Who Was Birdie Reeve? by Edward Winter

Who Was Birdie Reeve?

Edward Winter

Page 81 of The Gambit, March 1928 reproduced the following from an unidentified publication:

The caption reads:

‘“Birdie” Reeve, Chicago, 17, considered the world’s cleverest girl of her age, has just played simultaneously 10 of the leading chess players of the West and claims championship of her sex. She has a record of 190 words a minute on the typewriter and is the author of three volumes on the science of words.’

We quoted this feature back in the mid-1990s (see page 305 of Kings, Commoners and Knaves) but have never obtained further information about her or how such claims came to be made.

(3572)

Jerry Spinrad (Nashville, TN, USA) provides us with a large number of newspaper quotations about her typing exploits (which made her a vaudeville star) and family background, although he has found only one reference to chess. This was a report on page 12 of the Washington Post, 11 November 1928 entitled ‘Masters at Chess Draw with London’, which ended as follows:

‘Miss Birdie Reeves [sic], one of the best women chess players in America, was also on the scene during the major part of the performance and furnished excellent entertainment for the gathering of fans.’

This event, a Washington v London cable match on 10 November featuring such players as Mlotkowski, Whitaker, Yates and Michell, was the subject of reports on page 182 of the December 1928 American Chess Bulletin and pages 441-443 of the December 1928 BCM, but they made no mention of Birdie Reeve.

The other quotations provided by Mr Spinrad are, despite their lack of chess content, of much interest, and we therefore present them in full, as a supplement to the present item.

(3612)

We have acquired a promotional leaflet (no year indicated) for one of Birdie Reeve’s exhibitions. It includes a photograph of her ostensibly giving a simultaneous display:

Larger versions of side one and side two of the leaflet are provided for perusal.

Birdie Reeve

Jerry Spinrad (Nashville, TN, USA) has now discovered that Birdie Reeve died of a heart attack on 31 May 1996 at the age of 89, and that her obituary was published on page 53 of the Chicago Sun Times, 3 June 1996. The newspaper referred to ‘her ability to type 200 words a minute with just two fingers on each hand, spread out in a V formation’ and noted that George Burns mentioned her ‘great act’ in his autobiography All My Best Friends. The obituary also stated that ‘her vaudeville career ended in 1931 with the birth of her daughter, Hope Hirschman of Lincolnwood’. There was no mention of chess.

(3647)

We now add the exact reference about Birdie Reeve by George Burns (who did not, however, mention her by name) on page 58 of his memoirs All My Best Friends (New York, 1989):

‘If you could do anything better, faster, longer, more often, higher, worse or differently than anyone else, you could work in vaudeville. For example, “The World’s Fastest Typist” had a great act. She’d type 200 words a minute, then pass the perfectly typed pages out to the audience to be inspected. For her finish she’d put a piece of tin in her typewriter and imitate a drum roll or the clackety-clack of a train picking up speed.’

(3668)

We have acquired the following playbill:

‘Sunday, July 25’ indicates that the year was 1926. Birdie Reeve is described as a ‘16-year-old’, just as she had been in a newspaper report three years previously (see the supplement to C.N. 3612), but that discrepancy may be passed over. Showfolk age at their own pace.

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