Yeah, I know, just what the planet needs, yet another Blog. But this one is the OFFICIAL Blog of Illustration-ist, cartoonist, humor- mongerist, greasy Stooge-Shemp Howard-enthusiast, Danny Thomas glass coffee table ponderist Drew Friedman! Happier now?
In 1959, the popular theatrical caricaturist Sam Norkin was hired by Brown's Hotel & Country Club in Loch Sheldrake, New York, (the Catskill Mountains, aka the Borscht Belt), to create a large mural depicting the beloved comedian and movie star Jerry Lewis in his various personas. The mural would hang in the lobby of Brown's "Jerry Lewis Theater Club" until the hotel was eventually sold in 1988 in a foreclosure auction. It was converted into a condominium complex in the mid-1990's, and the mural was painted over. The condominiums burned down in 2012.
Jerry Lewis had a long association with the hotel's owners, Charles and Lillian Brown, beginning in his formative years in the early forties when he worked there as a waiter/tummler, perfecting his comedy craft.
Jerry Lewis remained friends with the Brown family for decades and continued to perform for them yearly at their hotel/resort. His longtime bandleader Lou Brown was also a member of the Hotel's Brown family. Sam Norkin died in 2011.
Thanks to John Wendler
Jerry & Patti Lewis sing a duet at Browns in 1955
on the road to Browns
a postcard featuring a crowd of sophisticated
"Borscht Belters" gathering outside the Jerry Lewis Theater Club at Brown's
another postcard featuring the inside of the Jerry Lewis Theater Club
the Jerry Lewis Theatre Club stage featured two giant happy/sad Jerry
heads on each side of the stage:
Happy
Sad
Vacationing couples and friends posing in front of the mural in 1963, before the painting would be enhanced with more color. Norkin's signature and date can be seen.
(Thanks to John Wendler for these photos)
The Jerry Lewis mural in 1986 with added and changed colors, two years before
the hotel closed. Photo by Russel Harvey
a Brown's Hotel ashtray
a Browns napkin
Brown's hotel soap
Jerry & Wilber the penguin in Brown's Hotel lobby, 1955
Jerry dressed as a waiter serving soup in Brown's cafateria, circa 1956
The late Borscht Belt comedian Joey Adams (Joseph Abramowitz, 1911-1999), was a sometimes vaudeville, nightclub and TV comic, a sometimes stage actor, a sometimes comedy/joke/gag writer, a sometimes showbiz historian, a sometimes film actor, a sometimes newspaper columnist, a sometimes radio host, a sometimes dial a comic, and a sometimes Friars club Roastmaster. He was also the husband to society/gossip columnist Cindy Adams, a friend of celebrities and politicians... and most prolifically, an author of many, many books.
In Oct 1955, The Honeymooners starring Jackie Gleason as Brooklyn bus driver Ralph Kramden debuted as a weekly filmed sitcom on CBS television, Saturdays at 8.30. The show lasted just one year, producing 39 episodes ("The Classic 39") before it was canceled by CBS (finally trounced by the Perry Como show on NBC). The Honeymooners is of course now considered a television comedy classic, arguably the funniest show ever.
William Golden, the creator of the iconic CBS "eye" was CBS's creative director in the fifties and hired a number of top illustrators and designers to create artwork on behalf of the TV network. Included among them were fashion illustrator Rene Bouche who created a portrait of Jack Benny that would become the famous opening logo for TheJack Benny Program, and the famed caricaturist Sam Berman, the creator of the opening caricature sculptures for the 1937 screwball film comedy classic "Nothing Sacred", who would draw a circular wide-eyed Jackie Gleason head inside the Moon, rising above Brooklyn to the strains of Gleason's "You're My Greatest Love" at the beginning of each episode of The Honeymooners...
For years I speculated about who the artist was who drew that iconic caricature, yet, typically, no artist credit was ever given for the image in the show's closing credits, nor in any of CBS's Honeymooners publicity. There has also never been a single reference or mention of who drew that iconic image in any of the Jackie Gleason biographies or Honeymooners books, nor in any caricature or television history book. Apparently, not even worth mentioning or researching.
I've blogged at length on the career of the once celebrated, now mostly forgotten artist Sam Berman and based on his distinctive, lush yet economic style and his work for television advertising/publicity in the fifties, all indications finally pointed to him clearly being the artist. With the confirmation of caricaturist historian Zach Trenholm, (and, to my knowledge), for the first time I'm disclosing it here.
