If you want to know from a golden age of comedy, you might be able to take your wife…please…to a new museum in Ellenville, N.Y. Plans were recently announced for The Borscht Belt Museum in the Catskills, which will celebrate the Borscht Belt’s legacy with artifacts, photos, and memorabilia. For more we spoke with Andrew Jacobs, co-president of the museum’s Board of Trustees.
How should we define the Borscht Belt?
The Borscht Belt was sort of a three-county area of the Catskills; Orange, Ulster and Sullivan County that drew over the over the summer months of more than a million people, many of them Jews, who came up here to escape the pestilence and crowding of the city and just to enjoy the fresh air and get away from their workday lives.
What was the heyday for this particular region and tourism?
Well, the beginnings were sort of in the turn of the century, but the heyday was really the post war era, I would say the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s and even a bit of the 70’s and then it sort of started to go downhill in the late 70’s.
So how did it become such a hotbed for comedy?
Well, I think it's good to take a step back and look at why people, especially Jews, came up to the Catskills and that is because they were really barred from staying at most other hotels in the region. So, they had to create their own sort of summer vacation world. And so, over the course of decades, there were more than a thousand accommodations up here in the Catskills; hotels, boarding houses, bungalow colonies. The bigger hotels and the big lavoro counties had entertainment. And so, you had hundreds and hundreds of venues where people were eager to see entertainment. And so, comedians from the city would flock up here in the summer, and they could play two, three hotels in a night. And so, it really became a mecca for stand-up comedians, and they really got to sort of cut their teeth up in the horoscope.
I know it's a very long list, but who were some of the standouts from this era?
Milton Berle, Jackie Mason, Joan Rivers, Jerry Seinfeld got a start up here, Woody Allen, the list goes on. Pretty much any significant comedian of the 20th century got their start up in the Catskills and it was a huge part of the evolution of stand up and America.
So, tell me a bit about the museum. I understand these plans have been in the works for quite a while.
Yes, the museum, the idea for the museum has been around for about a dozen years. And so, what we've done is we purchased a historic building, an old bank in Ellenville. What's cool about this building, besides the fact that's gorgeous, it’s a 100-year-old bank, is that it has really strong links to the Borscht Belt as the first one of the first banks that would lend money to the Jewish hotel owners and really kind of sustained that world. So, we purchased the building, and we're starting to renovations now and will be open to the public in 2025.
What are the museum's holdings? I have to imagine acquisitions are continuing but what will be in it?
Well, it's a lot of video and audio. The museum will lean heavily into comedy, so there will be a lot of comedian footage and audio. The kernel of our collection is a guy named Allen Frischman, who was building inspector in the town of Fallsburg for many years, and his job was to get and condemn the hotels as they were crumbling. And one thing he did before the bulldozers came in is he would save objects and store them in sheds in his backyard. So, Allen's collection will form the basis of our collection, but we also have been collecting items from people all across the country who are contacting us and wanting to donate.
I'm sure some people listening to this in the WAMC area may have stories or things that they might want to donate. How can they get in touch?
Go to our website, www.borschtbeltmuseum.org and you can find out information on how to donate. I would also mention that we're having a pop-up museum this summer in Ellenville on July 1st, open for the remainder of the summer, and we also have a festival in Ellenville Borscht Belt Fest, which is a performing arts and food festival the last weekend in July. So, there’s lots going on in the coming months, and we encourage everyone to come see us.
Will the museum have any live performance, live comedy when it opens?
There will. Yes, we will have lots of programming. We have a bunch of space that will double as community space and performance space. The main bank building has a gorgeous double height to the banking hall, which we will use for public events. So, there will be all kinds of programming to keep our message and mission sort of current.
Is any of that world of resorts still alive today?
I would say very little. There are a few hotels last, but for the most part, it is gone.
I'm hesitating to ask you this question, but for people who might have only known of this world through Dirty Dancing. How accurate is that movie in depicting the world of the Borscht Belt?
It's interesting, there's a lot of opinion on that. I would say for the most part, people think it's fairly accurate, but one thing it sort of deemphasizes the Jewish aspect of that world they portrayed there. But I think generally, it's an adored film, and people feel like it does do justice to that era.
Are there a lot of people still around who performed in the Borscht Belt who have been able to contribute stories and knowledge to these plans?
Yeah, we've been hearing from a lot of people. Obviously, they're older now and we are doing an oral history with StoryCorps, the nonprofit that gathers oral histories and this summer, that's one of the things we're going to be doing at the pop up is having a recording booth where people can come and share their stories or maybe just a memorable joke that they recall from that era.
Do you have a favorite joke or routine that comes to mind?
Well, I think I think it is a classic. It's the complaint about the food out of Borscht Belt hotel. The food was so terrible and the portions were so small.
You can see that one in 'Annie Hall' if you want.
Yes, exactly.
Andrew, anything I didn't ask you that you'd like to add?
We encourage people to go to the website and come see us at the end of July for Borscht Belt Fest and we think this is a really important subject for young people and everyone to learn about because the Borscht Belt, really is a story of America, and it's a story about sort of a marginalized group that sort of triumph over bigotry, creating this really incredible summer world, and a culture that ended up really influencing mainstream America.
