The Borscht Belt was a region in New York’s Catskill Mountains that was a popular summer resort destination for East Coast American Jews from the 1920s to the mid-1960s. Named for the Eastern European beet soup, the area was a center for leisure and entertainment, featuring numerous resorts, hotels, and bungalow colonies that significantly influenced American culture and comedy. Comedy luminaries such as Henny Youngman, Rodney Dangerfield, Lenny Bruce, Don Rickles, George Burns, and Buddy Hackett cut their teeth playing the Catskills.
The 2nd annual Borscht Belt Film Fest, which runs Oct. 31-Nov. 2 in Ellenville, NY, celebrates the era’s rich diversity and enduring spirit, and features a curated lineup of films, exploring the culture, food, and fun of the Borscht Belt. One featured film, When Comedy Went to School, tells the story of the Catskill hotels and bungalow colonies that provided the setting for a group of young Jewish-American comedians who re-defined stand-up and sketch comedy. The film, directed by Ron Frank and Mevlut Akkaya, features interviews with comedy legends such as Jerry Lewis, Sid Caesar, Jackie Mason, Mort Sahl, Dick Gregory, and Jerry Stiller.
We spoke with Ron Frank about what inspired the film, interviewing comedy icons, balancing comedy and education, and what went into researching the film.
Well, thanks for taking the time to talk. I really appreciate it. I want to say I really enjoyed When Comedy Went to School. I thought it was a great documentary.
Thank you.
You know, I first saw that it was going to be part of the Borscht Belt Film Fest, and I was puzzled because it’s a slightly older film. But then I watched it, and I was like, “Oh, well, this is absolutely perfect.”
It really is. I’m glad they took it on. It belongs in the Borscht Belt Museum, really.
Can you talk about how the film came about?
Yeah, I worked with a couple of other partners on it. I’ve always wanted to do a film about the Catskills. I had seen a documentary a long time ago on the Catskills on PBS, and I was intrigued by it. I grew up in the New York area, so as a kid, I went to summer camp there. And my wife’s family also had a summer place in Monticello. So, I was always attracted to it.
And when I got together with my other partners on this, and we found an investor, we were dedicated to making the film, primarily because we wanted to show the birthplace of stand-up comedy. We wanted to show the Catskills, but we also wanted to capture these comedians before they pass on. So, we were lucky enough to get them.
Well, many of them have passed on since you made the film, unfortunately. Can you talk about what it was like to capture their stories when you did?
Yeah, we spent a lot of time at the Friars Club in New York, which I don’t think is around anymore. And we met some old Borscht Belt comedians. One of them was Mickey Freeman, who opens our film. Mickey was a great guy. I was living in Los Angeles at the time, but after I interviewed him and got to know him, he used to call me up out of the blue, middle of the week, and just tell me a joke. He said, “That’s for you, Ron,” and then hang up. And it would just make my day, light up my week. He was a quintessential Catskills comedian.
After we interviewed Mickey, we knew that we wanted to go after bigger names. So, Jerry Lewis was really key to us. And then the other comedian that we really wanted to get was Sid Caesar. Jerry was in San Diego at the time. Sid was in Beverly Hills. It was very difficult with Sid because he was ill. But he would, we’d call him up and say, “How are you feeling, Sid?” And on that day, if he said, “I’m okay, come on over.” But he really labored. He was bedridden, practically, and he labored to sit with us. To me, Sid is a hero, and that was just a wonderful experience, the stories he shared.
I can tell you a quick story about Jerry. We filmed him on his boat. And when we were assembling ourselves on the pier, we heard a loud ship blast. It sounded like the Titanic, a huge ship blast. And his agent comes running to us and says, “That’s Jerry, and he wants you on the boat now”. So, we knew what we were in for with Jerry Lewis. We got on the boat, assembled our cameras and their crew, and everything. And he had this can of Coke right in the foreground. And I said, “Jerry, would you mind removing that? We can’t show that.” He started yelling at me. “You think I don’t know that? I’ve been doing this since you were in diapers,” and all that stuff. But I will tell you that towards the end of the conversation, which went on for about an hour, Jerry said, “That’s it? You’re leaving?” He was ready to do more. He enjoyed it. We didn’t talk about Dean. We didn’t talk about his film career. We talked about his childhood, his parents, how he grew up, and the experience of performing in the mountains. So, that’s generally the reaction we got. This wasn’t a typical interview where we were diving into their careers and their stardom and Hollywood Walk of Fame. We weren’t interested in that. We were interested in how they began.
Robert Klein seemed to be the perfect comedian to host. How did he get involved in the project?
We approached him. Robert was, I think, a natural for us. We took a different approach on this by having an on-camera host. At the time, we didn’t know which way this would go, theatrical or television. And it ended up being both. But Robert was just wonderful. We filmed him in the Roseland Ballroom in Manhattan. I don’t think that exists anymore. We recreated an abandoned Catskill nightclub. So that’s what we did. We put him there. And of course, he has many memories. So, we sort of couched it around his recalling that time period when he was simply a busboy in the Catskills, like a lot of others were.
You obviously want to capture the humor of the era, but it’s a historical documentary. How did you find the balance between those two things?
Well, we wanted to make it a comedic documentary. So, you can’t tell the story of how stand-up comedy began without showing the comedy. The challenge was that there were no cameras up in the Catskills. So, we had to find clips from Ed Sullivan, and we had to find the jokes that they were telling on these variety shows and other shows that were the same jokes. In fact, a lot was stealing from each other. But they were pretty much the same jokes. We wanted to make this funny and show the kind of humor.
It wasn’t just telling jokes, but it was trying to depict what was Catskills humor? What is Borscht Belt humor? And towards the end, we filmed other comics, like Mark Maron. He was just doing little stand-ups and nightclubs in the village when we covered him. But sort of embodied where Catskills’ humor went in some of the styles and jokes that he told. Wendy Liebman, same thing. So, they all agreed to participate because they were the inheritors. And we’re honoring their forebears. So that’s, that’s why we included them.
What was the research process? What kind of team did you have behind this?
Well, I worked with a writer, Lawrence Richards, who’s no longer with us, and he basically started this concept. Most of this idea was founded on what he brought to the table. He did a lot of research. I can’t even tell you where he dug up things. We worked with Phil Brown from the Catskills Institute. We went up to the Catskills a number of times. I made a trip, especially because my in-laws lived in Monticello. I hung out at Kutcher’s Hotel. I spent time with Mark and Helen, of the Kutcher family, talking to them and finding out more about the history. I learned about Mark’s grandfather, who I believe started the hotel.
A lot of them started as farmers. He grew up, up there. So, descendants grew up on these farms, and they took borders and then they became bigger hotels and resorts. It’s quite interesting how this all began. A lot of these Jews came from the old country and knew farming from there and then brought those farming skills up to the mountains. But many couldn’t make it as farmers, because it’s tough landscape up there. It’s mountainous, and they’re pretty severe winners. So, they managed to make it in hospitality. And then from there, entertainment.
Were there any facts that you discovered along the way that surprised you?
I didn’t know exactly how a lot of these big names began. I would have simply assumed, “Oh, they cross over from vaudeville,” or something like that. But there was a time period between vaudeville and television, and that’s really what we focused on. What piqued my interest was the fact that Jews couldn’t go to hotels as far back as the 20s, 30s, even 40s, maybe even 50s, in upstate New York. It’s one of the impetuses as to why they created their own resorts. That was surprising. You know, I’d seen movies like Gentlemen’s Agreement, and I knew that there was certainly discrimination and anti-Semitism in the country. But I didn’t realize that the Catskills were founded on the fact that Jews could not stay in other places.
Also, the lack of air conditioning, because in New York City, there was no air conditioning. A lot of these people were middle-class or lower-class, and they came from Brooklyn and the Bronx, and Manhattan, and they ended up there for the summer. I love the stories about what it was like for the women and the kids to experience summers. Husbands would come up on the weekends. There was a lot of, how should I say? They called them the ‘bungalow bunnies.’ These were women who had extramarital affairs. I don’t know if it was out of boredom or what, but they were there for the week, and a lot of busboys and waiters took advantage of that.
Well, I don’t want to take up any more of your time. I know you’re, I’m sure you’re very busy. Thank you for taking the time and good luck.
Thanks, Jeff.
For more information on the Borscht Belt Film Fest can be found at www.borschtbeltfilmfest.org.