Tamiment

Tamiment, first known as Camp Tamiment, was an American resort located in the Pocono Mountains of Pike County, Pennsylvania, which existed from 1921 through 2005. Originally established by the Rand School of Social Science in New York City as a Socialist camp and summer school, Tamiment developed into a regular resort and later fell under private ownership. The Tamiment Playhouse entertained guests with weekly revues and served as a training ground for many prominent Broadway and TV performers and writers. Playhouse alumni have included Danny Kaye, Imogene Coca, Jerome Robbins, Carol Burnett, Woody Allen, Neil Simon, and many others. Tamiment was a popular resort for Jewish singles and has been referred to as "a progressive version of the Catskills..." and "...a pillar of the Poconos tourist industry."

The Tamiment golf course, designed by Robert Trent Jones, was ranked among the top 200 U. S. golf courses by Golf Digest magazine.

The resort was liquidated in 2005 to make room for a residential condominium development.

History

Background

The Rand School of Social Science was a Socialist institution in New York City, founded in 1906 and governed by the American Socialist Society.[1] The school enrolled five thousand students annually between 1910 and 1920 but often did not have enough capital to cover operating costs.[2] The Lusk Committee, led by New York state senator Clayton Lusk, was investigating what it regarded as "subversive activities" and attempted to close the Rand School by injunction.[2] The school fought and won a costly two-year battle to remain open but, in 1920, its operating capital was at an all-time low.[3] Bertha Mailly, executive secretary of the Rand School, held many fundraisers and was credited for keeping the school afloat.[3] She conceived of the idea of establishing a summer school and camp that would generate enough revenue to support both itself and the Rand School.[3]

In the summer of 1919 Mailly had visited Unity House in Bushkill, PA, a resort operated by a local chapter of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU).[3] While she was there she learned that an adjoining 2,100 acre property was for sale, promptly made a deposit, and successfully raised the money to buy the land and establish a new camp.[3] The facility was named Tamiment, an old Native American word for the area,[3] and would be located less than one hundred miles from New York City.[4]

Establishment and development

Camp Tamiment opened on June 21, 1921, and its first visitors were 65 members of Local Allentown, a Socialist party.[5] The camp was designed "to diffuse a general knowledge of literature, art and science through the medium of lectures, publications, and dramatic performances."[6] It earned an operating profit in its first year and became self-sustaining after 1923.[7] Between 1937 and 1956, Camp Tamiment funded between half and three-quarters of the Rand School's annual operating budget.[8] In December 1922 Mailly referred to the camp as a "great aid and inspiration" for the Rand School.[9] She said, "It enabled us to give the young men and women the thing they need, the joy of living to which they are entitled. They study with us. We teach them how to think in the right direction and in their leisure hours, we prove to them that we know how to play."[9]

Camp Tamiment was described as "...the first attempt of Socialists and working people to make for themselves a place for rest, recreation and vacationing."[4] A corporation identified as the People's Educational Camp Society (PECS) was created for the purpose of operating the camp.[10] The PECS board had envisioned Camp Tamiment as a country summer school, but Mailly and manager Ben Josephson chose to turn the facility into a regular resort.[11] Political subjects were progressively downplayed while swimming, tennis, and calisthenics became the most popular activities.[11]

Tamiment served as a destination for Jewish singles from the working and emerging middle class[12] and would be referred to as "a progressive version of the Catskills..."[13] The facility included a 90-acre lake[14] and, in 1947, Tamiment opened an 18-hole golf course designed by Robert Trent Jones.[6][15] The golf course has been ranked among the top 200 U. S. courses by Golf Digest magazine[16] and was the site of an annual golf tournament hosted by prominent entertainer Danny Kaye.[17] Josephson described the Tamiment facility as "a summer resort that has attained top rank in the field, outranking by far many of the privately owned vacation places in both beauty and business."[6]

The camp did not consider itself just a recreational enterprise as it had educational and cultural programs.[8] All of the profits were reinvested in the camp or donated to charitable or educational institutions.[8] These factors allowed Camp Tamiment to have tax-exempt status, which significantly contributed to its success.[8] Author Lawrence Squeri wrote, "Once Tamiment became a money-making resort, it also became a paradox. Ostensibly an institution devoted to the undermining of capitalism, it sought to make money in the best capitalist tradition."[11] In the 1950s, resort guests might not have been aware of Tamiment's political agenda as it was sponsoring seminars offsite in New York City.[18]

Later years and dissolution

The government took notice of Tamiment's tax exemption and would later characterize it as "one of the largest, most modern, and most profitable resorts in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania."[8] In 1956 the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) revoked Tamiment's tax-exempt status, ruling that the People's Educational Camp Society's main business was running a summer resort for profit and that its social agenda was secondary.[19] The camp decided to acquire the title to the Rand School Library in order to continue its tax exemption.[8] (Besides the library, PECS would also acquire ownership of the Rand School and close it down.)[8]

After multiple court appeals, PECS lost its case for tax-exemption and, in 1963, Tamiment's parent corporation had a tax bill of almost ninety thousand dollars.[19] On September 18, 1963, Josephson recommended to the PECS board that the resort be sold,[19] and on June 28, 1965, Camp Tamiment was acquired by a Delaware corporation in a multimillion-dollar deal.[14] At the time of the sale, Tamiment was described as "one of the largest resort hotels in the country..." and included over 150 buildings, over 300 employees, a playhouse that could seat 1,000 people, and a dining room that could seat 1,200.[14]

During the 1970s and 1980s, stars Joan Rivers, Frankie Valli, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Alan King, and Donny and Marie Osmond performed at Tamiment.[20] Las Vegas entertainer Wayne Newton purchased the resort in 1982 for a reported $15 million and planned to make it the flagship property in a national chain of timeshare hotels.[21] He later sold Tamiment.[22] Lawrence Squeri wrote in 2002 that the facility "no longer has the New York liberal Jewish flavor that made it unique."[19]

In March 2005 Tamiment owner Suong Hong sold the resort for $64 million to developers Greystone Capital Partners of Paoli, Pennsylvania.[17] The firm started auctioning off Tamiment's contents on May 14 with the intention of demolishing the resort buildings.[17] As of 2011, Greystone was planning to build over 200 residential condominiums on the 2,200 acre property.[20] At the time of its sale, Tamiment was considered "...a pillar of the Poconos tourist industry."[20]

Tamiment Playhouse

Max Liebman became theater director at Tamiment in the early 1930s and created an original stage revue every Saturday night during the 10-week summer season.[12][23] His shows combined music and dance with comedy, and the people Liebman hired included Danny Kaye, Sylvia Fine, Imogene Coca, Betty Garrett, Jules Munshin, Herbert Ross, and Jerome Robbins.[24] The Broadway musical The Straw Hat Revue was based on his Tamiment revues from the 1939 season and had a large cast of Tamiment players.[25] In the 1950s Liebman directed the TV variety show Your Show of Shows, utilizing his Tamiment experience to put on a weekly live revue.[23][26] He stated, "I was really preparing myself for television at Tamiment. I was doing what you might call television without cameras..."[27] After Liebman left Tamiment, the playhouse continued to present weekly summer revues until 1960, when audiences were dwindling.[25]

Tamiment Playhouse was referred to as the "Poconos boot camp for Broadway writers and performers."[28] Broadway and TV producers watched the shows there and recruited new talent.[29] Performers Barbara Cook, Carol Burnett, Bea Arthur, Larry Kert, and others gained experience at Tamiment.[25] Cook considered the playhouse to be a "very important step" for her, as she developed the confidence to perform on Broadway.[25] Noted choreographer Robbins learned the importance of timing and acquired the skill to quickly assemble material at Tamiment.[30] Composer Jerry Bock spent three summers there which he said helped prepare him for the experience of reworking a musical in pre-Broadway tryouts.[31] Bock stated, “…How do you get to Broadway? Practice, at Tamiment!”[25] Neil Simon's first theater work were the sketches he wrote with his brother Danny Simon for Tamiment Playhouse shows.[32]

Woody Allen acted and directed for the first time at Tamiment, where he also went from writing jokes to writing sketch comedy.[29] Authors Willis Hall and Keith Waterhouse wrote, "Allen bemoaned the fact that he was not able to sell any of his Tamiment material, yet many of the ideas and themes formulated at Tamiment were seminal in terms of his later work..."[33]

Once Upon A Mattress was originally presented as a one-act musical at the Tamiment Playhouse in August 1958.[34] The show had been written by resident Tamiment writers[34] and was designed to accommodate the lead players there.[25] After being a hit with hotel guests, Once Upon A Mattress was significantly expanded for Off-Broadway, later moved to Broadway, and became one of the most frequently produced musicals in the United States.[35]

References

  1. ↑ Lee, Algernon (July 28, 1919). "Rand School Kept Torch Of Truth And Knowledge Since Its Inception". The New York Call.
  2. 1 2 Swanson, Dorothy (April 1989). "The Tamiment Institute/Ben Josephson Library and the Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University". Library Quarterly. 59 (2): 152–153. In JSTOR
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Swanson, p. 153.
  4. 1 2 Feigenbaum, William (July 21, 1921). "Camp Tamiment Exceeds Promise of Press Agent". The New York Call.
  5. ↑ "Camp Tamiment Opens With 65 Picnickers From Allentown, Pa.". The New York Call. June 20, 1921.
  6. 1 2 3 Stutz, Bruce (1992). Natural Lives Modern Times. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 323.
  7. ↑ Squeri, Lawrence (2002). Better in the Poconos: The Story of Pennsylvania's Vacationland. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. p. 132. ISBN 0271021578.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Swanson, p. 154.
  9. 1 2 "Call and Rand School To Win Together, Says Mrs. Mailly". The New York Call. December 3, 1922.
  10. ↑ Squeri, p. 132
  11. 1 2 3 Squeri, p. 133
  12. 1 2 Sweet, Jeffrey (November 2008). "The Tamiment Connection". American Theatre: 74.
  13. ↑ Nesteroff, Kliph (2015). The Comedians. New York: Grove Press. Chapter Four. ISBN 978-0-8021-2398-5.
  14. 1 2 3 "Tamiment is sold in multimillion dollar deal". The Pocono Record. July 3, 1965.
  15. ↑ Hansen, James (2014). A Difficult Par. New York: Penguin Group. Appendix A. ISBN 978-0-698-15700-2.
  16. ↑ Belden, Tom (September 28, 1986). "Golfing In The Poconos Offers Tees With A View". Philadelphia Inquirer. Retrieved January 26, 2016.
  17. 1 2 3 Devlin, Ron (May 15, 2005). "Tamiment bidders find bargains full of memories". The Morning Call. Allentown, Pennsylvania. Archived from the original on 2010-10-03. Retrieved 2014-02-14.
  18. ↑ Squeri, p. 180
  19. 1 2 3 4 Squeri, p. 203
  20. 1 2 3 Sadowski, Michael (January 7, 2011). "Lehman officials will vote today on plan to turn resort into condominium complex". Pocono Record. Retrieved January 31, 2016.
  21. ↑ "Wayne Newton plunges into the resort business". New Castle News. May 28, 1983.
  22. ↑ Squeri, p. 253
  23. 1 2 "Max Liebman, TV Producer, Is Dead". The New York Times. July 24, 1981. Retrieved 2016-01-18.
  24. ↑ Sweet, p. 75.
  25. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Sweet, p. 79.
  26. ↑ Sweet, p. 76.
  27. ↑ Nachman, Gerald (2003). Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s. New York: Pantheon Books. p. 113. ISBN 0375410309.
  28. ↑ Smith, Cecil; Litton, Glenn (1981). Musical Comedy In America (Second ed.). New York: Routledge. p. 226. ISBN 0-87830-564-5.
  29. 1 2 Evanier, David (2015). Woody: The Biography. New York: St. Martin's Press. p. 94. ISBN 978-1-250-04726-7.
  30. ↑ Campbell, Karen (October 12, 2004). "The footsteps of a great choreographer". The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved September 21, 2015.
  31. ↑ Lambert, Philip (2011). To Broadway, To Life!. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 32–35. ISBN 978-0-19-539007-0.
  32. ↑ Simon, Neil (1998). Collected Plays of Neil Simon Volume IV. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks. p. 361. ISBN 978-0-684-84785-6.
  33. ↑ Evanier, p. 96
  34. 1 2 Barer, Marshall (1995), "Breakthrough Casting In Once Upon A Mattress", in Viner, Michael; Frankel, Terrie Maxine, Tales from the Casting Couch, Phoenix Books, ISBN 1-59777-642-4
  35. ↑ Wright, William (December 15, 1996). "A Broadway Scion Who Rules with a Song". The New York Times.

Further reading

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