Jacqueline Piatigorsky, heiress, dies

LOS ANGELES -- Jacqueline Piatigorsky was born into the Rothschild banking clan and grew up in a palace in Paris, but her silver spoon came with a ball and shackles.

She rarely left her sumptuous homes and was dominated by a callous nanny. She felt invisible to her parents, who expected little of their sensitive, socially awkward daughter except to marry well.

"I was a disappointment," she wrote, "a shrinking, misunderstood child."

She was also intensely competitive, and driven to be more than a poor little rich girl. After a failed first marriage, she found bliss as the wife of cellist Gregor Piatigorsky and raised a family in Los Angeles.

Then, starting in her 40s, she turned a childhood obsession into a string of impressive achievements: She became a U.S. chess champion and an influential patron of the game, whose Piatigorsky Cup tournaments drew more international grandmasters than any U.S. competition in decades.

Later in life, she became a sculptor of note, with her first one-woman show at 65. Later still, she turned to competitive tennis, winning national seniors tournaments in her 70s. She pursued both interests well past her 90th birthday.

Piatigorsky was 100 when she died July 15 at her longtime Brentwood home. The cause was complications of pneumonia, said her son, Jorem.

Born Jacqueline de Rothschild on Nov. 6, 1911, she was the middle child of Baron Edouard de Rothschild and his wife, Germaine Alice Halphen.

She had an older brother, Guy, and a younger sister, Bethsabee, whom she did not meet for three years because their nannies hated each other.

As for her parents, Jacqueline saw them by appointment. Their quarters were so far from the nursery that "visits to them seemed expeditions," Piatigorsky wrote in her 1988 memoir, "Jump in the Waves."

In addition to son Jorem and a daughter, Jephta, she is survived by five grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.