The Mysterious MontagueBy LEIGH MONTVILLE

Reviewed by Barbara Spindel

A shady character's moment in the Southern California sun.

 The book itself, in plot, pacing, and setting, unspools like an old movie. 

Leigh Montville writes nonfiction, but many of the men who pop up in his latest book, The Mysterious Montague: A True Tale of Hollywood, Golf, and Armed Robbery, have names that sound as if they were tapped out on the typewriter of a 1930s screenwriter: Scorpy Doyle, Side Hill Henry, Bozo Corbett, Mush Mulane, and Bushel Gooley, to name a few.

This is fitting, as the book itself, in plot, pacing, and setting, unspools like an old movie. Montville, who has written bestselling biographies of such sports legends as Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, and Dale Earnhardt, here tells the story of John Montague, an enigmatic man who arrived in Hollywood in the early ’30s and quickly achieved his own curious celebrity. As a hanger-on at the exclusive Lakeside Golf Club, he became known for his killer golf game, his showy tricks on the green (he was said to have beaten Bing Crosby at a round of golf using a baseball bat, a shovel, and a rake in lieu of clubs), and his prodigious strength (he could lift the not-insubstantial comedian Oliver Hardy, one-handed, and plop him on the country club bar).