The Mysterious Montague: A True Tale of Hollywood, Golf, and Armed Robbery,Books,Free Shipping,0385520336,

	The Mysterious Montague: A True Tale of Hollywood, Golf, and Armed Robbery by Leigh Montville
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Product Details Binding Hardcover Dewey Decimal Number 796.352092 EAN 9780385520331 ISBN 0385520336 Manufacturer Doubleday Number Of Items 1 Number Of Pages 320 Publication Date May 06, 2008 Publisher Doubleday Release Date May 06, 2008 Availability Usually ships in 24 hours Product Description 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.” From the glamour of 1930s Hollywood, to John Montague’s extraordinary skill and triumphs on the golf course, to the shady world of Adirondack rumrunners and bootleggers, three-time New York Times bestselling author Leigh Montville captures a man and an era with extraordinary color, verve, and energy. The Mysterious Montague is Leigh Montville’s most entertaining achievement to date. When John Montague died alone on May 25, 1972, age 69, in a fleabag hotel in Studio City, Calif., his body went unclaimed for a week. Hardly a fitting end for a man who once rubbed shoulders with Bing Crosby, Richard Arlen, Oliver Hardy and the other Hollywood swells who golfed, drank and caroused at the Lakeside Country Club in L.A. In the capable hands of bestselling sportswriter Montville (Ted Williams), Montague's is a quintessentially American story of a man from a hardscrabble background who found himself in the glamorous, easy-money world of Hollywood. But Montague had a past that caught up to him. Having fled a charge of armed robbery in upstate New York, Montague was brought back in 1937 to stand trial, and though he got off, his life quickly unraveled. Hyped by the great sportswriter Grantland Rice (who called him a golfer who would be a wrecking whirlwind in any amateur championship and on a par with any pro) and other newshounds, Montague struggled through a series of increasingly embarrassing attempts to go legit on the golf circuit. An entertaining read for the golf lit completist, this doesn't rise to the level of compulsion for the average reader. (May) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. EARLY RAVES FOR THE MYSTERIOUS MONTAGUE “Critics who think bestselling sports biographer Montville’s popularity rests on that of his gargantuan subjects, from Ted Williams to Dale Earnhardt, had better think again: He hits the pin in one with this page-turning account of a long-forgotten golfer….Explaining why reporters loved to write about Montague, the author declares, ‘Intrigue is a better seller than great golf any day.’ Here, he gives readers both.” —Kirkus, starred review PREVIOUS PRAISE FOR NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR LEIGH MONTVILLE TED WILLIAMS “Exceptional. Montville on Ted Williams is can’t-miss, one of America’s best sportswriters weighing in on one of the last century’s most intriguing figures. A great read.” —Chicago Tribune “In Ted Williams, Leigh Montville reaches a threshold even the mighty Williams could never touch: perfection. The beauty of Montville’s work is that it is not a baseball book, per se, so much as the life and times of an oft perplexing, always fascinating man.” —Newsday “Montville is refreshingly nonjudgmental about his superstar subject. First-rate biography.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review “Crisp analogies and astute observations, combined with a fluid writing style, are Leigh Montville’s strengths in this definitive biography of the Splendid Splinter.” —Tampa Tribune THE BIG BAM “[A] vivid, intimate account. Montville’s unique voice … makes old yarns seem new.” —Sports Illustrated “Montville is a wonderful storyteller and Ruth’s story, from Baltimore street urchin to international celebrity is indisputably amazing … a fascinating tale, alternately happy and sad, and always artfully written.” —Chicago Tribune “The best Ruth biography to date … [Montville’s] adroit organization of the historical material—enhanced by newly studied archival material and oral history transcripts, together with his flair for marshalling undisputed facts that are intertwined with plausible speculations—has produced an engaging, entertaining, and eminently readable biography.” —Library Journal, starred review 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.” From the glamour of 1930s Hollywood, to John Montague’s extraordinary skill and triumphs on the golf course, to the shady world of Adirondack rumrunners and bootleggers, three-time New York Times bestselling author Leigh Montville captures a man and an era with extraordinary color, verve, and energy. The Mysterious Montague is Leigh Montville’s most entertaining achievement to date. LEIGH MONTVILLE is a former columnist at the Boston Globe and former senior writer at Sports Illustrated. He is the author of five books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth, Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero, and At the Altar of Speed: The Fast Life and Tragic Death of Dale Earnhardt. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts. CHAPTER ONE THE ADIRONDACKS 1930 The restaurant sat at the bottom of a large bowl of Adirondack darkness. The surrounding mountains, beautiful during the day, forest green and forest wild, still made their presence known during the night. They shut out all horizons: zipped up, locked down, tucked in the well-scattered population between the New York towns of Au Sable Forks and Jay, under a black and tight blanket. The lights from the restaurant were pinpricks of isolated civilization. The porch light was still lit. The inside lights were still lit. Proprietor Kin Hana and his wife, Elizabeth, and an employee, Paul Poland, finished the work of Monday night in the first hours of Tuesday, August 5, 1930. The last three customers were gone, but money had to be counted, tables cleared, floors washed, stock replenished. A last cup of coffee had to be drunk, a joke told. The restaurant, simply known as Hana's to the local residents, was a roadhouse on Route 9, the two-lane asphalt highway that meandered down from the Canadian border, fifty-eight miles to the north, then to Glens Falls and Saratoga Springs, then Albany and all the way to New York City, Broadway, 275 miles to the south. Adventure had come to the road in 1920, especially in the dark, with the advent of the Eighteenth Amendment, Prohibition, and an atmosphere of car chases and gunplay as smugglers tried to bring distilled spirits from one country to the thirsty citizens of another. The restaurant was a modest part of the excitement. A man could buy a drink at Hana's, could also buy a bottle to take home, but this was not unusual. A man could buy a drink at most of the roadhouses along Route 9. The area was awash in alcohol. Farmers rented out their barns and hay wagons to smugglers. Mechanics in Saranac Lake fitted out automobiles for the chase, engines cranked to racetrack speed, false gas tanks and false bottoms installed to convey every possible ounce of hard liquor and beer. Freight trains contained hidden cargo. Boats on Lake Champlain carried more contraband than sightseers. The dance was a decade old, a formalized routine of winks and nods, hide-and-seek, punctuated by occasional murders and publicized court trials. Illegality was the norm. 'I believe that 90 percent of the people in the county were opposed to Prohibition,' one Au Sable Forks resident later said. 'Not one farmer in twenty-five would not shield, help, or hide a rumrunner. The usual compensation for their help was a bottle of liquor, more highly prized than money.' Kin Hana was Japanese, a relentless bundle of hustle and bustle, always on the job, meticulous about cleanliness. He considered himself a restaurant owner, not a bootlegger. The liquor business was something that had developed by circumstance. He provided good food at modest prices, typical American fare, even set up a roadside stand in the summers to sell hamburgers and hot dogs to travelers who didn't have time for a full meal. His establishment was run with much attention to detail. All kitchen employees had to wear hairnets. He inspected the waitresses every day from behind his rimless glasses, made the women hold out their hands, checked to see if their fingernails were clean, then looked down to see if their shoes were shined. His children laughed at this fussiness, and maybe the waitresses did, too, but never in front of him. He was not a man surrounded by casual chatter and laughter. His given last name was Hanada, shortened long ago for easier English consumption. His version of the immigrant success story had started when he was a teenager, a cabin boy on a Japanese ocean liner. Left behind in an Anchorage, Alaska, hospital when he fell ill, he decided to move to the United States. He learned the rudiments of a new language, and then embarked on a new life that eventually led to a position as a houseboy for a wealthy family in Au Sable Forks. Impressed by his good work, the wealthy family sent him to cooking school in Boston. Cooking school led to the restaurant business. He had edged into his late forties now, a familiar figure in the community, and was long married to Elizabeth, a local girl, a Cobb, quiet and religious. They had five children ranging from nineteen to five, three girls and two boys. The color of Hana's skin sometimes drew comments, obvious and stupid, such as 'Ching-Ching Chinaman, sitting on a fence'--there almost certainly was no other Asian entrepreneur, maybe no other Asian resident, in all of the Adirondacks--but he always seemed too busy to be bothered by an overheard insult. The restaurant on Route 9 constituted his entire empire. It was a long, one-story white building that was not only his business, but also his home. The dining room of the restaurant was the largest rentable room in Au Sable Forks, sometimes used for civic functions. The much smaller illegal barroom was tucked next to the kitchen. A door not far from the restrooms at the other end of the dining room opened into the half of the building that was a four-bedroom apartment. Four of his five children were sleeping in that apartment at this exact moment, two girls in one bedroom, the youngest boy in another. The third daughter, sick with a cold, was asleep on a couch in the living room. Hana's sixty-seven-year-old divorced father-in-law, Matt Cobb, slept in a third bedroom. Hana himself was in the back of the restaurant, locking the storeroom for the night. Elizabeth and Paul Poland were finishing their work in the well-lit dining room. The chores were almost done, the last dot of activity soon to be extinguished into the darkness. This was when the three men entered the restaurant. Elizabeth was the first to see them. She hadn't heard any car; the sound of the front door was what made her turn. The men, a curious sight, were standing by the cigar case. Elizabeth registered at first glance that each of them was wearing a soft felt hat and each had a white cloth mask covering his face. Far from alarmed, she almost laughed. She thought these were friends from the nearby town of Keene playing a late-night joke. She was going to say something funny, had it half composed in her head, but then she saw the three revolvers. They were pointed at her. * The night changed with one blink of recognition. The masked visitors were businesslike, gruff, and efficient. The way they held their revolvers, the sense of authority contained in each slight move, said that these were not kids, half drunk and impulsive, picking a random site for random mischief. These were men who knew exactly where they were and what they were doing. They had a plan. 'Be quiet,' one of them said. Neither Elizabeth nor Paul Poland moved. Neither spoke. 'Where's the little fellow?' the same man then said. The question showed the extent of the men's knowledge. The little fellow? Kin? Before Elizabeth could answer--before she could make up something or tell the truth, what to do?--her husband came out of the stockroom. A revolver immediately was turned toward him. The demand now was for everyone to lie facedown on the floor. Elizabeth and Paul Poland complied. Kin Hana resisted, reacted to this intrusion; he asked in his fractured second language what was happening. One of the men quickly threw him onto his back. Kin Hana resisted no more. While two revolvers were trained on the people on the floor, the third gunman went through the door to the apartment at the end of the dining room. He walked directly into Kin and Elizabeth's bedroom, as sure as if he had lived in the house all of his life, and yanked a sheet from the bed. He ripped the sheet into strips that were soon used to gag the mouths and bind the hands and feet of the three captives. The gunmen now turned out all the lights, even the light on the porch, so no strangers would stumble onto the scene. Not even the summer moths would be attracted to any commotion, the dark business conducted under the focus of flashlights the gunmen had brought with them. First, the men emptied Kin Hana's pockets, taking whatever cash money he had, disregarding any checks. Second, they removed his gag and asked for the combination of the safe in the master bedroom of the apartment. (They knew about the safe?) He said he didn't know the combination; that his wife always took care of the money. The gunmen turned their attention to Elizabeth. They undid her bindings and walked her back to the apartment and told her to get to work. Stalling for time, chewing on quiet hope that help somehow would arrive, she balked. She said she wasn't sure of the numbers. One of the gunmen said if she didn't remember, he would dynamite the safe and the building and her children would be in peril. Elizabeth said she remembered now. All of the activity had awakened the oldest daughter, Naomi, who saw her mother and the masked men pass her bedroom door. She started screaming. One of the gunmen quickly grabbed her, and his accomplices soon rounded up the other children and yanked another sheet off one of their beds. The children were bound and stretched on the floor. The gunmen decided to take care of all possibilities. 'Where's the old man?' one of them asked. He was directed--why lie?--to the final bedroom, where he was greeted with a surprise. The grandfather, Matt Cobb, also had been awakened by the noise. He was known in the area as powerful and agile for his age, a fighter, and he was out of his bed, waiting. When the gunman entered the room, Cobb jumped him. The old man pulled down the gunman's mask and started flailing. When the gunman landed on his back and feared he was losing, he called for help. 'Verne!' he shouted. A second gunman joined the fray. Cobb continued to resist, but now was overwhelmed. A hard crack on his head with the butt of the new arrival's revolver ended the struggle. The gunmen ripped up another sheet, tied up the semiconscious grandfather... Customers who bought this item also bought The Match: The Day the Game of Golf Changed Forever The Downhill Lie: A Hacker's Return to a Ruinous Sport Arnie & Jack: Palmer, Nicklaus, and Golf's Greatest Rivalry The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL The Franchise Babe: A Novel Customer Reviews for: The Mysterious Montague: A True Tale of Hollywood, Golf, and Armed Robbery Rating - Links Braggart Laid Low LaVerne Moore was one of the more colorful figures in the world of golf in the 1930's and Leigh Montville tells his tale in all its boisterous glory in The Mysterious Montague, A True Tale of Hollywood, Golf, and Armed Robbery. John Montague, as Moore was better known, was a trick shot artist who could chip a ball into a highball glass or under the sash of a partially-opened window across the room. He reputedly knocked a bird off a power line from 170 yards and consistently drove the ball over 300 yards with ... Read More Rating - "The Mysterious Montague" This is the fascinating, intriguing tale of a man who changed identities to start a new life in Hollywood and leave a criminal past behind - or so he hoped. It's one of those "only in America" stories - featuring golf and Hollywood celebrities such as Bing Crosby - with a surprise ending that actually seems fitting although justice isn't done, strictly speaaking. Rating - Mason's Mom This is a good read, with an entertaining view of a time gone by that we have only read and heard about. John Montague is larger than life but stuck with the human flaws that the rest of us have. You don't have to know golf to enjoy this as Montville makes it a story for every one. Rating - Fascinating!! The book brings to life of an man, whom I was unfamiliar with, and brought to live America before World War II. The story is a fascinating journey that causes the reader to wonder what is true and what is legend. The stories will amaze you and the people who surrounds the man are legendary. Before there was Tin Cup.. there was Montague. (after reading, I realize that Tin Cup was a rip off of this great story!) Rating - The Mysterious Montague - An Enjoyable Book** The title of Leigh Montville's new book tells you a lot about the story without ever having to read a page. John Montague played golf and schmoozed with some of the most famous of the 1930's Hollywood celebrities. However, something in his personal life would eventually turn his world totally around. This book will probably not win any literary awards, but it is entertaining, amusing, and at times quite unbelievable. Golfers will love it, non-golfers will enjoy it. See all books by author Leigh Montville

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