Flower of the Fairways: Marion Miley in Life and in Death
Miley in 1935
For the first episode of the Mother of Golf podcast, I interviewed author Beverly Bell about her book The Murder of Marion Miley (2020), the only (novelized) biography of Marion. The following is a transcript of the podcast, edited for clarity:
Hi and welcome to Mother of Golf, a media source created by and for women in golf. We cover women’s golf stories with articles, videos, and podcasts. You can check all of it out at www.motherofgolfmag.com. I’m your host, Amanda Corr.
It’s our first episode, so I’m going to go classic woman podcaster on you and talk about a bloody murder. It goes a little something like this. In 1941, Marion Miley was twenty-seven years old. She was known as a loving daughter and friend, an insanely talented amateur golfer, and the most photographed woman golfer in the world during her career, the reason being that she was an absolute knockout. Her vibe was a mix of masc and femme—she always had her hair cut short in a pixie or a bob, rocked tweed pantsuits and Oxford shoes, left her tanned and dimpled face bare, and flashed everybody the warmest smile, leading reporters to nickname her the “Flower of the Fairways.”
Her talent and beauty captured the attention of countless people, and by the end of her life, she was close with movie stars like Bing Crosby, political figures and socialites like Prince Edward and Wallis Simpson, and fellow women golf pros like Patty Berg, so her murder came as a shock to many. Her death is quite the story, but so is her life, so I’m going to tell you a bit about both, then include my conversation with Beverly Bell, a journalist who found Marion Miley’s scrapbooks in the basement of an old house and wrote a gripping, novelized account of what happened. And by the way I’m going to call her Marion so no one confuses her with the other Miley. So let’s start with the murder.
It was the middle of the night on September 28th, 1941 and Lexington, Kentucky was still and quiet until shots rang out. A few people thought they’d heard something but couldn’t be sure. Minutes later, nurses working at the tuberculosis clinic down the street from Lexington Country Club were startled by the sight at the door: Elsie Miley, the fifty-year-old manager of the club was on her knees, covered in blood. She’d just finished hosting a fundraiser dance and was supposed to be fast asleep in her apartment above the Lexington clubhouse, with the proceeds locked away in her safe. Instead, she was at the clinic with three bullets lodged in her abdomen. When asked what happened, all Elsie could muster was, “Help Marion.” They all knew who she was referring to.
The police arrived at the hospital soon after, and were redirected to the apartment. They followed the trail of blood Elsie had left when she crawled from her home to the clinic. They entered the clubhouse door and flipped the nearest light switch, but darkness remained—the power had been cut. Instead, they struck a match (the rookie cops had forgotten their flashlights). They climbed the stairs, inching forward, until they noticed a figure on the floor at the end of the hallway: Marion. She was lying in a pool of blood with her arm over her face, her mouth red. Her nightgown was torn. Bits of brain matter and skull were spattered across the floor. The wall was smeared with bloody handprints. Marion was still warm, but she wasn’t breathing. Detectives examined the crime scene, finding a few bullet casings and and it wasn’t long before her body was wrapped in a white sheet and taken to the morgue, where it was discovered that she’d been shot twice at point blank range—once through her left shoulder and once in the back of her head.
The questions of where Marion was and whether she could be helped were answered. The new questions were who did this and why?
Marion was, by all accounts, one of the nicest and most talented people to have graced the planet. Her father taught her to play golf when she was around twelve, and she was winning state titles by her late teens. Sure, she loved the rush of winning tournaments, representing the U.S. in the Curtis Cup three times, dressing up for tournament galas, meeting other famous people, practicing hard every day, and working out on her rowing machine with the U.S. Amateur in mind. But she also dreamed of studying medicine, once nerding out on everything she learned during her own appendectomy, and writing, filling her journal with short stories and publishing a few newspaper articles about sports. She loved riding horses. And betting on them too. She collected coins. She dabbled in sales working for Standard Oil, a job that only a tomboy like her could have handled at that point in history. She even tried her hand at crime, once refusing to plead guilty to speeding and spending a night in a Texas jail. She joked with her best friend Fritz about how the two had to stick together and embrace the fact that they weren’t the “marrying kind,” focusing more on learning new things and having fun than appealing to men. When she was asked about the idea of domesticity, all Marion had to say was that she didn’t like it and she wasn’t good at it. Yes girl.
The socks and shoes, I can’ttt :(
So again, who did this and why? A few suspects immediately came to light.
Number one: Marion’s father. The former head pro at Lexington, he’d left for a bigger, better-paying club in Cincinnati, leaving Elsie and Marion in Lexington and visiting every three weeks. Had he found a new woman in Ohio? A colleague admitted to police that Fred Miley was quite the ladies’ man, working out and giving lessons to women regularly. Was he trying to rid himself of baggage? Did he consider Elsie and Marion a financial drain, especially when he was just starting to make money again after the Depression? Or maybe he’d pissed off the partner of one of his golf students and was now paying the price.
Suspect number two: The paperboy who reported noticing an unfamiliar blue Buick outside the club the night of the murder. Was he making up what he’d seen to cover for himself? Or someone else?
Suspect number three: Skeeter Baxter, the greenskeeper at Lexington. He’d made an agreement with Elsie and Marion to look out for them while Fred was in Cincinnati. Elsie would flash the light inside her apartment a couple times before going to bed to signal to him that everything was okay. Did he betray the Mileys’ trust and take advantage of their vulnerability? Did he attack them trying to get at the proceeds from the dance? Did someone else do it and he was covering for them in order to score a cut of the bag?
Suspect number four: Marion’s group of local women friends, specifically Frances Laval. “Fritz,” as Marion called her, was one of the last people to see Marion alive. She’d hosted the group of friends at her house for cards that night, then claimed to have dropped Marion off at the club while the dance was still going on and declined to sleep over. Was she jealous of Marion’s talent, beauty, and fame? Had she professed her love for Marion and been rejected?
Suspect number five: A local convicted criminal named Thomas Penney. Police received tips from two different men that they’d been approached about helping rob an older lady living at Lexington Country Club.
And finally suspect number six: Robert Anderson, a local club owner who had reported his blue Buick stolen several days after it supposedly disappeared and was suffering, the cops would discover, from a bite taken out of his left thigh.
Marion taking on a tough lie while Helen Hicks observes
For two weeks, detectives interviewed suspects and re-examined the crime scene. Bing Crosby had put up an anonymous reward for information. But then a break came in the form of a preteen boy named Jimmie Hilen. He’d been riding around the club on his bicycle, asking for Skeeter, who’d been absent from work since the murder. Police asked him a few questions, eventually uncovering that Jimmie had been hanging out with Skeeter and a couple girls at the club sometime after twelve o’clock on the night of the murder. According to Jimmie, Skeeter had stopped to talk to two men in a blue Buick at two different points, shadily disappearing at others. Police soon approached Skeeter about what they’d heard and everything quickly came out: Penney had heard about the money from Baxter and recruited Anderson to assist. Penney was located and pulled over in the blue Buick, which contained one of the exact same bullet casings that were found at the scene. Penney and Anderson claimed that Baxter told them there was over ten thousand dollars in the safe, and that only one older woman lived there. When they broke into the apartment, Elsie screamed for Marion’s help. Marion jumped out of bed and attacked them with everything she had, biting Anderson in the leg and getting Penney in a chokehold, punching him in the head repeatedly until he turned his gun and shot her, once in the shoulder, incapacitating her, and once in the head, killing her instantly.
Over a thousand people attended Marion’s funeral. Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. Patty Berg, Helen Dettweiler, Helen Hicks, and other members of her Curtis Cup teams. In an effort help Fred Miley cope, Fritz held onto Marion’s clubs, scrapbooks, diary, clothes, and watch, its leather band stained from the sweat that collected on her wrist as she played golf in the Kentucky heat. They remained in Fritz’s basement until Beverly Bell uncovered them in the 2010’s.
The trials of the three men began the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, so the story was buried in the back pages of the papers and all but forgotten. But they were eventually found guilty, all three executed on February 26, 1943.
Marion Miley shouldn’t have died like this. She should have woken up the next morning, she should have won the U.S. Amateur, she should have joined her friends in starting the LPGA, she should have been honored with an induction into every golf hall of fame, and she should have died an old woman with a million stories. But life, the world, and time, doesn’t operate in accordance with what should happen.
Miley and Lexington mayor Charles Thompson in 1935
But now that you know the story, I want to share my conversation with Beverly Bell, the journalist who wrote The Murder of Marion Miley (2020)—the only book that’s been published on Marion. You can easily purchase Beverly’s book online so do that immediately. It reads like an old noir film script. I pictured Humphrey Bogart as Fred Miley, Jimmy Stewart as Detective Hoskins, Tony Curtis as Penney, Robert Mitchum as Anderson, and James Dean as Skeeter Baxter. And in the scenes where Marion’s photo is shown framed on dressers and printed in newspapers: Ingrid Bergman. A little hair dye on the actor and the two could’ve been sisters.
How did you first hear about this story?
It was one of those stories that got lost in history. I first learned about it many years ago. I had taken up golf five years earlier and was a local freelance writer. My father-in-law, who had grown up in Lexington and was about ten years younger than Marion, told me this story about this great golfer who had lived in Lexington and was nationally known and, when she was twenty-seven years old, was murdered at her country club, and pretty soon I was more hooked than he was. It captivated the journalist, the historian, and the golfer in me.
Why did women golfers like Marion gain so much fame in the 1930’s? What was the state of women's golf at the time?
It was a really interesting period in 1930. Bobby Jones had decided to retire from amateur golf, and there was this dropoff in men’s golf. At the same time, you had great female athletes like Glenna Collett Vare coming up. You also had something else that was really important to the popularity of the women’s game: the Depression. There were many people who were struggling financially and probably looking for affordable fun and the women took advantage of that, creating this wonderful, compelling environment. You see these photographs of so many people in the galleries, circling greens. So it was a confluence of factors creating this magic and Marion was right in the middle of it.
You do see sexism in the description of the athletes of that day. There is an uncanny focus on Marion physically. But she was a strong person. She probably stood about 5’7,” 5’8.” You can see these huge fluctuations in her weight when she was in the middle of some fierce tournament or something that really meant a lot to her. It did make me concerned for her sometimes—I don’t know if it was a case of nerves or the amount of exertion or maybe her appetite was off when she was in a competitive environment. But she carried herself really well. Her smile was unbelievable. She had so much personal charisma.
Describe finding Marion's scrapbooks in Frances Laval's basement. How did you know they existed and where to find them? What exactly was in them? What made you realize Marion assembled them herself? Were you initially thinking Frances had put them together?
Yes, they were in a home that had been owned by Frances “Fritz” Laval. She had sold the home and passed away, and these scrapbooks were in the basement of this house. Right when I started poking around after hearing the story from my father-in-law, I connected with this older woman and she said to me, “I have some things related to Marion. They’re in the basement of a house I bought and I don’t really know what they are, they were left here, and I just left them alone, but they definitely have something to do with Marion.” So I went over and she takes me into the basement (which, by the way, was not scary at all—it was very well lit), and she just points over and I’m just looking through, and there's an old set of golf clubs, there’s a watch, and there are these scrapbooks of newspaper clippings and photos. I open them up and they’re all about Marion and they follow a timeline.
At that point, I wasn’t necessarily thinking it was Marion who put them together. I’m thinking it’s probably her mom. The woman asked me what she should do with them and I was like, “SAVE THEM.” I told her to contact the country club and they would probably keep it safe.
I eventually realized it was Marion who put together the scrapbooks because I got to read her diary, and she talks about putting her scrapbooks together and how her back is killing her from being hunched over. And at the end she says, “I did a good job,” and I was like, “Yes, you did!” She also talks about her daily activities like practicing and playing golf with her dad.
Marion's relationship with her dad was special. I've often found that the relationship between women and their fathers is strengthened by the father teaching the daughter a sport, although I've also seen the opposite. How do you think coaching Marion might have prepared her father Fred to become something of an advocate for women and women’s sports?
Fred Miley was Marion’s biggest advocate. There is no doubt in my mind that he would’ve supported whatever she wanted to do. He might not have supported the idea of her becoming a professional golfer, just because the opportunities were so limited. It wasn’t anything like it is today, with lots of tournaments and sponsorships. It was that your sole job would be selling a brand of equipment and teaching.
I do feel confident that Fred was unfaithful to Elsie, but he was a really good father. He would’ve wanted her to have every opportunity. Everything was invested in her. And I’m sure, as far as he was concerned, no son could’ve been any better when it came to the game of golf. I give him lot of credit—most of the indicators show that he wasn’t forcing the game on her, and that, to me, shows restraint and good parenting. Because it can go either way—it could be a positive thing, or it can be overbearing and maybe even kill the love of a sport for a kid with promise. Marion always said she gave 100% of the credit to her dad. She was very generous with her open appreciation for what he had done. He was her favorite person to play golf with.
Do you think Marion knew Fred was cheating on Elsie?
I think some of that would’ve depended on Elsie—did she just accept his philandering as part of his job or his lifestyle? There was certainly a tolerance for things like that at that time. Maybe we wouldn’t see that same tolerance now in terms of a woman’s dependence on a man. Although that’s not 100% true for Elsie, even [being a club manager]. But I think it would depend a lot on Elsie’s reaction. But Marion was smart. I just can’t help but think that she would’ve had some idea.
There were a couple diary entries where she was thinking about the idea of marrying someone, only to say, “No, we’d kill each other.“ So you can see how she’s working these things out. And I think about how she’s a woman coming of age in the 1930’s, and what she was doing out there compared to a regular woman. She had so many adventures and opportunities, playing golf with Bing Crosby… It would be crazy now for a woman athlete to do those things, but eighty or ninety years ago, when women’s roles were much more restricted, and you stayed within these confines…
Do you think Marion would have become one of the founders of the LPGA had she not been killed?
She was certainly in that circle. She writes in her diary that she talked to Patty Berg about being a professional. So you know those conversations were taking place. Patty was a good friend of Marion’s. I think Patty did have sway over Marion so I’m always thinking that she could’ve convinced Marion to do it. Marion’s big stumbling block was that she hadn’t won the Amateur. That was a goal of hers, so my gut says she would have tried again. But whatever she decided to do, even if she chucked it all and said, “I’m going to focus on med school,” there’s no doubt in my mind that she would’ve done a great job. She was one of those people who was so gifted. That was her conflict: what to give the priority to. But she beat six of the thirteen LPGA founders, and that speaks to her caliber of play. The fact that Patty and Marion were close would’ve carried a lot of weight in influencing her direction.
I’m sure you’ve been left with unanswered questions after researching this story. What are you still desperate to know about Marion’s life and/or death?
I think the whole idea of her going professional or not. Because I’m focused on the game. It’s been suggested that Marion was gay, and that to me was never the most compelling aspect of the story. I acknowledge it, but the thing that attracted me was that she was a golfer. But if she and her friends were gay, it was a lot to manage, living in that time, trying to be true to yourself when you can’t because of whatever society is telling you. It was a brutal environment to live in. There were laws that you could not do that. You could die. There was such animosity, and we still see that. All the other questions have been answered in terms of who committed the crime and how it came about. Fortunately we don’t have to deal with that—eighty, ninety years later, thinking, “Who did this?” That’d be a nightmare.
Why is Marion’s story important? Who are you hoping will read this book?
This story is important because we’re human beings and we respond to compelling stories about other human beings—that's the first thing I think of. The second thing is that women athletes are still looking for role models. This is a person who was an extraordinary athlete and she dealt with injuries, defeats, and disappointments, but she kept getting up and competing. But really the most important part about all this is that these women advanced the women’s game. They said, “This has value. This can be fun. Watch us. We’re competitive.” These young women were like, “I don’t care what era I’m born in. I have this talent. I can play and I can play well. I can get spectators.” And that’s what we want—we want the game advanced. There are so many barriers to playing this game. For women, men, kids. It bothers me. We have made progress. But I’m like, “Whatever we can do, and let’s look at these women ‘cause they had something figured out.”
The 1937 American Curtis Cup team arriving in Southampton, England. Left to right: Leona Cheney, Charlotte Glutting, Opal Hill, Patty Berg, Marion Miley, Aniela Goldthwaite, Maureen Orcutt, Glenna Collett
I want to thank Beverly Bell for sharing her thoughts and experiences with us. The women’s golf community is indebted to her for restoring Marion Miley’s memory and legacy. I’m happy for her that she got to discover those scrapbooks but also super jelly! I think everyone, or at least every history nerd, dreams of finding their own holy grail like that. But that’s our first episode. I hope you enjoyed. Rest in peace, Marion. Thank you, Beverly. And until next time, this is Ballflower.
First photo: Fair Use/Palm Beach Post; Second photo: Copyright Lexington Herald-Leader/Kentucky Photo Archive; Third Photo: Howard Schickler Collection/USGA Museum; Fourth photo: Lafayette Studios/University of Kentucky Special Collections; Fifth photo: Copyright Unknown/Courtesy of USGA Archives