Open Thread

BRG looks like you will never get to experience the champagne glass… the place closed down in 2001!

The Thrills Are Over At Mount Airy Lodge; Once a Favored Honeymoon Retreat, A Troubled Resort Closes Its Doors
By ANDREW JACOBS
Published: Friday, November 2, 2001
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LinkedinDiggFacebookMixxMySpaceYahoo! BuzzPermalinkIn the end, love was no match for the mildew.

After more than a half-century as America’s premier ”honeymoon hideaway,” Mount Airy Lodge, the all-inclusive, star-studded resort where countless couples found passion in a heart-shaped tub, shut its doors this week, a victim of shifting tastes, staggering debt and a less-than-bewitching ambiance. Long before today, when workers began nailing plywood over the windows of the rambling main lodge, much of the 1,200-acre property had fallen into such a shambles that fewer than a third of the 895 faux-gilt rooms were habitable.

”Frankly, the place was so outdated and neglected, it was deplorable,” said Karen Baker, a spokeswoman for Oaktree Capital Management, an investment company. Oaktree took over Mount Airy last year after its longtime owner, Emil Wagner, killed himself rather than see it sold at a sheriff’s auction. Although the resort had been clawing its way back toward solvency, Ms. Baker said, the terror attacks of Sept. 11 kept the faithful at home and pushed the place over the edge.

Notwithstanding its unglamorous demise, many a matron can still blush when recalling nights spent amid floor-to-ceiling mirrors, velvet-swagged canopy beds and shag carpeting so blue and deep, it successfully hid several generations of dirt.

”The food was lousy, but it was a legalized orgy,” said Mickey Freeman, a comedian who often appeared in the Crystal Room, Mount Airy’s 2,000-seat show palace that hosted headliners like Bob Hope, Milton Berle, Connie Francis and Nipsey Russell. ”I used to say, ‘If you break the mirror above the ceiling, you’ll have seven years of bad sex.’ ”

Even if they never played Simon Says by the pool or paddled a boat in the 36-acre artificial lake, plenty of New Yorkers can still sing the tag line to Mount Airy’s once-ubiquitous television jingle, the one that promised a dazzling, fun-filled vacation with outstanding nonstop entertainment. ”All you need to bring is your love for everything,” went the voice-over, ending with the mellifluous ”Your Host With the Most in the Poconos. Beautiful Mount Airy Lodge.” Suzanne Martens, the Czech-born hostess who transformed an eight-room inn into the Poconos’ largest resort, spent heavily on advertising, including the enduring print ad that featured a girl holding a beach ball. (That image, cribbed by Roy Lichtenstein, now hangs at the Museum of Modern Art.)

Mrs. Martens and her nephew, Mr. Wagner, knew their clientele well: hard-working New Yorkers who wanted an easy, inexpensive getaway with relentless distractions. Until the late 1980’s, Mount Airy and its sister resorts, Pocono Gardens Lodge and Strickland’s Mountain Inn, featured a social staff of six, led by the ”Docster,” who would use a whistle to direct guests from the Sports Palace to the ski slopes.

Miko Ventrello, 58, a veteran reservation agent who was helping relocate stranded guests today, provided a sample spiel: ”Indoor/outdoor pools, skiing, snowmobiling, ice-skating, hiking, biking, horseback riding, archery, 18 holes of golf, paddle ball . . .,” she said, pausing only to take a breath. ”You’d never get bored here.”

In its heyday in the 1960’s and 70’s, Mount Airy, a 90-minute drive from Manhattan, was unofficially known as the gentile version of the Catskills’ Concord Hotel, a place that featured polka festivals, all-Irish weekends and all-you-can-eat smorgasbords. ”I like to call it the Daily News demographic,” said Bob Uguccioni, director of the Pocono Mountains Vacation Bureau, who was close to Mrs. Martens and Mr. Wagner. ”This was not the rocking chair set. They wanted glitz, glamour and three meals, similar to the cruise ships of today.”

Ronald Logan, Mount Airy’s manager between 1968 and 1979, helped oversee an ambitious period of expansion, when Mr. Wagner constructed two chairlifts, the golf course and the lake. ”From Memorial Day to Labor Day, you couldn’t get a room,” he said. Nearby hotels gladly absorbed the overflow, and the entire Poconos region prospered.

*rob*(

Rob, Who aside from Ann Margaret, in her twenties, has ever been inside a champagne glass?
Honetly, I think you need to read more than just Leviticus to set you right.
I’ll tell you this, had the ancient prophets known about champagne, or glass, or Ann Margaret, I am sure they would have disappoved of it all!!!

Not sure about soap, but I saw something involving the transfer of cola and then something else involving what appeared to be at least a three foot lei….

Any body ever seen the soapy shows in bangkok???

BRG i have no idea. the poconos now is the new ghetto actually. i think mt airy lodge is now an SRO.

*rob*