The Sour Cream Sierras Of New York

Every year, mainly between the Fourth of July and Labor Day, 3 million visitors pile into the Catskill Mountains in southeastern New York state for fun, games and romance. Unlike vacation areas elsewhere that draw from the public at large, the Catskills attract ethnic groups. There are sections of the Catskills catering to Italians, Irish, Greeks, Poles and Jews. Of all these, it is the Jewish section, variously called the Borscht Belt, the Sour Cream Sierras and the Mountains, that has the most �lan, is the most famous—Danny Kaye, Sid Caesar, Phil Silvers, Sam Levenson, Shelley Winters, Jerry Lewis and Robert Merrill are among the many entertainers who got their start there—and the most important.

The Mountains attract vacationers from all over the world, and not just with singers, dancers and comedians. The accommodations arc generally excellent, the food plentiful (and good, if you like Jewish cooking) and there is a wealth of sports facilities, supervised by current or former champions. At Grossinger's, the best known of the area's hotels, Mike Souchak is the golf pro, Florence Chadwick is the resident aquatic director and a continuous flow of prizefighters, ice skaters, skiers and basketball players comes to visit, train or perform. Rocky Marciano, Joey Maxim, Ingemar Johansson, Billy Conn and Gene Fullmer are among those who have trained at the G; so have Olympic Figure Skaters Tenley Albright, Carol Heiss and Hayes Alan Jenkins and David Jenkins; for almost 30 years, Olympic Speed Skating Champion Irving Jaffee has run the winter sports program.

At the Concord, the G's chief competitor, Buster Crabbe is "director of water activities," Jimmy Demaret is resident golf pro. The Concord was the first resort to use an artificial snow machine for winter skiing. Last summer, in the middle of a heat wave, the hotel froze its outdoor skating rink, permitting guests to skate in their bathing suits. Needless to say, the Concord also has an indoor rink, as do many other hotels. And the number of golf courses, tennis and volleyball courts, swimming pools (indoor and out), archery ranges and softball diamonds—concentrated in a 20-mile-by-20-mile heartland in Sullivan and Ulster counties—is staggering. There is now even a bustling harness-racing track—Monticello Raceway—built specifically for the resort trade and billed, in typical Catskill style, as The Mighty M.

At the height of the summer season the Mountains are the most densely populated resort area in the U.S. There are some 500 hotels and 800 bungalow colonies and boarding houses, ranging in elegance and expense from Grossinger's to the so-called kochaleins. The word, in Yiddish, means "cook alone"; a typical kochalein is an establishment with rooms for family groups and a large communal kitchen where each guest can cook his own meals.

But Grossinger's and the Concord indisputably are the Mountains' two pacesetters. Their innovations become part of general Catskill style and culture and often spread around the country. (Tony and Lucille, the Grossinger dance team, introduced the mambo to the U.S.) The two hotels are in a constant battle for supremacy, a rivalry often compared to the one between Macy's and Gimbels. Grossinger's, 15 miles northwest of the Concord, is big but with a haimeshe (homey) atmosphere and puts the stress on the individual guest. The Concord is bigger but relatively impersonal and aggressive. The Concord management is always boasting that it has surpassed Grossinger's on any number of fronts and will soon overtake it on all the rest. As Comedian Buddy Hackett, a Concord favorite, told an audience there one night last summer, "Years ago, you couldn't mention the Grossinger at the Concord. Now what's another motel up the road?"

Grossinger's has been the subject of a book, Waldorf in the Catskills , and the inspiration for a film, Holiday Inn. During World War II a bomber was named after it. The fame of the hotel has spread abroad: the Palace Hotel in St. Moritz, which caters to Niarchos, Onassis and the like, is known as the Greek Grossinger's. When King Baudouin of Belgium toured the U.S., Grossinger's was one of the places he wanted to visit. He did, spending a weekend incognito, and, according to Paul Grossinger, the executive vice-president and general manager, "he loved it." Baron Edmond de Rothschild also has visited Grossinger's incognito.

Many tributes have been paid to Jennie Grossinger, the president of the hotel and the matriarch of the Mountains. A trim blonde who looks younger than her age—she is 70—Jennie was the inspiration for a song entitled, appropriately, Jennie, that was first sung by Eddie Cantor and Eddie Fisher. (Cantor "discovered" Fisher at Grossinger's.) She has been the subject of the television program, This Is Your Life (a copy of the tape is rerun for guests regularly), was named Noble Woman of the Year in 1962 by the Baltimore Hebrew Noble Ladies Aid Society, is a fellow of Brandeis University and holds an honorary degree from Wilberforce University. To most visitors she personifies Grossinger's.

Grossinger's sits on a hilltop overlooking the town of Liberty. The grounds sprawl over 1,000 acres, encompassing an 18-hole championship golf course; a lake; an airport, where Henry Cabot Lodge, in company with Governor Nelson Rockefeller, a frequent visitor, alighted for a speech at the beginning of his campaign for the vice-presidency; an outdoor Olympic-size swimming pool; a toboggan slide; a ski slope; a riding academy; a post office, the presence of which allows the hotel to stamp all mail "Grossinger's" instead of Liberty; a skating rink; a printing plant that churns out menus, announcements and 100,000 copies of the weekly Grossinger News, a euphoric sheet (INDOOR POOL SMASH HIT!!) mailed to former guests; and a garden with signs saying

Please
DO NOT PICK US
WE BLOOM FOR YOUR PLEASURE
thank you THE FLOWERS

The main building, erected in the 1920s, is a vast warren of timbered stucco in the Elizabethan manner. It includes rooms for 325 guests, five lobbies, a nightclub, sundry shops and studios, a coffee shop ("Try our kosher pizza") and a dining room easily the size of two football fields. The lobbies and dining room are paneled in pine.