had finished second in the Women’s World Championship Tournament at Stockholm 1937 — it was a long-awaited rentrée after the war years, miserably frittered away in the farcical tragedy of Italian fascist regime. Though youth was gone and she had been threatened by the new post-fascist Italy with losing her job had she dared to put her foot in the Soviet Union, this time “Benini girl” (as she was dubbed by her fellow club members for being unmarried) didn’t think twice: she undertook a fifteen-day train trip and finally challenged herself to do the things she wanted to do. Photo: start33.ru.