MARION MILEY, THE US GOLF STAR MURDERED IN HER PRIME

The Orange Blossom Tour tees off in Florida next week. Here's a fascinating account of the pre-war days when it was a major circuit at a time when women's amateur golf was booming in America. This is also the tragic story of Marion Miley who became a star on the Orange Blossom Tour before being murdered at the age of 27. 

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FROM THE USGA WEBSITE ARCHIVES
By Rhonda Glenn
On Sept. 28, 1941, just days after playing in the US Women’s Amateur, Marion Miley was murdered in an apartment at Lexington Country Club, Kentucky. Miley was 27 years old. Her mother, Elsa Miley, 50, was mortally wounded.
In an era of great amateurs, Miley, pictured right from USGA archives, had very nearly established an era of her own when her life was snuffed out in the most horrific crime in the history of the game.
Miley’s death made headlines from the United States to Canada and Australia. A lithesome brunette with a healthy competitive spark, she had won key matches in Great Britain, Canada and Mexico as well as in the United States. Newspapers pursued the story until three men were arrested for the crime, tried and convicted. In 1943, they were executed. To some, however, this coldest of cold cases remains unsolved and one of the convicted killers was wrongly sent to the electric chair.
Faint memories survive. For those who know her name, Miley’s story is fascinating, reviling and, finally, haunting. They try to keep it alive.
One is Mark Stuhlreyer, former president of Lexington Country Club. Stuhlreyer found Miley’s memorabilia in a clubhouse closet just a few feet from where she was killed. He has researched Miley’s career and, like a few others, can’t quite let her go.
“It’s like falling in love with a ghost,” Stuhlreyer said.
Miley was born in Philadelphia in 1914, the daughter of Fred and Elsie Miley. Fred was a golf professional who was proficient at every task. An expert clubmaker and teacher, he even dabbled in course design. He was a good player but couldn’t crack the pro ranks. In his only U.S. Open appearance, in 1918, he missed the cut by eight strokes. But Fred cashed in on high-stakes matches and as he moved from one club job to another, gambling provided a nice side income.
In the early 1920s he joined the migration of professionals to Florida to take advantage of the land boom and the new golf courses that were being built. Marion grew up in Fort Pierce, a small town on the Atlantic coast, a few miles north of Palm Beach.
Marion turned to golf when she was 12. Three years later, Fred accepted the head pro job at Lexington Country Club, and when Marion finished high school the following year, his wife and daughter joined him. Elsie became the club’s manager. Under Fred’s tutelage, Marion’s talent took root during summers at the Lexington club. In the fall, she was off to Florida State Women's College in Tallahassee.
She enrolled as a physical education major with a minor in music, but soon changed her plans. Golf had won out. She won the 1931 Kentucky Women’s Amateur and when she repeated the following year, she dropped out of college at the end of her sophomore year to concentrate on her game.
In 1933 the young woman from Kentucky qualified for the U.S. Women’s Amateur for the first time. Although she lost in the first round, her quest had begun.
With no professional tour in the 1930s, golf offered no real future for women. The Great Depression was under way and despite the bleak economic times, women’s amateur golf boomed in the States. Stories and photos of the players were splashed across the newspapers and spectators temporarily forgot their empty bank accounts, turning out by the thousands to watch the women play.
A US player could wrap up a slot on the Curtis Cup team in the big spring and summer events: the North and South, Trans-Mississippi, Western Derby (a stroke-play event), Western Amateur and the U.S. Women’s Amateur, while spending the winter on a pleasant little circuit of nearly a dozen tournaments in Florida - the Orange Blossom Tour. In January 1934, Marion drove south.
The Florida tour drew the top female amateurs of the day. It was founded in 1918 with the Palm Beach Championship and by 1934 the Orange Blossom Tour included nearly a dozen events.
Marion made her debut with some three dozen crack players pursuing their dreams in Miami, Palm Beach, Ormond, St. Augustine, Orlando, Clearwater, Lakeland and Punta Gorda. The competition was great, the weather warm enough to work on their games and, if they won, the national attention might earn them a berth on the Curtis Cup team.
It was a closely-knit group of great players and pretenders driving from one event to the next. When the Florida circuit was over and spring was just around the corner, they headed north to the Augusta Invitational, forerunner of The Titleholders.

Maureen Orcutt was a key to their Press coverage. “The Duchess” was not only a threat in every tournament but also a reporter for The New York Times, where her dispatches about the amateur events added a light touch to The Times’ sports pages and were picked up by other newspapers.
The female amateur golfers became stars. Almost equally talented, they were a cross-section of American life. One tournament might be won by a society woman, such as the stately Grace Amory, or a business executive's daughter such as dynamic little Patty Berg or the graceful Betty Jameson. The next might be won by the gifted Babe Didrikson, daughter of a carpenter and an Olympic Games-class athlete, or even Marion Miley, daughter of a club professional. They all made good copy.
Glenna Collett Vare was in a class by herself. A six-time U.S. Women’s Amateur champion, the polished Vare was fiercely competitive. Then there was Jean Bauer, as beautiful as a fashion model, and the other cast members: Betty Hicks, Charlotte Glutting, Kathryn Hemphill, Dot Kirby and Peggy Chandler.
They were feted at the finest clubs, where they laughed, danced and drank a little among the rich. Marion Miley had grown up in country clubs and she moved in these grand circles with graceful ease. It wasn’t all roses.
Some players had troubled climbs to the top. Babe Didrikson was a heroine of the 1932 Olympics, yet when she defeated Peggy Chandler in the 1935 Women’s Texas Amateur final, Babe’s rough manners were treated with disdain. Chandler, a snooty woman whose social position gave her a sense of entitlement, said before their final match, “We can’t let any truck driver’s daughter win our championship.”
But sports can be a great equaliser and the Orange Blossom circuit gave all of the women a chance to shine. So they packed their suitcases with dinner dresses as well as golf togs, joined forces to rent cottages for the winter, stayed in members’ homes or booked rooms in the fabulous hotels at rock-bottom rates.
Storming Florida like debutantes on winter break, they refreshed the state’s aging population and their exploits were closely followed by the Press.
The 1934 Florida circuit was where Miley first attracted national attention. She endured a grueling final against Jean Bauer in the Riviera Championship in Miami. Their match went 36 holes, then 17 extra holes, and Marion won on the 53rd hole. She played well the rest of the winter and in April beat Jean Bauer again in the Augusta Invitational final.
Miley’s reward was a coveted berth on the 1934 USA Curtis Cup team, although she was a last-minute replacement for Helen Hicks, who had turned professional. Marion was never called on by her team captain, Glenna Vare, to hit a shot for her country in that match but it was Miley's debut in the big time and she was a vivid presence on the sidelines at the Chevy Chase Club, Maryland.
With Marion watching from the gallery, the USA team handily beat Great Britain and Ireland, 6½ to 2½ (Editor's note: Those were the days of two-day Curtis Cup matches with three 36-hole foursomes ties on Day 1 and six 36-hole singles on Day 2).
Miley’s 1935 season was even better. Entertainers Bing Crosby, Joan Bennett and W.C. Fields went to the Baja Peninsula and watched her win the Mexican Women’s Open. Crosby was a dedicated golfer and when he met Miley, he promised to call her for a game. This was heady stuff, but her breezy self-assurance and impressive game would woo fans throughout her life.
She continued her success in 1935 by winning three straight Florida tournaments. That summer she notched her first titles of national importance, winning the Western Derby and the Women’s Western Amateur. In June, Miley won the Women’s Trans-Mississippi, overpowering the 17-year-old Berg, 9 and 7. The Associated Press tagged Miley’s day as “…one of the finest performances in a women’s golf tournament.”
But Miley couldn’t crack the higher tiers of the U.S. Women’s Amateur. For the second year in a row, she lost to Charlotte Glutting, this time in the quarter-finals. Her best chances at the national title were in the 1936 Women’s Amateur at Canoe Brook in Summit, New Jersey, and in the 1938 Women’s Amateur at Westmoreland in Wilmette, Illinois.

In 1936, the British champion, vivacious 19-year-old Pamela Barton from England, quashed Miley’s hopes in the US semi-finals, 3 and 1, then defeated “The Duchess” in the  final. Neither Barton, who won the British women's amateur title again in 1939,  nor Miley, in a great irony, would live to the age of 30. A member of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force in World War II, Barton, pictured right from USGA archives, was only 26 when she died in a plane crash on the runway in bad weather conditions at RAF Detling near Maidstone in Kent in 1943.
In 1938, Berg simply overpowered the US Women’s Amateur field. Rowdy fans spurred Patty to hole yards of long putts to edge out Marion by two holes in a dramatic semi-final. It was the closest Marion would come to the national championship.
Miley almost assured herself of a spot on the United States Curtis Cup team for the 1936 match at Gleneagles by winning twice on the 1936 Orange Blossom Tour in Florida.
While the team was in New York waiting to sail to Scotland, tabloid photographers fell in love with Miley, 22, and jubilant Patty Berg, 18, the team’s youngest members.
But at Gleneagles, US team captain Glenna Vare kept Miley out of the line-up – as she had done in 1936 - and was blasted by the British press, who had tabloid photographers trailing the young American and wanted to see her play. The USA eked out a tie, 4½ to 4½, holding on to the cup they had won two years before.
Marion played in an exhibition with Berg and famed Englishwomen Joyce Wethered and Enid Wilson, and then prepared for the Ladies British Open Amateur. No American had ever won, but Miley came close.
“At the end of a wild, windy day which saw the American menace scattered all over Southport’s sandhills, only Marion Miley, tall daughter of a Kentucky professional, remained to combat seven Englishwomen for a trophy which has never crossed the ocean,” said a story in the British Press.
Marion won that quarter-final encounter against Elsie Corlett, but lost her semi-final to Bridget Newell, 4 and 3.
When Miley made the 1938 Curtis Cup team, she finally got a chance to play. Berg was ill, unable to make the trip and Marion was the centre of attention at the Essex County Club in Massachusetts. Paired with her friend Kathryn Hemphill in foursomes, they halved with Phyllis Wade and Mrs. J.B. Walker. In the singles, Marion squeaked past Elsie Corlett, her rival from the 1936 British Amateur, to win, 2 and 1.
The final match came down to the battle between Charlotte Glutting and Great Britain and Ireland’s Nan Baird. Glutting was two holes down with three to play and players from both teams stormed out of the clubhouse to follow. Glutting won by one hole, and the USA escaped with a 5½ to 3½ victory. It was the last Curtis Cup match before the war.

+THE CONCLUDING PART OF THIS ARTICLE BY USGA STAFF WRITER RHONDA GLENN OF THE USGA WILL BE PUBLISHED ON THIS WEBSITE TOMORROW.