PicoVib

On July 9, 1937, John Montague left his Beverly Hills home, perhaps for another round of golf with movie stars. He was well dressed, as always, and carried his 5-foot-11, 220-pound frame in such a way that made him seem bigger and more powerful than his measurements would suggest. He had “bulldog shoulders” and the “arms of a blacksmith,” reporters said, with a round face, wavy hair and dimples. 

In the past few years, Montague had become one of the most famous golfers in the country despite — or because of — one fabulous quirk: He refused to play a single round of tournament golf. He also refused to discuss his past, reveal anything about his personal life or let anyone take his picture. In that void blossomed fantastic myths and legends, like the one where he bet he could scare a bird off a wire 200 yards away and snapped the bird’s neck with his shot instead. Grantland Rice, the esteemed sportswriter, called Montague one of the best golfers in the country in 1935, leading to a wave of interest in the sport’s most mysterious man. 

Time, Esquire and Sports Illustrated all tried to solve the enigma. All failed. 

No one knew about his past until that July day, when two officers from the Los Angeles police department stopped him as he left his home.

One day in 1930, John Montague showed up in Los Angeles. He did not know anyone and no one knew him. He had come from a middle-class home in Syracuse, where he was an average student and a below-average employee at a local golf course. In Los Angeles, he rented a room in a lodging house and, like so many before and after him, sought a new start in the Great American West.

Advertisement

Soon, he made a name for himself on municipal courses for his crazy trick shots and his willingness to bet anyone, any time. The tales of his prowess caught the ears of the most famous men in Hollywood, and by the mid ’30s he counted among his friends Bing Crosby, Spencer Tracy and Randolph Scott. Fora time, he lived at the luxurious apartment of Oliver “Babe” Hardy, of Laurel and Hardy fame, and he was a member of Lakeside, the exclusive country club a few blocks from Universal Studios, where he played cards and gambled in the club’s bar. 

Montague delighted his Hollywood friends with his charm and appetites. One reporter said he could “consume abnormal qualities of whiskey.” Another said he ate huge breakfasts that would “stoke most men for a week.” His clubs were said to be twice as big and twice as heavy as an average golfer’s, leaving one reporter to call them “war clubs.” 

Montague was known to always carry a stack of hundred dollar bills in his pocket. He wore pastel suits and drove two Lincoln phaetons, as well as a supercharged Ford, but no one knew where his money came from or what he did, not even his Hollywood friends. It was said that he owned a gold or silver mine in the desert where he would disappear to for three or four days at a time. But he never offered any details about his life, and his friends never asked. 

So protective was he of his privacy that one time, while on the course, he spotted a photographer hiding behind a bush, took his roll of film and destroyed it.  

The lucky few who golfed with him swore by his talent. Rice said he’d take him in an even bet against any golfer in the country. George Von Elm, a former amateur national champion, called Montague the “best golfer in the world.” But Montague refused to enter professional tournaments, and when Rice asked why, Montague said, “I play golf for other things.” 

He loved its mental challenges, the way it forced him to concentrate and visualize, the thrill he felt to produce under pressure on every single shot. 

Without pressure, he once said, there was no thrill. 

As the mystery around him thickened, reporters and acquaintances teed off with wild stories: That he once shot under par using nothing but a putter. That he could clear 400 yards with his drives That he often picked up his ball on the 18th green to avoid a course record and the publicity that would come with it. 

The most oft-repeated story about Montague was the time he bet Bing Crosby, the most famous voice in America, that he could whip him with a baseball bat, a rake and a shovel, then did. Crosby himself confirmed the feat, inspiring a scene in the movie “Tin Cup” years later.

Advertisement

One day, a state trooper in Oneida, New York, named John Cosartz read the sensational tale about Montague, Crosby and the rake. Something about Montague struck Cosartz as familiar. He sent the articles to colleague J.B. Lynch, an inspector in Malone, New York, to get a second opinion.

Late on the night of Aug. 5, 1930, two cars parked outside a roadhouse near Jay, New York, in the Adirondack Mountains. The sky was clear. Four men put on masks and grabbed pistols and blackjacks, then walked inside. They tied up the couple that owned the place, including the couple’s three daughters, the youngest of whom was 10. 

As she was gagged, one of the daughters asked her captors, “Don’t choke me.”

Upstairs, the men found Matt Cobb, the 67-year-old father of the owner, asleep. After a brief struggle, Cobb broke free and jumped out of his bedroom window. One of the men — Cobb would remember the guy as stocky and strong — chased him. Cobb and the man wrestled on the ground and rolled down a hill toward the riverbank, where the man got a hold of a blackjack and hit Cobb multiple times. The blows knocked out Cobb’s teeth and left him bruised and bleeding from his ears. 

The four men fled with about $800, the equivalent of around $12,000 today. During a chase with police, one of the two cars smashed through a guardrail and flipped, killing one robber and dazing the other. 

Inside the car, however, the officers made a most interesting discovery.

There, in a Gladstone suitcase, were letters addressed to a Laverne Moore. There was also a driver’s license for Laverne Moore and newspaper clippings highlighting Laverne Moore’s golf accomplishments and his stint that spring with a minor-league baseball team. The officers also found a bag of clubs with 13 irons and three woods.

But neither man in the car was named Laverne Moore, and the other car had escaped.

Advertisement

Over the next few years, Inspector Lynch arrested two of the men involved in the robbery (in addition to the third he had died), but Laverne Moore eluded him. About all Lynch knew is that Moore had been a troublemaker and a great athlete in his hometown of Syracuse. In fact, Lynch said he always believed that Moore would “some day reveal himself by his outstanding abilities as an athlete.” 

On June 11, 1937, Lynch mailed fingerprints, a picture of Laverne Moore and samples of Moore’s writing to the LA sheriff’s office. It didn’t take long for word to come back: Montague was their man.

When officers arrested Montague at his Beverly Hills home a little less than a month later, he had $43 in his pocket.

The news shocked Hollywood. Crosby could not believe the charges. Hardy posted Montague’s bail because, he said, he is “one of the finest fellows that ever lived.” 

The arrest answered some questions — on his bond application, Montague listed his occupation as a mining engineer — but it also created more mystery. A beautiful brunette showed up at the jail with a maid, gave Montague a kiss, then drove one of his Lincoln’s home. For the first time, Montague posed for pictures, but he refused to open up about his past or private life.

Q: How did you come to Hollywood?

A: I thought I’d like the climate.

Q: How’d you meet all the movie stars?

A: By playing golf.

Q: Are you married?

A: None of your business.

Montague went straight from jail to the Lakeside Country Club, where he was greeted with cheers. The club’s caddies had pooled their tips and tried to give Montague $1,000 to help with his legal expenses. 

In August 1937, he agreed to go to New York for his trial, but first there was a fight over his name. New York officers insisted he sign the extradition papers as Laverne Moore; he insisted on signing as John Montague. His lawyer argued that “Laverne Moore can be considered legally dead after seven years and a new man with a new soul born in his place.”

Advertisement

Finally, the parties reached a compromise. He signed the papers as “Laverne Moore, known as John Montague.” 

More than 100 people sent him off at the train station. He walked out on the train’s observation platform, grinned and pretended to swing a golf club. The crowd cheered. Always a debonair dresser, he took 20 bags and suitcases with him and played bridge with his guards — two New York police officers and Percy Egglefield, the sheriff of Essex County. Egglefield was so charmed by Montague that he told one reporter, “We’re just four pals together, that’s all.”

Montague arrived in Elizabethtown, New York, in late August. He celebrated his 32nd birthday in police custody. His jailors, however, let him walk to a nearby corner drug store for an ice cream soda, accompanied by four state troopers. After he ordered, three of the victims of the 1930 robbery walked into the drug store: Mrs. Kin Hanna, the wife of the roadhouse’s owner, and her two daughters, Nomie, 24, and Doris, 17, all of whom had been bound and gagged that night. 

They stared at Montague but said nothing.

Before the trial, Henry McLemore, a reporter for the United Press, visited Montague in a hotel room. For some reason, Montague let McLemore punch him in the stomach. “I hurt my knuckles,” McLemore wrote, “but not his belly.” Montague then took a glass of water and put it on a table. He pulled out a wedge, took a practice swing and chipped a ball off the rug and into the glass, shattering it. Later, he took out his driver, pointed to a window that was open six to eight inches and told McLemore he would drive the ball through it. 

“Call me a liar if you want,” McLemore wrote, “but the ball whistled right through the opening.”

Montague carried on in luxury. He lived in a 16-room annex at one of the town’s summer hotels. In late September, he played golf with Rice at the North Hempstead Country Club and shot a 65, one off the course record. His trial was supposed to start on Oct. 13, but two days beforehand, his lawyer asked the judge to postpone it until Oct. 19. 

On Oct. 12, Montague went to the victory dinner for the New York Yankees, the 1937 World Series champs.  The party was held in the ballroom of the Commodore Hotel. Waiters carried trays of drinks. Champagne corks popped. Lou Gehrig was there “wearing a bow tie and a large expanse of white shirt showing because his chest is big and he wears no vest,” a reporter observed. Montague sat at a table and signed autographs next to Joe DiMaggio. 

The party raged until 3 a.m.

The case against Montague was solid, even though more than 66 of his Hollywood friends had mailed letters to the judge on his behalf. 

One of the men convicted in the robbery, Roger Norton, testified that Montague was there that night. Norton said he saw Montague hit Matt Cobb, the old man upstairs, “several times.” He also testified that Montague handed him a revolver as they sped away from state troopers and instructed him to “give it to them” (Another participant in the robbery, William Carleton, contradicted Norton’s assertion that Montague was at the roadhouse, instead claiming the fourth guy in the crew was someone named “Burns.”) 

A state trooper, Harry Durand, said on the night of the robbery, he and his partner pulled over a green car near Schroon Lake, about 50 miles from the roadhouse. McGinnis said the driver of the car handed over his license; it was Roger Norton. He asked the other man in the car for his name, and the guy said he was “Lawrence Ryan.” Durand had both men get out of the car. He remembered that Norton stood on the left side of the vehicle, “Lawrence Ryan” on the right side. 

“Do you see the other occupant of the car in this room?” the prosecutor asked. 

“I do,” Durand said. “He’s right there.” 

He nodded toward Montague, who stared back emotionless.

Advertisement

Another witness testified that Montague, Norton and another convicted participant, William Carleton, visited the roadhouse a week before the robbery to “see if the place would be a good drop for liquor” during Prohibition. 

District attorney Thomas McDonald wrapped up his case after two days of testimony. 

Montague took the stand.

“Why did you change your name?” McDonald asked.

“Because I was ashamed,” Montague said.

“Ashamed of what?”

“Because my bag and belongings were found in Carleton’s car.”

“Then you ran away because of that?”

“I did.”

Montague said he sold cars from 1930 to 1935 and made about $100 a month — barely enough to cover three months of membership fee at Lakeside. He said he lived a lavish life because he was often a guest of rich and famous friends. 

“Did you object to photographers taking pictures of you?” McDonald asked.

“I did.”

“You were afraid you might be identified if your picture was taken?”

“Possibly so.”

The jury took almost five hours to return a verdict, but in the end they found Montague not guilty. Women cheered. The judge, Harry E. Owen, was not so amused.

“I am sorry to say that your verdict is not in accord with the one I think you should have rendered,” Owen said. “But that’s up to you.”

One of the first things John Montague did after the trial was legally change his name.

For the first time, he was free to golf without the shadow of his past lurking behind him. In November 1939, he was paired with Sylva Annenberg, one of the top women golfers at the time, in a charity match against two Babes: Didrikson and Ruth.

Gayle Talbot, a reporter for the Associated Press, went to the match. “For several months, this Montague has been the most talked about single figure in sport,” he wrote. The problem was that 10,000 other people had the same idea as Talbot, and the crowd was a “mob.” At one point, the surge of people knocked over Ruth. One boy suffered a concussion when one of Didrikson’s drives thumped him on the head. Others climbed trees to watch Montague tee off, while Talbot noticed a drunk who “persisted in lying in a bunker and smoking a cigarette.” 

Montague played nine holes before someone stole his ball on the ninth green and the match was called. Talbot recorded Montague’s score as: 445 35X 65X. Apparently, on the sixth hole, the crowd was so packed that Montague couldn’t get to his ball for his second shot.  

He flew back to Los Angeles, where Hollywood friends and reporters greeted him at the airport.

Advertisement

“My eyes,” he said, “are on the British and American Opens.”

In 1939, he tried to qualify for the U.S. Open. He shot an 81 in his first round, then was so erratic during his second round that he picked up his ball after nine holes. At the St. Paul Open that year, he finished near the bottom of the field.

“It turns out,” one reporter wrote, “that Montague is just another run-of-the-garden golfer.”

Another said, “He exploded for once and all the super-golfer legend.”

But those who played with him in his prime never stopped believing what they saw. Many years later, Johnny Depaolo, a top amateur and frequent partner, said he had watched everyone from Walter Hagen to Jack Nicklaus and was still convinced “Montague was the greatest.” 

“Something happened to Montague,” DePaolo told the San Francisco Examiner. “Maybe the strain of the trial took it out of him. I don’t know. That’s the real mystery about the man.”

John Montague died in 1972 in a Ventura Boulevard motel near a driving range where he served as an unofficial instructor. He was 67 years old, far removed from his days of great fame and intrigue. But just as in life, his death had a touch of mystery to it. 

“He had been ill about 20 years with stomach trouble,” his obituary read, “and his death was rumored many times since the early 1950s.”

Note: Information and quotes from this story came from various wire-service reports, as well as: Time Magazine, The New Yorker, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, the New York Daily News.

(Photos: Getty Images)

ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57kHBtbnFibXxzfJFpZmlsX2eAcMDHnmSgqpWWwW6zwK2qm7FdpLNus86lnWg%3D