In New York: in New York: Simon Says Condo

By Stefan Kanfer

"I look at it with mixed emotions," Lou Goldstein was saying. His lean, humorous face was at half-mast. "It's like watching your mother-in-law drive over a cliff -- in your new Cadillac."

Goldstein had been more than director of daytime social and athletic activities at Grossinger's Hotel & Country Club. He had been a fixture, like the indoor and outdoor swimming pools and the nonstop kosher fare. For 37 years, celebrities and nobodies had taken orders from him as he led his stand- up antic game of Simon says.

Simon says put up your hands. Simon says bend forward from the waist. Where are you from?

Philadelphia.

Out. Last year a lady stands here and I say to her, "What do you think of sex?" "Sex," she says, "it's a fine department store."

And now the resort, owned by one family since Woodrow Wilson was in the White House, will be operated by a corporation with the upscale name of Servico, Inc. The new owners, with plans to turn the place into a yuppie paradise, had invited the world to watch them "implode" the Grossinger Playhouse, where innumerable comics, singers and dancers had broken in their acts. Dynamite would knock down the floors and ceilings, leaving only a gaunt wooden frame. Bulldozers would take care of that. From some of the older witnesses, the word oy was repeated sotto voce all morning.

And who could blame them? Grossinger's was once the capital of the Borscht Belt, a loose confederation of some 1,000 Catskill Mountain resorts, so named in honor of the East European Jewish clientele who filled the rooms, wandered the greenery, searched for mates, did a locust number on the four Lucullan meals a day (including a midnight snack) and cheered the tummlers, a Yiddish word for exuberant entertainers. The performers themselves were a nation of immigrants: David Daniel Kaminski, Aaron Chwatt, Jacob Pincus Perelmuth, Morris Miller, Eugene Klass, Joseph Levitch, Milton Berlinger, Joseph Gottlieb. All are better known under their noms de borscht: Danny Kaye, Red Buttons, Jan Peerce, Robert Merrill, Gene Barry, Jerry Lewis, Milton Berle, Joey Bishop.

It had all begun three generations ago, when Ellis Island teemed with immigrants. A few of them had gone west -- about 100 miles west (and north) of Manhattan -- to try farming Sullivan County, N.Y.'s inhospitable soil. Vegetables would not grow there, but debts did, and the farmers were obliged to take in boarders. Soon the old houses became inns, sometimes with names that reflected a yearning for assimilation. The splendiferous Nevele is eleven spelled backward, in honor of a group of local visitors. Ratner's place had large Rs in the wrought-iron fencing. The owner called it the Raleigh.

( But Grossinger's never changed its identity. Back in 1914 the Galician emigres Selig and Malke Grossinger bought a farm with a down payment of $450. After they became innkeepers they turned a first-year gross of $81. But things picked up between the wars. Their blond, gregarious daughter Jennie had acquired some nearby property, and with an amalgam of public relations, real estate smarts and philanthropy, she became the lodestar of the Catskills. Politicians came to the place they called the "G" to court the Jewish vote, athletes to use the growing facilities, entertainers to try out new routines en route to Broadway or Hollywood.

The walls became festooned with ecumenical snapshots of the great and the Grossinger: Jack Benny, Robert Kennedy, Lionel Hampton, Jackie Robinson, Terence Cardinal Cooke, Alan Alda, Yogi Berra, Nelson Rockefeller, Ralph Bunche, Eleanor Roosevelt. The 800-acre complex had its own post office (Grossinger, N.Y.), 600 rooms, a l,700-seat dining area, a $7 million annual gross. Its dancing masters Tony and Lucille introduced the mambo to the U.S. Jennie appeared on This Is Your Life.

No one could keep track of all the couples who had met and married at the G, but everyone knew one of the reasons for the blossoming romances: the Tattler, the house newspaper that treated everyone as an enticement. When Canadian Novelist Mordecai Richler visited what he called "Disneyland with knishes," he remembered how, thanks to the paper, "the painfully shy old maid and the flat-chested girl and the good-natured lump" were transformed into "sparkling, captivating" Barbara; Ida, the "fun-loving frolicker"; and Miriam, a "charm-laden lass who makes a visit to table 20 F a must."

Don't enter to get ulcers. Believe me, I saw the prize. Such names they have today. Desiree. That's a name for a Jewish girl? Today you holler Sol and a horse comes over. Drexel? You should hear what his grandfather calls him for short. How old are you?

Thirty.

You didn't say Simon says. Out.

But Jennie passed away in 1972. At the time, there were the customary pronouncements about the end of an era, but no one paid much attention. The Grossinger family was still in charge; what could go wrong? A lot. As Jennie had prospered, so had her guests. They could afford to go to Miami now, or Las Vegas, or Europe or even Israel. A drive to a second home became the weekend of choice, and the city had hundreds of places catering to singles. Besides, thin was in and who needed to stuff their beaks every hour?

And so on a floor carpeted in bilious green, under a ceiling of dingy acoustical tile, a few score of Grossinger veterans and journalists gathered to witness the destruction of an old building and an invocation of Jennie's sacred memory. "I think she'd be delighted today," said William Meyer, the confident, youthful president of Servico. He went on to describe the changes planned for the next year: the gourmet dining room, the spa, the whirlpool, the thermal wrap, the two-bedroom condos that would go for $125,000 each, the 8,000-sq.-ft. "action lounge" targeted to young people.

The message was clear: under new management, the Catskill Mountains could go far. But Comedian Mal Z. Lawrence, who has often played the G, was not buying. "If Jennie were here, she'd cry," he decided. His colleague Mac Robbins, a fast man with a one-liner, was playing it andante today: "It's a sad, sad time. What can you say? It's the passing of what used to be. The third generation of Grossingers wanted out." So out that none of Jennie's children or nephews or cousins were in evidence. Of all the bygone headliners, Eddie Fisher was the only one who showed. He had been discovered at the resort back in 1949, before the days of his wives Debbie Reynolds and Elizabeth Taylor.

At Grossinger's you don't work. You toss the horseshoe, but a member of our staff picks it up. Also you throw downhill. What's your name?

Sylvia. I didn't say Simon -- I'm out, right?

Fisher, with hair somewhat darker than one would expect on a man of 58, spoke solemnly about coming up to Grossinger's as an untried singer: "I was sent here to become 18." As he reminisced, a young cameraperson arrived and, setting up her equipment, asked the speaker's identity. "Carrie Fisher's father," she was informed.

When the speeches were over and Jennie's name invoked once more, but surely not for the last time, the small crowd filed out to watch the much advertised implosion. The dynamite made a racket, and smoke issued from the crumbling front of the building. The comedians turned away as bulldozers began to crunch the sides of the playhouse. In profile, the yellow machines appeared to grin, as sharks do when they attack an obsolete old whale.

What was your name?

Grossinger's.

How old?

Seventy-two.

Out.