In the Catskills: A Century of Jewish Experience in "The Mountains" (41 page)

I also include two songs written about the Catskills. My “Yener Welt” had its Sullivan County premiere at the Third History of the Catskills Conference in 1997, and was repeated at the Sixth conference in 2000, sung both times by myself and my son, Michael.
Yener welt
in Yiddish means “the other world.” It’s sort of like: “you’ll get it in the afterlife,” but it’s not morbid or even sacriligious; it’s just Yiddish sarcasm. The only other Yiddish you need to know for this song is “
Ich hab nisht gelt
,” “I don’t have any money.” Grammatically, it should be “
Ich hab nisht kayn gelt
,” but it doesn’t fit into the music that way, so let’s not make a
megillah
.

Henry Foner sang his “Shoot the Shtrudel to Me, Yudel!” at the Third History of the Catskills Conference in 1997, and repeated it at the Sixth Conference in 2000. He had written this and other songs in the 1940s when he and his brothers played in the band at the Arrowhead Lodge. This comic song, true to the shtick so prevalent in the Catskills, was written to celebrate the delicious apple shtrudel of Yudel Slutsky, the hotel owner.

Comics, Singers, and Tummlers

Joey Adams (with Henry Tobias)

B
ORSCHT IN
T
HEIR
B
LOOD

I
t was the annual
Night of Stars
benefit at Madison Square Garden. Twenty thousand people had paid in a million dollars to see David Kaminsky, Aaron Chwatt, Al Dabruzio, Philip Feldman, Pinky Perlmut, Moishe Miller, Jerome Levitch, Bernie Schwartz, Milton Berlinger and Murray Janofsky with Joseph Abramowitz as Master of Ceremonies.

Maybe these names don’t sound like they could jazz up a marquee or cop a million bucks at the box office. David Kaminsky, however, has won not only theatrical awards but international awards for his work with UNICEF. Aaron Chwatt boasts an Oscar bigger than himself. Al Dabruzio starred in the movie of George Gershwin’s life,
Rhapsody in Blue
, and in the Broadway productions of
Guys and Dolls
and
What Makes Sammy Run
. Philip Feldman, the curly-haired guy with glasses, is our ambassador from Brooklyn. Pinky Perlmut and Moishe Miller are fixtures at the Metropolitan, and I don’t mean the insurance company. Jerome Levitch, who lives in a $500,000 bungalow in Bel Air, piled up millions for himself and Paramount. Good old Bernie Schwartz is one of the sexpots of the screen today. Milton Berlinger just gave his wife a full-length sable coat to replace the old one that was stolen—and he took it out of petty cash yet. Murray Janofsky crept into your living room for years via his daily TV show. Joseph Abramowitz roughs it on Fifth Avenue when he isn’t potting around the globe on a cultural exchange tour for the President, or entertaining our soldiers on the island of Crete, or performing at a Bar Mitzvah in the Bronx.

All these fellows have something in common. A few lean years ago you could have bought any one of them for a buck and a quarter apiece. That’s when they first took to the hills—an area some ninety miles north of the George Washington Bridge called the Catskill Mountains, alias the Borscht Belt.

This same neighborhood also spawned another gent named Rip Van Winkle, who hollered between snoozes that “The Kaatskill Mountains always has been haunted by strange beings.” I don’t know what put him to sleep, but I know he must have been awakened by the Social Directors who first came to the Catskills to make funny for the people.

It figures that if old Rip ever found out what happened to those kosher Kaatskill Social Directors, he is still revolving someplace. Some of them changed their material, a few even changed their noses, but all of them changed their names.

David Kaminsky is Danny Kaye, Aaron Chwatt is Red Buttons, Al Dabruzio is Robert Alda, Philip Feldman is Phil Foster, Pinky Perlmut is Jan Peerce, Moishe became Merrill Miller then Robert Merrill, Jerome Levitch is Jerry Lewis, Bernie Schwartz is Tony Curtis, Milton Berlinger is Milton Berle, Murray Janofsky is Jan Murray, and I changed my name from Joseph Abramowitz to Joey Adams.

I don’t think I know anybody from those days who kept his own name.

When I appeared on my first TV show, a Madison Avenue agency executive approached me. He was wearing the ad man’s uniform: gray flannel suit, black tie and homburg hat—a typical New England Gentile. A fine-looking man.

“You’re Joey Adams,” he said politely. “My name is Wendell Adams. I’ve seen your name in the papers lately and I’ve wondered if we are related in any way.”

“I don’t know,”I yawned nonchalantly. “What was your name before?”

The Borscht Belt, which cradled some of the biggest names in show business, was a handsome ghetto unto itself that consisted of a string of summer camps, hotels and bungalows in the Catskill and Adirondack mountains. The resort owners were really farmers who boarded a few city folk come summer and made good before they knew it. They were experts on cows and chickens but they knew from borscht about show business.

As the roomers increased and manure turned into paydirt, these farmers resented having to hire musicians and entertainers to amuse their guests. To the farmers, entertainers were “the free eaters” who were necessary evils needed to keep up with their competitors on the next farm.

In the early days, when Moss Hart “starred” at Camp Copake, Dore Schary jazzed up Grossinger’s, and Danny Kaye was more important to White Roe Lake than pumpernickel on a Sunday morning, the Social Director had to be producer, director, writer, actor, song-and-dance man, emcee, comedian, scenic designer, electrician, stage manager, stagehand and sometimes waiter. After the show he had to mingle with the guests, dance with the fat old women and romance the “dogs.” In addition, he was the
shadchon
, or marriage broker.

But these were only his evening chores. During daylight he doubled as sports and activities director. If he was a big shot he had a permanent staff to help him out, consisting of one other skinny fella, who also doubled in such jobs as tennis pro, basketball player, lifeguard, and busboy. Most of these “stars” got paid off in meals and a place to sleep, usually cozily situated in a basement storeroom or—if they were at the top of their profession—in a stuffy attic. Alan King’s bedroom at the White Roe Hotel was a cot onstage.

The theatrical unions, like the American Guild of Variety Artists and the American Federation of Musicians, have subsequently required that certain rules and regulations be observed in hiring talent for summer resorts.

Today these lettuce patches are billion-dollar, year-round resorts and they boast million-dollar show budgets on a par with Miami Beach and Las Vegas. The Concord Hotel recently paid Judy Garland more money for one night than the combined weekly salaries that Eddie Cantor, Will Rogers, W. C. Fields, Bert Williams and Fanny Brice got for doing the
Ziegfeld Follies of 1925
.

As I introduced each one of these stars at that Madison Square Garden benefit, I kept thinking of their beginnings in the huts, farms and lean-tos of the Catskills.

Red Buttons, for instance, started with me at a place called Beerkill Lodge in Greenfield Park, N.Y., where he quadrupled as entertainer, bellboy, prop boy and waiter on busy weekends. As an apprentice Borscht Belter his salary was a dollar and a half each and every week, but he found a way to make a little extra on the side.

Like the other hotels, our place was strictly kosher. That means you can’t mix meat and dairy at the same meal. This upset the digestive juices of many of the younger people who wanted cream in their coffee, even after a pot-roast dinner. But it was against the kosher laws. That’s where our little red-headed bootlegger came into the picture. He got the ingenious idea of buying a brand-new fountain pen, filling it with sweet cream, smuggling it to the dinner table and charging twenty-five cents a squirt to the rebels who wanted
café au lait
.

Robert Alda worked with me for six summers in the Catskills. His salary was fifteen dollars a week, which was pretty high for a singer, but Bob was a rare commodity. He was a good-looking Italian who resembled Cary Grant and could sing Jewish songs. What a prize to place before the love-starved females left on the doorsteps of summer resorts by anguished husbands (who regretted that they had but one wife to give to the country).

Bob was a good singer, a good actor and a good guy. He helped paint the scenery and write the lyrics for our shows. He learned Jewish songs and Hebrew dances, and was a smash onstage. But Bob Alda’s big job was to keep the women happy. The trouble was that our Italian troubadour was married. And with a six-month-old son yet.

The owner of Beerkill insisted that Bob’s wife and child take a room off the premises so that he could carry on his mingling and mixing with the romantic old bores without interruption. Robert danced with them, held their pudgy hands and sometimes even walked with them in the moonlight. But always he would run home to mama at the witching hour, like all good Italian singers do.

One poor soul, a bride of about thirty years from Jersey City, took Bob’s job seriously and followed him to his room. She waited until all the lights were out so she wouldn’t be recognized. Then she opened the door to his room, and quietly slipped into bed, only to find herself entangled with a family of three.

On a night when opera singer Merrill Miller was going good, a fellow called Moe Gale wandered into Grossinger’s, became his manager, got him his first break on NBC’s
Opera of the Air
, and changed his name to Robert Merrill. From there it was straight to the Met. Ever since, the Nevele Hotel, the President Hotel, the Laurels Country Club and at least half a dozen others lay claim to Bob making his debut in their hallowed barns.

Wolfie Olkin of Youngs Gap Hotel in Liberty recalls when Bob worked for him in 1941. It seems he was supposed to be the exclusive property of the Gap, but Bob used to sneak out between shows and make a few extra bucks singing at nearby hotels. Wolfie, upon learning of Merrill’s moonlighting, docked his pay and lectured him: “I don’t mind you sneaking out and entertaining at my competitor’s but if you must be that greedy, why do you eat here and run? Why don’t you run and eat elsewhere?”

Jan Peerce, another Met star, was discovered behind a fiddle. “I started as a violinist at the Breezy Hill Hotel, where I got five bucks more than the other musicians because I also did vocals,” chuckles Jan when you quiz him about those early days.

Following summer after summer at the President, the Waldmere and the Kiamesha Lake Inn, Jan finally gave up his career as a future Heifitz. As he tells it, “I was one of three violinists working with Abe Pizik’s band at a benefit at the Astor Hotel. It was the fiftieth-anniversary party for Weber and Fields and all the top show people were present. Suddenly there was a swollen lull and Abe convinced the emcee to let me sing one song, ‘
La donna è mobile
.’ A few minutes later, a waiter told me, ‘Roxy wants to see you.’ He had asked me to come to his office the next day. Right away he threw away my fiddle, canceled my plans to work for Joe Slutsky at the Nevele that summer and immediately put me in the Roxy Theatre. Soon after that, I was at the Met.”

Danny Kaye still retains the undisputed title “King of the Catskills.” His first job was as a part of the entertainment staff at White Roe Lake in 1933. The staff was headed by “Fishel” Goldfarb, now a very successful businessman, and still a pal of Danny’s. Twenty-year-old Danny learned his trade the hard way, appearing in one play a week and a different variety show every evening. He entertained at breakfast, lunch, and dinner and then rehearsed all through the night.

During Danny’s fifth season fate stepped in. A dance duo decided they needed a third artist. “With a little training we can teach Danny where to put his feet,” the ballerina commented with mild enthusiasm. That’s how Danny became a dancer. The group was given the elite title “The Three Terpsichoreans.”

With the addition of this new dimension, Danny leaped from White Roe Lake to Camp Tamiment as chief emcee, under the direction of Max Liebman. He worked as singer, dancer, juvenile lead, character actor, villain, comic and all-around Toomler. A Toomler, derived from tumult-maker, is Castilian Yiddish for a fool or noisemaker who does anything and everything to entertain the customers so that they won’t squawk about their rooms or food.