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He was a 1930s golf legend and Hollywood
trickster who adamantly refused to be photographed. He never
played professionally, yet sports-writing legend Grantland
Rice still heralded him as "the greatest golfer in the
world." Then, in 1937, the secrets of John Montague's
past were exposed--leading to a sensational trial that captivated
the nation.
From three-time "New York Times" bestselling author
Leigh Montville.
John Montague was a boisterous enigma. He had a bagful of
golf tricks, on and off the course. He could chip a ball across
a room into a highball glass, and knock a bird off a wire
from 170 yards--and when the big man arrived in Hollywood
in the early 1930s, he quickly became a celebrity among celebrities.
He lived for a time with Oliver Hardy (whom he could lift,
one-handed, onto the country club bar) and played golf with
everyone from Howard Hughes and W. C. Fields to Babe Ruth
and his close friend Bing Crosby, whom he famously beat while
playing only with a rake, a shovel, and a bat. Yet strangely
Montague never entered a professional tournament, and in a
town that thrived on publicity, he never allowed his image
to be captured on film.
The reasons became clear when a "Time" magazine
photographer snapped his picture with a telephoto lens ...
and police in upstate New York quickly recognized Montague
as a fugitive wanted for armed robbery. As Montague was indicted
in the tiny upstate town of Jay, New York, hordes of national
media descended and turned a star-studded legal carnival into
the most talked about trial of its day - the trial of "the
Mysterious Montague."
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