Gay Bashing, 1941 Style

Marion Miley in 1935

In 1941, how does the largest-circulation newspaper in the United States tell its millions of readers that a murder victim was gay without actually saying it?

When amateur golf star Marion Miley was shot dead by robbers at the Lexington Country Club in Kentucky, the New York Daily News began a sidebar article (with the headline Friends Praise Slain Golfer) this way:

Marion Miley was “a very peculiar girl,” according to those who disapproved of her fondness for members of her own sex.

But to her friends, she was tops – a grand competitor, a genial companion.

(Click here to find out how the Daily News handled another case in 1936.)

The story went on to say the 27-year-old traveled with a group of women golfers “who favored mannish attire. She wore tailored tweeds, short hair and Oxford brogues.” It said her mother, Elsie Miley, chaperoned her on the amateur golf tour because of Marion’s “fondness” for women.

Marion was nicknamed “Flower of the Fairways,” a tall, pretty brunette with an engaging smile who was once called the most photographed golfer in the world. She had won almost every major golf tournament in the United States except one: The U.S. Women’s Amateur.

The Daily News story quoted an anonymous source who said Marion “was never seen at club dances.”

Indeed, the Lexington Country Club hosted a dance September 27, the night of Marion’s murder, and she did not attend. She played cards at a friend’s house instead, returning around midnight to the apartment she shared with her mother on the second floor of the country club.

Elsie Miley was the club’s manager and kept the dance proceeds in her room in the apartment. The robbers had been tipped off that the dance could bring in $10,000. At around 2 a.m. they broke into the club, cut its power, and climbed the stairs to the apartment.

Marion rushed into the hall when she heard them break through the apartment door. She fought with one of the robbers, who shot her in the shoulder. She fell to the floor and bit him hard on the leg. That’s when he fired a bullet into her head, killing her.

Elsie Miley was shot three times in the abdomen. After the robbers left – with $140 – she walked and crawled 200 yards to a sanitarium across Paris Pike from the country club and rang the bell before collapsing. She died three days later.

Three men were convicted of the murders in December – shortly after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor – and they went to the electric chair in February 1943.

In a novelized account of the case, The Murder of Marion Miley, author Beverly Bell implies that Marion and a close friend, Frances Laval, were lesbian. In interviews, Bell has said she is not certain they were. She also said Marion’s sexual orientation was not the most compelling part of the story – Marion’s golf achievements and worldwide acclaim were.

The Lexington Country Club honors Marion each year with the Marion Miley Memorial Tournament, now in its 78th year. The crime is sometimes referred to as the Forgotten Murder because it happened shortly before Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, which prompted America’s entry into World War II – and quickly fell from the headlines.