Nona Gaprindashvili was Beth Harmon before there was Beth Harmon

    As news breaks of former world women's chess champion Nona Gaprindashvili suing the producers of "The Queen's Gambit" -- just days ahead of this weekend's Emmy's where "The Queen's Gambit" is expected to win more acclaim -- it is interesting to consider that there was another movie about women's chess that hardly drew a drip of news or attention in the U.S.

   And, it came out at about the same time, Sept. 4, 2020, to Oct. 4, 2020, for "The Queen's Gambit" -- just a month and a half ahead of the better known film.

   And, it featured this same Nona Gaprindashvili.

   "Glory to the Queen" is a documentary of four women who ruled the world of women's chess. A trailer for the movie shows a woman saying, "It was like landing on Mars or Jupiter.  . . .  For 30 years these women carried the chess crown. That won't happen again in 5000 years, not even in a big country."

   Nona Gaprindashvili is one of the four women who ruled women's chess from 

   "Glory to the Queen" is about Nona Gaprindashvili, Nana Alexandria, Maia Chiburdanidze, and Nana Ioseliani. From the 1960s to the 1990s, they ruled, bringing the world championship to Georgia and the Soviet Union ten times. 

   So it was that from a small country -- Georgia to this day only has about 3.7 million people -- four chess players rose and were so powerful, that for 30 years, no one could beat them.

   Of them, Nona Gaprindashvili is remembered as the greatest -- if not the greatest women's chess player of all time. The Georgians loved their chess stars, and flocked to see them. 

   "I'll never forget travelling home after becoming the world champion," she says, as the film shows her posing as a sculptor sculpts a bust of her. "Once we crossed the border into Georgia, the train stopped at every station." And, the film shows her exiting a train as a large basket of flowers is presented to her. 

  But, what is most significant about Nona, perhaps is that she was Beth Harmon before there was Beth Harmon. The Beth Harmon in the Queen's Gambit aspired to the world championship that had forever been owned only by men. The "Beth Harmon" in "Glory to the Queen" also aspired to win against the best the male competition the world could offer.

   The real-life Beth Harmon set her goal to beat the men, just like the fictional version. And, just like the fictional version, she did. "Chess Miss Gaprindashvili Beats 7 Men in a Strong Tourney," says a headline found in the New York Times. 

   Indeed, Nona Gaprindashvili went where no woman player had ever gone, earning grandmaster status -- the first female grandmaster in history.

   "The Queen's Gambit" became Netflix's biggest limited-scripted series ever. It won two Golden Globes this year and has garnered 18 nominations for tomorrow's Emmy Awards. Like "The Queen's Gambit," "Glory to the Queen" has also won its honors. A foreign film, it took home the audience prize at the Slobodna Zone movie festival in Belgrade earlier this year. 

   Hail both movies. And, hail both Beth Harmon and Nona Gaprindashvili. Both have cut against the world of sexism in the world of chess. Both Nona Gaprindashvili and "The Queen's Gambit" promoted chess and made it a bigger sport. Lawsuit or not, I am grateful for both.

   And, what was the lawsuit about? In the movie, someone remarks that never has a woman done what Beth Harmon was doing. Oh, there had been Nona Gaprindashvili, but she never played males, he says.

   But, she did, and like Beth Harmon, she won.