Grossinger’s Catskill Resort Hotel, the iconic Borscht Belt hotel that inspired the film “Dirty Dancing,” will be the subject of a new scripted TV series.
The series, which is currently in pre-production, is being written by Alan Zwiebel, an early “Saturday Night Live” writer who spent his childhood summers at Grossinger’s, and Harris Salomon, whose producer credits include the “Dr. Ruth Show.”
“The Mountains,” which begins on the Fourth of July weekend in 1950, will join “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” in depicting the heyday of the Jewish Catskills on the small screen. The series is about “the untold, multigenerational story of Jennie and Elaine Grossinger, the formidable matriarchs who transformed a humble Catskills boarding house into an empire of leisure, elegance, and resistance,” according to Deadline.
In its mid-century heyday, the family-run resort was known as “the Waldorf in the Catskills” and hosted up to 150,000 guests a year. Grossinger’s was home to three swimming pools (both indoor and outdoor), a golf course, 600 rooms, and two kosher kitchens — drawing both Jews from New York City and elite non-Jewish guests including Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Robinson and Robert Kennedy.
Many were drawn by the legendary hosting skills of Jennie Grossinger, the resort’s proprietor for most of its existence. Born in 1892 to Asher Selig and Malka Grossinger in Baligrod, in what was then Austria-Hungary (now Poland), she came to the United States in about 1897 with her family. Nearly two decades later, after afew failed business ventures in New York City, her father purchased a 100-acre farm near Liberty, New York, for $450, which the family opened as a modest boarding house. For many years, Jennie worked as the hostess, Malka as the cook.
Eventually, Jennie Grossinger took over management of the resort. Under her leadership, the humble boarding house upgraded to a luxurious resort with 36 buildings. Eventually, Grossinger’s had its own post office and air strip, and the resort, which had its own ski slope, became the first in the world to use artificial snow for commercial purposes in 1952.
Like other Catskills resorts, Grossinger’s was most popular in the post-World War II era, when Jews were excluded from many mainstream American holiday destinations. Jews — and Jewish New Yorkers, in particular — built vacation spots in parts of Sullivan, Ulster and Orange counties, eventually transforming the Catskills into a hotspot for Jewish culture and community, earning the nickname the Borscht Belt.
Many Jewish comedians and entertainers got their start performing at Borscht Belt resorts, including such as Mel Brooks, Jackie Mason, Red Buttons and Joan Rivers. Actor and singer Eddie Fisher’s career began at Grossinger’s — legend has it that Eddie Cantor “discovered” Fisher while he was performing at the resort. (Fisher later married his first wife, actress Debbie Reynolds, at Grossinger’s.)
All of this might be depicted in “The Mountains,” its creators have indicated.
“This series isn’t a reimagining,” Salomon told Deadline. “It’s a resurrection. Of a place. Of a people. Of an America that danced, fought, loved, and built something beautiful in the mountains.”
In 1964, following the death of her husband, Harry, Jennie turned over the day-to-day operations of the resort over to their children. After Jennie died in 1972, her daughter Elaine Grossinger Etess and her son, Paul Grossinger, assumed ownership of the resort where they had grown up.
“Barney Ross, a Jewish boxer from Chicago who came to train because he kept kosher, put us on the map,” Elaine told Hadassah magazine in 2019 about growing up at the resort. “We had many notable guests — sports people, politicians, ambassadors, etc. Top singers and comedians — Tony Bennett, Alan King, Milton Berle, Red Buttons and many more — headlined the entertainment. The Eddie Fisher-Debbie Reynolds wedding in 1955 brought a lot of publicity. Israeli President Chaim Weizmann spent six weeks in the hotel to recuperate from an eye operation and became good friends with my mother.”
But the popularity of the Catskills vacations began to decline by the 1970s as airline travel increased and non-Jewish country clubs and resorts began to admit Jewish patrons.
Grossinger’s closed for good in 1986. In 2018, the then-owner of the property hoped to revive the resort as a hotel and spa, but the project did not materialize. Last month, following a 2022 fire that destroyed a building on the grounds, a South Florida-based golf and luxury lifestyle residential development company purchased the resort and its adjacent land for $14.75 million.
Recent years have seen a renewed interest in Borscht Belt nostalgia, motivated, in part, by the Catskills episodes in the recent Prime Video hit series “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” Coming up on July 26 and 27, the third Borscht Belt Festival hosted by the Borscht Belt Museum, which was founded in 2023, will take place in Ellenville, New York.
Today, the region still sees plenty of Jewish vacationers, though the style of vacationing is different: The clientele is mostly Orthodox visitors, and instead of large, centralized resorts, they typically spend the summer in bungalow colonies.
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