{"id":112098,"date":"2026-07-23T16:57:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T23:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forallevents.com\/reviews\/?p=112098"},"modified":"2026-07-23T16:57:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T23:57:08","slug":"documentary-in-jewish-film-fest-depicts-borscht-belt-mega-success-grossingers-resort","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forallevents.com\/reviews\/documentary-in-jewish-film-fest-depicts-borscht-belt-mega-success-grossingers-resort\/","title":{"rendered":"Documentary in Jewish film fest depicts Borscht Belt mega-success, Grossinger\u2019s resort"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Snapshots of Grossinger family are featured in documentary. Screenshot from We Met at Grossinger\u2019s.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

By WOODY WEINGARTEN<\/strong><\/p>\n

People with a mere two drops of cultural Jewish blood trickling through their veins are still likely to enjoy a new film centering on the heyday of the Catskill Mountains, We Met at Grossinger\u2019s.<\/em><\/p>\n

The historical documentary also focuses on family (the Grossinger\u2019s and everyone else\u2019s), and on kosher food and vacations and corny jokes.<\/p>\n

And anti-Semitism.<\/p>\n

Not to mention Jackie Robinson, Barney Ross, Eleanor Roosevelt, Mel Brooks, The Marvelous<\/em> Mrs. Maisel<\/em>, and name changing.<\/p>\n

Plus a taboggan slide, all-you-can-eat food orgies, and Woodstock.<\/p>\n

The nostalgic documentary virtually guarantees that viewers \u2014 non-Jews included\u00a0\u2014 can smile at its homey (haimish<\/em>) tales and \u201cJewish vibe,\u201d and maybe even once or twice tear up.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s also likely to frustrate, with Borscht Belt stars like Joel Grey being interviewed too rarely live \u2014 and segments with five living members of the Grossinger family not being labeled enough so it\u2019s tough to grok who\u2019s narrating at any given moment.<\/p>\n

The keyword in We Met at Grossinger\u2019s<\/em> could be excess \u2014 excess menu choices, excess sports and dancing and other activities, excess passive entertainment, excess exhaustion, even excess sex.<\/p>\n

All salted with joy, however.<\/p>\n

The 1\u00be-hour doc begins with the notion of the upstate New York resort hotel starting as a place for immigrant Jews and their children \u2014 who\u2019d suffered from deprivation abroad and were still banned from many, many venues in the United States \u2014 to escape from discrimination and the intolerable summer heat of New York City.<\/p>\n

We Met at Grossinger\u2019s<\/em> pulls no punches, referring to signs like \u201cNo Jews or dogs allowed,\u201d in golf and country clubs and so many other venues.<\/p>\n

The film talks of the family beginning with a boarding house with seven rooms that took in $81 a week, then building a nest egg that allowed purchase of a bigger structure down the road. Ultimately, Grossinger\u2019s rested on 1,000 acres on a lake.<\/p>\n

The growth spurts jumpstarted other Borscht Belt folks building \u201ceverything included\u201d complexes that at the area\u2019s peak in the \u201850s included 537 other hotels.<\/p>\n

The hotel\u2019s first turning point, the film indicates, comes when co-founder Jennie Grossinger invites Barney Ross, in effect, to be a \u201cboxer in residence.\u201d Another milestone follows shortly thereafter when she invites Major League Baseball\u2019s black race barrier-buster Jackie Robinson to the facility.<\/p>\n

Later in the documentary, directed by Paula Eiselt, Robinson shows up for television\u2019s first interracial hug in the episode of the groundbreaking Ralph Edwards\u2019 reality show, \u201cThis Is Your Life,\u201d that was a tribute to her.<\/p>\n

\"\"

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (left) is a house guest of Jennie Grossinger. Screenshot from We Met at Grossinger\u2019s.<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

In its mid-section, We Met at Grossinger\u2019s<\/em> details the story of its main character, Jennie, overachiever\/hotel hostess who\u2019d left school after the sixth grade to help her family get enough to eat.<\/p>\n

Also spotlighted are Jennie\u2019s immigrant mother, Malka, who is surprisingly progressive for an Orthodox Jew; and her daughter Elaine, who readily admits she was long angry with her mom because the elder Grossinger had dumped her into the lap of a governess while Jennie made love to a hotel.<\/p>\n

Often and at length.<\/p>\n

Ironically, perhaps, the women form a trifecta of successive empowerment that ran one of the biggest cold-beet-soup and entertainment centers in the mountains.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Actor Debbie Reynolds and singer Eddie Fisher are among the thousands who married at Grossinger\u2019s resort. Screenshot from We Met at Grossinger\u2019s.<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

Throughout the flick, as might be expected, there are talking heads interspersed with short film and TV clips, photo album family shots, gag-lines, and name-dropping, name-dropping, name-dropping.<\/p>\n

Factual tidbits can be amusing when we learn that Jenny\u2019s yummy rye bread made its way onto supermarket racks, and that she compiled a Grossinger\u2019s cookbook even though she has no time to cook.<\/p>\n

We stop, too, for a moment to linger at Dirty Dancing<\/em>, which used Grossinger\u2019s as the inspiration for its location.<\/p>\n

We also are fed references to more modern times \u2014 including the Covid-19 pandemic and Israel\u2019s plight in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

We Met at Grossinger\u2019s, <\/em>which is sold out for tomorrow\u2019s screening in the 46th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (at the Jewish Community Center San Francisco), will be shown again, as the fest\u2019s Closing Night feature, at the Piedmont Theatre in Oakland, on Saturday, Aug. 1.<\/p>\n

The film uses words well to create a mood. It sums things up with these phrases, \u201cWe have made this country a better place, we have actually made this country a funnier place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then it proffers the slightly schmaltzy, feel-good idea that Jewish history has \u201clots of dark moments, but the Borscht Belt was anything but.\u201d<\/p>\n

The title is a bit misleading, of course. We Met at<\/em> Grossinger\u2019s<\/em> sounds like a run-of-the-mill rom-com \u2014 implying, let\u2019s say, an actress like Jennifer Grey, after a botched abortion, runs off with a testosterone-heavy Patrick Swayze \u2014 when, in truth, the doc covers an entire short-lived universe at a time when The American Dream was a good deal more accessible than now.<\/p>\n

Woody Weingarten, a longtime voting member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle, can be contacted by email at\u00a0voodee@sbcglobal.net<\/a> or on his websites, https:\/\/woodyweingarten.com<\/a>and\u00a0https:\/\/vitalitypress.com<\/a>. His books include <\/strong><\/em>Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner\u2019s breast cancer<\/strong><\/em>, aimed at <\/strong><\/em>male caregivers;\u00a0MysteryDates \u2014 How to keep the sizzle in your relationship; The Roving I<\/em>, a compilation of 70 of his newspaper columns; and\u00a0Grampy and His Fairyzona Playmates<\/em>, a whimsical fantasy intended for 6- to 10-year-olds that he co-authored with his then 8-year-old granddaughter.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 By WOODY WEINGARTEN People with a mere two drops of cultural Jewish blood trickling through their veins are still likely to enjoy a new film centering on the heyday…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"yasr_overall_rating":3,"yasr_post_is_review":"","yasr_auto_insert_disabled":"","yasr_review_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-112098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-woody-weingarten"],"yasr_visitor_votes":{"stars_attributes":{"read_only":true,"span_bottom":"