The Mysterious Montague: A True Tale of Hollywood, Golf, and Armed Robbery

By Leigh Montville
257 pp. Doubleday, 2008 $26.00

Reviewed by Misty Edgecomb

On the surface, this is a book about a golf phenomenon by a renowned sportswriter, which will undoubtedly attract an audience. But as a non-golfer, to whom the names that pepper its pages — Grantland Rice, Horton Smith, Ralph Guldahl — mean little, it seems that the power of Montville’s descriptions elevate the book to far more than a standard sports history.

The author tells the classic American story of a self-made man with a shadowy past in the mold of Jay Gatsby. John Montague charmed 1930s Hollywood with his golfing prowess, knocking birds off a telephone wire with a single shot or winning a round with nothing more than a rake, a bat and a shovel. But he also possessed a charisma that kept friends like Bing Crosby and Oliver Hardy by his side when his unsavory past became the celebrity story of 1937.

Montville follows Montague (revealed to be a low-rent rum-runner from upstate New York named LaVerne Moore) from his Hollywood rise at Lakeside Golf Club, though his carnival-like 1937 trial for armed robbery.

The book is meticulously researched, yet frequently, Montville’s in-text citation of who said what unnecessarily stalls his narrative and makes the story feel choppy. But in the end, the story is strong enough to keep a reader engaged — who doesn’t like to read of the dramatic rise and fall of a man of his own invention.

As Montville writes, “There [is] nothing like seeing some dirty laundry flap in the clean vacation air.”