Cold
Beet Soup
Don Chatham
January 24, 2011
The
Chicago Literary Club
A
Look Back on the Catskills Era
Seven
days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, borscht was served at Grossinger’s, one of
several hundred hotels in the resort area known as the Catskills in upstate New
York. Because of this, an editor at Variety
dubbed the area The Borscht Belt.[1] Many
New Yorkers look back with nostalgia to what is typically remembered as a
vacation paradise of the 1940s, 50s and 60s, and America’s most famous summer
playground. A now bygone era to be sure, but an era nevertheless. Beyond its significance as a pivotal cultural
experience for millions, the Borscht Belt also served as the training ground
for some of America’s most beloved entertainers and provided a virtual template
for standup comedy to this day.
At
the end of the nineteenth century, some Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe,
a few of the multitudes that came to New York between 1880 and the First World
War, left the Lower East Side of Manhattan and moved up to the farmlands of the
southwestern Catskill Mountains in Sullivan and Ulster counties. They looked to
settle, to farm, to escape the unhealthy environment of tenement life. The
message got back to the Lower East Side: the scenery was beautiful, the air was
fresh and clean, the climate in July and August was pleasant.
The
Catskills came into being as a resort area at the turn of the century when
immigrant farmers started taking in boarders to make ends meet. People from the
same region in Europe began coming up to spend a summer week or two of simple
pleasures – meals of farm-fresh foods, a stroll down a shady lane, a mid-afternoon
nap on a grassy lawn, and nice view from a gazebo or veranda. The area offered
a fresh air escape for the predominantly first-generation east European and
Russian Jews who sought relief from their congested neighborhoods on the Lower
East Side. As the comedian Joey Adams pointed out, “. . . clannishness was . .
. a selling factor.” [2]
Immigrants naturally hang together. Many of these settlers couldn’t speak
English and all of them ate only kosher food; consequently Jewish families went
on vacations where they could find other Jewish families. They felt comfortable
and secure talking the same language and eating the same food. Known as well as “The Mountains,” the area
was first little more than a place where these recent immigrants would feel
welcome and could get fresh eggs and milk. As the farmhouses started to
prosper, farmers with anything from a muddy horse pond to a water hole started
advertising ‘Swimming and Boating.’[3]
After
World War I, these boarding houses multiplied. Many evolved into hotels and
clusters of cottages called bungalow colonies, and the region became a quasi-official
vacation site for thousands of Jews from New York City and its environs. Vacation
itself was an entirely novel concept, an American concept, for a population
that had been historically impoverished and oppressed. In its heyday, as many
as five hundred resorts catered to visitors of varied interests and incomes.
The evolution of the region, especially the evolution of those resorts that
grew elaborate and luxurious, mirrored and crystallized a two-fold process: the
Americanization of the Jewish population on the one hand, and the impact of
Jewish culture on America on the other. As American Jews began relaxing in
their newfound freedoms and enjoying, for once, the fruits of their labors,
pleasures once decidedly reserved for others seemed within reach.
The
O & W railroad was the main source of travel in the beginning and the
owners would gather at the station and compete with each other to get the
customers. “Come to our place, only twelve dollars.” or “I’m charging thirteen
but with three delicious meals a day.” The guests went where they thought they
would get the best deal. Robert Merrill remembered that driving up could take
the whole day. Cars overheated and people would spend all their time filling
the radiators. One summer his car wouldn’t go any further so he sold it and
hitchhiked the rest of the way. Either way, it was worth the effort because of
conditions in the city. Mothers would put their babies in carriages outside
their tenements and the cinders from the elevated trains would fall all over
them. So the mountains, however hard to get to, offered fresh air and
hospitality. Ironically, many of the early resorts were run by Gentiles but the
clientele was largely Jewish. As the popularity of the area grew, the guests
bought out the original dwellings. And as competition grew, larger, grander
accommodations appeared.[4]
In
those early years, nostalgic reminders of the old country were enough – berry
patches for picking, a lake or pond for bathing and boating, some klezmer tunes
played on a piano and fiddle. Later, games learned on city streets and in
schoolyards, like handball, basketball, and baseball, were transplanted to
vacation settings, and home grown entertainers bridged the transition from the
Old World to the New with a repertoire of both Yiddish and American songs and
inside humor. Before long, however, greater prosperity and notions of leisure-class
activities demanded “all-American” facilities such as tennis courts, swimming
pools, and golf courses. The Flagler, for instance, as early as 1918, had
eighty rooms, fifty baths, hot and cold water, and a telephone in every room.
The hotel had an elevator, its large lobby had a sun parlor and a writing room,
and the grounds included a nine-hole golf course.
Grossinger’s
became probably the most famous resort in the area. Selig and Malke Grossinger
were farmers from Poland. Selig tried to make a go of it in the needle trade in
New York City but found it hard to pull off and so opened a restaurant. Farmers
at heart, they then decided to buy a farm in Ferndale, New York, because an
orthodox community was already there. They bought a nine-room farmhouse and
started growing potatoes but the soil wasn’t good for crops. So, they got the
idea of renting out the rooms. The first year, 1914, the Grossinger Kosher Farm
grossed eighty-one dollars from nine guests, each of whom stayed a week. The
next year so many people wanted to come that they stayed in tents scattered
around the property. In 1919, the Grossinger’s bought a farm that was situated
on the top of a mountain that had a lake and most important a real hotel with
indoor plumbing, electric lights, and a lobby. With that, the now famous
Grossinger’s was on its way. Selig and Malke’s son, Harry, and his wife Jennie,
took over from his parents. During the summers, over time, the guests became
part of one big family with Jennie as the gracious and loving matriarch. She
became famous in that role, pretty much remembering all the regulars by name
and greeting them personally as they returned year after year. Once when a
guest’s daughter was in school, the teacher asked the class, “How does your mother
get ready for Passover?” The girl answered, “My mommy writes out a check to
Grossinger’s.”[5]
In
1926, they hired Milton Blackstone, who became the public relations man for the
hotel, and it was Blackstone who made Grossinger’s an international symbol of
hospitality, “the single best-known hotel in the world.”[6] In the early 30s, a taxi driver named Moe
Weissberg foiled a holdup attempt in New York City and became a local hero. Blackstone
invited him and his wife for a two-week vacation as Jennie’s guest.
Grossinger’s made all the newspapers. In 1934, he got the idea of having lightweight
boxing champ Barney Ross train at Grossinger’s. Jennie’s mother-in-law at first
resisted – “A fighter on my grounds? Never,” she said -- but Blackstone
explained that Ross was an Orthodox Jew, ate strictly kosher, and didn’t work
on the Sabbath. She agreed.
Ross
brought Damon Runyon with him, as well as all the American press that covered
boxing, and Grossinger’s was again in the daily papers, with Grossinger’s as
the dateline. Runyon tagged the resort “Lindy’s with trees.”[7]
Blackstone would also target budding celebrities in New York and invite them up
as guests – Milton Berle, who was nobody at the time, Richard Tucker, Alan
King, Red Buttons, Eddie Cantor. They would vacation, hang around with the
guests, entertain.
Blackstone
was also responsible for changing the hotel’s postal address from Ferndale, New
York, to Grossinger’s, New York. He also set up the hotel as a post office and
installed an airport on the property. Blackstone then hired Robert Towers as
the social director and together they lead Grossinger’s to enduring fame for
its ability to attract A-list celebrities in various fields – writers, artists,
politicians, sports figures, entertainers. Nine boxing champions trained at the
resort, including Rocky Marciano. Chaim Weitzman, who later became the first president
of Israel, was a guest in 1942 for his birthday, and Grossinger’s became the
telephone exchange for the world as he took calls with birthday wishes from
internationally known figures such as Eleanor Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Debbie
Reynolds came to Grossinger’s, Elizabeth Taylor came to Grossinger’s;
unfortunately they both came with Eddie Fisher.
At
its peak, Grossinger’s, which wasn’t the largest of the hotel resorts, covered eight
hundred acres, had six hundred hotel rooms, took in more than one hundred
thousand guests a year, and was unrivaled in its reputation for entertainment,
food, and romance. Guests would come back to the same rooms year after year.
Some families didn’t even return their keys and out of habit would go to their
rooms first and then let the front desk know they had arrived. Food, more food,
and then even more food became the hallmark of Grossinger’s hospitality. When
Selig Grossinger, the founder, died, his last words were, “Abie, make sure that
everybody eats.”[8]
On
an even grander scale, the Concord came to epitomize the Catskills era. Lavish
food, that never seemed to end – seven kinds of herring at breakfast, ten-course
dinners, three or four main dishes at every meal, and you could have one of
each if you wanted. It had extravagant surroundings and constant activities and
entertainments, including, for example, swimming, tennis, canoeing, Ping-Pong,
horseshoes, horse riding, dancing, games such as the enormously popular (and
surprisingly risqué) Simon Sez, and golf, which included a 7,672-yard world-class
golf course known as The Monster. The hotel’s nightclub had one thousand seats
and was the largest nightclub in the country. The Concord dining room was the
size of 5 football fields and could accommodate three thousand guests at one
time. When asked if he could serve their table, a waiter reportedly replied
that their table was not in his state.
The
Concord spent more money on entertainment than any resort in the world, and
spent more than that on food. The Concord’s owner, Arthur Winarick, who never
graduated from high school, came out of Russia with memories of the palatial
buildings of the upper classes. He came from a place where poor kids like him
aspired to live in palaces, so he fashioned all the huge buildings at the
Concord to meet that dream. The Concord represented the full run of the
spectrum that started from the early days of cold-water bungalows with outdoor
bathrooms.
The
Borscht Belt was where everyone wanted to be and where everyone was welcome. Billie
Eckstein was the first black headliner in the Catskills, appearing in 1949. His
recollection reflects on the cultural status that the Catskills had achieved. “I
don’t want to sound naive,” he said, “but [racial bias] was something I was
never aware of. I don’t remember breaking down walls – there were no walls to
break down.” [9]
Nipsey Russell recalled that when he headlined at the Concord, it was like a
black entertainer scoring at the Apollo, a classical pianist performing at
Carnegie Hall, an actor winning the Academy Award. Once you scored at the
Concord, you were set. Everyone wanted you. Judy Garland started her comeback
at the Concord in 1961 after not working for a long time. She then went on to
her famous Carnegie Hall concert. Sports figures were common – Joe DiMaggio,
Pete Rose, Tom Seaver, Willie Mays, Bob Gibson, George Steinbrenner. Muhammad
Ali trained at the Concord. Winarick’s dream was deep-seated though and mindful
of history in that he also established many fundraising events for the support
of Israel. One of the most memorable was a reunion he sponsored for survivors
of the Lodz Ghetto. Sam Winarick’s son, Gordon, recalled that “They wore
indentifying tags that said things like ‘I had a sister . . . .’ People met
friends, neighbors, even relatives they thought were dead all these years. You
heard their stories, saw them with their children, grandchildren. It was
unforgettable. For three days, we were telling the world we will never forget.”
[10]
While
in the beginning, it was enough to be able to get away from the city and take
in the mountain air and fresh food, little by little the guests began to expect
more to do than sit on a porch or play horseshoes. The owners began appointing
“tummlers” to organize social events that would stimulate and entertain. The
word tummler is derived from a Castilian Yiddish word for someone who creates
excitement in a crowd -- a tumult maker– and as such became a source of
competitive advantage.[11] The
tummler would organize games, hikes, and any number of social events. To keep costs down, however, the hotel owners
pressed the tummlers to use staff for their events. Busboys doubled as
entertainers, waiters doubled as dance partners, and musicians doubled as
comics.
Tummlers,
who later became even more prominent as social directors, were the guys whose
job it was to neutralize a bored or sometimes angry mob of guests, by parlaying
staff into double duty – at first with events such as square dances, quiz shows,
treasure hunts, or Ping-Pong tournaments. This then elevated to minstrel shows,
concerts, champagne hours, dance lessons and dance contests, handwriting
analysis, tea leaf readings, crap games for the boys and knitting for the
girls, and then ultimately to staged entertainment. The busboys, bookkeepers and
waiters were often characters in their own right and looked for opportunities
to show their stuff. Jerry Lewis, for example, started out as a busboy at the
Concord and Sid Caesar played clarinet in the band at the Avon Lodge.
Alan
King was a Catskills drummer who engineered what turned out to be an unfortunate
chance to show his comic potential. To get attention, he would fall off
swayback horses, throw himself into the pool in a tuxedo, clown for the guests
in rocking chairs on the porches -- and finally got a tryout at the hotel
Gradus where he opened with the line, “When you work for The Gradus, you work
for gratis.” Fortunately for him, getting fired the next day didn’t interfere
with his career.
Another
popular staffer-turned-comic was Jan Murray, who worked out an audience-engagement
routine built around a waiter-customer conversation. As the waiter, Murray
would say we have two kinds of soup: chicken and pea. The volunteer/customer
was told to first order chicken and then change his mind. “I’ll take the
chicken soup,” the customer would say. And Murray would say, “Okay, one chicken
soup coming up.” A moment later, the customer would call him back and say,
“Wait, I’ve changed my mind. I’ll have the pea soup instead.” Murray would then
yell offstage to the kitchen, “Hold the chicken and make it pea.”[12]
Henny
Youngman was in a band that was playing in a small combo at the Swan Lake Inn.
One day the social director got drunk and didn’t show up. Henny, who was a
frustrated comic to begin with and had been thrown out of Manual Training High
School for clowning, stepped out of the band and into the spotlight firing off
what became his signature one-liners punctuated by screechy violin interludes.[13]
Youngman
was an immediate smash. Four hotels took him on as head tummler and his style
started a trend. But the rapid delivery of numerous one-liners left everyone joke
broke and always on the lookout for new material. Eddie Cantor once had a long
taxi ride with a driver who entertained Cantor with his own spiel. The driver
got the biggest tip of his life when Cantor hired him as one of his writers.
When a comic got out of the business he might put his repertory up for auction.
Comics started compiling their jokes and selling them to other comics who might
then sell parcels to yet other comics. The usual method of obtaining material,
though, was to lift it directly from their peers.
In
that regard, Milton Berle was famous for stealing jokes without compunction
under the belief that a joke was not told well until he told it. At a roast
toward the end of Berle’s career, Jackie Mason cracked, “We’re all here paying
tribute to our own material.”[14]
Red Buttons stole his “Sam, You Made the Pants Too Long” routine from Joey
Adams, who had taken it from Joe E. Lewis, who had borrowed it from Milton
Berle, who copied it from a tailor in Brownsville.[15]
In
that guests often came back to the weekly Saturday night shows, fresh material
was at a premium and drove the creation of supermarkets for gags. Here, at
places like the Theatrical Drugstore in Manhattan, comics could swap their “commodities”:
two Berle “blackouts” for one Red Skelton “Guzzler’s Gin” routine, or twelve “Bob
Hopes” for a Willie Howard sketch.[16]
Heckler lines were especially valuable. Berle had the corner on that market,
with lines like “You heckled me 20 years ago. I never forget a suit.”
Opportunities
for talented and ambitious staff were numerous, since the owners didn’t have to
pay them anything extra, but there was still an issue in that the entertainers
would be working the one hotel the entire season and guests who stayed more
than one week would begin seeing the acts repeated. Boredom would set in and
guests demanded more or threatened to cut their stay short. The hotel owners
would bargain with each other for the most popular acts – one would use an act
early in the evening and another would use the same act for the late show. This
arrangement then led to the creation of booking agents, or “10 percenters” as they
came to be known; the running joke among performers was that their agents were annoyed
because the performers were getting 90 percent of their money.
The
agents at the time, in particular a man named Charlie Rapp and the agency team
of Al Beckman and Johnny Pransky, began developing packages of entertainers working
in the Catskills, but also in New York City, that were then cycled through
several hotels – or booked into a “circuit” so to speak – which gave rise to
the term the Borscht Belt Circuit. This arrangement provided the owners with
different acts throughout the summer season. Same act, different hotels,
different guests. And in the bargain the owners no longer had to house and feed
the entertainers. Such a deal. The local staff talent warmed to it also as it
elevated their status – they were no longer just bellhops, they were
entertainers.
In
addition, both for the established New York City entertainers and the
up-and-comers on the staffs in the Catskills, this practice provided more
exposure for the talent – good reviews in the Catskills, good reviews on
Broadway – and so largely propelled the careers of the likes of Sid Caesar and
Danny Kaye, who was known as the King of the Catskills.
Like
Rodney Dangerfield, sometimes the agents got no respect in the presence of the
vaunted egos of hotel owners who would think of themselves as big-time
producers simply because a Henny Youngman or Jan Murray came from their staff.
Charlie Rapp tells a story of an owner who demanded Jack E. Leonard, well known
as an insult comic, for his Saturday-night show. The owner didn’t know much
about Leonard except that he was a hot property. Rapp tried to convince the owner that Leonard
wasn’t a good choice because the owner’s resort catered to a strictly Orthodox
family audience that wouldn’t appreciate or even get his type of humor. The
owner took umbrage. “I had stars here before you were born,” he huffed. “Do you
know that Buddy Hackett worked for me for ten dollars? Do you know that I
discovered Sidney Caesar? Only this week I had lunch with Milton Berle – and you’re
telling me about show business? Get me Jack E. Leonard or forget you knew me.”
So
Rapp got him Jack E. Leonard. When Leonard arrived and saw all the men with yarmulkes,
his opening crack was “Welcome Legionnaires” and things went downhill from
there. “If Moses saw you he would have invented another commandment,” Leonard
snarled. After thirty minutes of insults he left with “Thank you, opponents.”
An ordinary Jack E. Leonard audience would have been roaring with laughter at
this point but this audience just stared in disbelief. The next day the outraged
owner was on the phone to Rapp. “What the hell kind of comic you sent me? You
ruined me with this insulter, this, this. . . . ” “But,” Rapp interrupted, “you
are the one that insisted on Leonard.” “So,” said the owner, “you couldn’t talk
me out of it?”[17]
The
advent of World War II added to the pressure. By 1941, any act with a car was working. But when America entered the war
the coin of the realm changed from cash to gasoline and the only acts working were those with a car.
To be a booking agent in the Catskills you now had to be a travel agent as well.
The first question was not what do you do, but do you have a car. When a guest
asked the social director at one hotel “What acts are coming up for the
weekend?” the social director replied, “It looks like a great show. We’ve got a
Buick and two Caddies on the way.”[18]
The
Catskills resorts rose to prominence just as vaudeville was dying out and gave
comedy a place to grow. The Catskills were in effect the comedy clubs of the 1930s
and 1940s. The list of great talents who emerged from the Borscht Belt is
telling – Joey Adams, Woody Allen, Milton Berle, Shelly Berman, Mel Brooks,
Lenny Bruce, Myron Cohen, Sid Caesar, Rodney Dangerfield, Buddy Hackett, Moss
Hart, Danny Kaye, Alan King, Jerry Lewis, Jackie Mason, Carl Reiner, Allen
Sherman, Neil Simon, Jonathan Winters, Henny Youngman, and many more. This is
where standup comedy got its start.
Reflecting
the influence of its roots in vaudeville, Borscht Belt humor refers to the
rapid-fire, often self-deprecating style common to many of the performers and
writers of the time. Routines typically included topics such as bad luck, impoverished
childhoods, physical complaints, marriage, nagging wives, and annoying
relatives. The jokes gained appreciation as much by virtue of their rapid
proliferation as by the mounting impact of the groan factor. A few examples:
Henny
Youngman: I was so
ugly when I was born, the doctor slapped my mother.
I made a
killing in the stock market. I killed my broker.
My wife said
to me, “I want to go somewhere I’ve never been before.” I said, “Try the
kitchen.”
Most girls
are attracted to the simple things in life. Like men.
My wife and
I went back to the hotel where we spent our wedding night. Only this time I
stayed in the bathroom and cried.
She got her
good looks from her father. He’s a plastic surgeon.
The doctor
gave a man six months to live. The man couldn’t pay his bill so the doctor gave
him another six months.
Rodney
Dangerfield: My wife and I were happy for
20 years. Then we met.
Buddy
Hackett: As a child my family’s
menu consisted of two choices: take it or leave it.
Lenny Bruce I
won’t say ours was a tough school, but we had our own coroner.
Mel
Brooks: Tragedy is when I
cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.
Alan
King: If you want to read
about love and marriage, you have to buy two separate books.
Jackie
Mason: My
grandfather always said, "Don't watch your money; watch your health."
So one day while I was watching my health, someone stole my money. It was my
grandfather
As
the resorts continued to prosper, Jewish culture was making its mark on
American life. A legion of comedians had grown up in the neighborhoods of
Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. Their humor, anchored in the shetls, may have
been sharpened by the crassness of freewheeling life on street corners and
outside of candy stores. And their shtik, delivered in the nasal cadences of
New York Jewish speech, may have debuted on the vaudeville circuit and in Coney
Island saloons. But they were nursed and nurtured and cut their teeth in
Catskill resorts. It was here that these vigorous comedians delivered their
particular view of life -- with pathos, irony, self-mockery, sarcasm, and
vulgarity -- that would, by way of radio, television and movies, reach the
nation at large to the point that, as Lenny Bruce put it, you didn’t have to be
Jewish to be Jewish.[19]
In
an NBC series titled “Remembering the Catskills,” Carl Reiner notes that all
the great comics of the twentieth century came through and from the Catskills.
The form that developed there – standing on a stage and telling jokes – still
abides in monologues and interviews. At the time, in the 30s and 40s
especially, the consciousness of being Jewish was a factor seen especially in both
the practice of changing names and in the strength of the community in those
many resorts. David Kaminsky became Danny Kaye, Aaron Chwatt became Red
Buttons, Jerome Levitch became Jerry Lewis, Milton Berlinger became Milton
Berle, Bernard Kniberg became Alan King, Joseph Abramowitz became Joey Adams.
Adams tells a story about a Madison Avenue advertising agency executive who
approached him. He was wearing a gray flannel suit, black tie, homburg hat – a
typical New England Gentile. “My name is Wendell Adams,” he said. “I’ve seen
your name in the papers recently and I’ve wondered if we are related in any
way. Joey Adams replied, “I don’t know – what was your name before?”[20]
With
steadily passing time the Catskills comics set the standard for virtually all
comedy that came after. The Jewish-American experience became the American
experience as the comedy spectrum moved from The Mountains to the television
shows of Sid Caesar and Milton Berle, to the bohemian nightclubs of Mort Sahl
and Shelly Berman, to the black humor of Lenny Bruce and what Alan Cooper
called the “sit-down comedy”[21] of
Philip Roth and Bruce Jan Friedman.
The
Catskills were the training ground, the bridge from Borscht Belt to Broadway,
from Yiddish to English, from Jewish comic to American comedian. Before the
1950s, most comedians who reached prominence grew up in large, Yiddish-speaking
immigrant families in Brooklyn and Manhattan’s Lower East Side. About 80% came
from kosher homes and 90% later changed their names. Younger comedians by
comparison are better educated, have less contact with Jewish religious ritual,
and are more likely to break away from traditional Jewish humor to deliver
social or political messages in their acts.[22]
When
Jon Stewart won an Emmy in 2005, he commented that “When I first said that I
wanted to put together a late-night comedy-writing team that would only be 80
percent Ivy-League-educated Jews, people thought I was crazy. They said you
need 90, 95 percent. But we proved ‘em wrong.”[23]
Humor
has become a common bond. At the same time, it’s difficult to imagine what
would remain of American humor without its Jewish component. Gentile comedians such as Robin Williams and
Danny Thomas found it advantageous to include some Jewish material in their
repertoires. Steve Allen’s material was so Jewish that audiences were often
surprised to learn that he wasn’t.[24]
Turn to any TV variety show today, await the standup comic, and chances are
good that he or she will come on with accents and gestures and usages whose
origins are directly traceable to the Borscht Belt.[25]
As
Lenny Bruce explained, himself at one time a Catskills comic, being Jewish is
not only a religion, it is a state of mind, a condition, a
way of looking at the world. “Dig: I’m Jewish. Count Basie’s Jewish. Ray
Charles is Jewish. Eddie Cantor’s goyish. B’nai B’rith is goyish. Hadassah,
Jewish. If you live in New York or any other big city, you are Jewish. It
doesn’t matter even if you’re Catholic; if you live in New York you’re Jewish.
If you live in Butte, Montana, you’re going to be goyish even if you’re Jewish.”[26]
As
the jokes and the style became more assimilated into an American context, the
one-liners became more episodic, more conversational, more observational, wherein
nuanced delivery, pacing and timing played a larger part. The standup comedy of
a Henny Youngman and the sit-down comedy[27] of
a Philip Roth merged into the conversational style of the present-day comics. The
Catskills legacy lives on.
Myron
Cohen had a foot in both the joke-based world of the Catskills and the conversational,
situational comedy that emerged in the fifties. Here’s one of his classics that
he was still using on television shows in the 1970s:
A Jewish
grandmother is watching her grandchild playing on the beach when a huge wave
comes and takes him out to sea. She pleads, "Please God, save my only
grandson. I beg of you, bring him back." And a big wave comes and washes
the boy back onto the beach, good as new. She looks up to heaven and says,
"He had a hat!"
We
can see the Catskills legacy even in today’s humor preferences. Here’s a clip
from a YouTube video called “A Catskills Comedian” that ran in 2008:
A man drives
into a gas station and tells the attendant to fill it with regular. While the
attendant pumps the gas, he says, “Sir, I notice you have Michigan plates on
your car. Where’re you from in Michigan?” The gentleman says, “Detroit.” And
his wife says, “What’d he say?” “He wanted to know where we’re from in Michigan.
I told him Detroit.” The attendant says, “Detroit! I was there when I was in
the army and I had the worst sexual experience of my life in Detroit.” And the
wife says, “What’d he say?” “He said he thinks he knows you.”
In
a book entitled A Summer World,
Stefan Kanfer, a contributing editor for Time
magazine, summarized the point as follows: “The influence of the Catskills on
our culture has been incredible. It’s been pervasive. There are certain places
you can’t eat and certain jokes you can’t tell and certain attitudes you can’t
have without acknowledging what the Catskills were.”[28]
And
as one who lived there, Arthur Shulman seems to have spoken for a generation as
he reflected on the times: “It will never be duplicated. Unless you lived
through it, you can never quite know what it was like. It was an atmosphere, a
time, an era.[29]
Today
the Borscht Belt is no more. Grossinger’s (in 1985), the Concord (1998), the
Nevele (2009) have all gone the way of what they call the three As: air
conditioning, air fares, and assimilation. TV, Vegas, and the Americanization
of humor have eclipsed the unique outlet that was the Catskills. But the world
that came out of it will probably live on to the last comic standing.
[1] Myrna Katz Frommer and Harvey Frommer, It Happened in the Catskills (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1991), 223.
[2] Joey Adams and Henry Tobias, The Borscht Belt (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1966), 20.
[3] Ibid., 20.
[4] Frommer, It Happened in the Catskills, 6-13.
[5] Ibid., 41.
[6] Ibid., 31.
[7] Ibid., 32.
[8] Mervyn Rothstein, “From Jewish Eden to Embarrassment,” The New York Times, January 6, 1990.
[9] Frommer., 163.
[10] Ibid., 161-175.
[11] Adams, The Borscht Belt, 40-41.
[12] Ibid., 87.
[13] Ibid., 59.
[14] Ronald Lande Smith, The Stars of Standup Comedy: A Biographical Encyclopedia (New York: Garland Publishing, 1986), 22.
[15] Adams, The Borscht Belt, 81.
[16] Ibid., 62.
[17] Ibid., 194-95.
[18] Ibid., 187.
[19] Frommer, It Happened in the Catskills, x-xi.
[20] Adams, The Borscht Belt, 3.
[21] Alan Cooper, “The Jewish Sit-Down Humor of Philip Roth,” in Jewish Wry, ed. Sarah Blacher Cohen (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987), 158.
[22] Behavior: “Analyzing Jewish Comics,” Time, October 2, 1978.
[23] William Novak and Moshe Woldoks, The Big Book of Jewish Humor (New York: Collins, 2006) xvii.
[24] Ibid., xlv.
[25] Wallace Markfield, “The Yidishization of American Humor,” Esquire (October, 1965): 114.
[26] Irv Saposnik, “These serious jests: American Jews and Jewish comedy,” Judaism, July 1, 1996.
[27] Cooper, “The Jewish Sit-Down Humor of Phillip Roth,” 158.
[28] Rothstein, “From Jewish Eden to Embarrassment.”
[29] Frommer, It Happened in the Catskills, 94
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