Brandeis University Magazine - Summer 2008.

Women’s
Writes
Four Brandeis
authors help
shape herstory.
B
randeis community members are not just literate—they’re literary, endlessly crafting volumes on topics that span the alphabet from aesthetics to
zoology. In the past year, this magazine’s Books pages featured notices of
more than 100 recently published works by alumni and faculty members. Sometimes, though, themes emerge that pique more than the usual old-school curiosity. The four interviews that follow shines the spotlight on four literata who put
their keen eyes to work witnessing women’s lives. Their vantage points range from
the personal (Tania Grossinger, Growing Up at Grossinger’s) to the familial (Sophie
Freud, Living in the Shadow of the Freud Family) and from the cultural (Joyce
Antler, You Never Call! You Never Write! A History of the Jewish Mother) to the imaginary (Theresa Rebeck, Three Girls and Their Brother). Eerily, there are crosscurrents. Several pages of Antler’s book, for instance, give lively description to the
Catskills resort of Grossinger’s childhood; consideration by Antler of oedipal presumptions about Jewish moms and their sons relies on basic understandings drawn
from Freud; and Rebeck’s novel—the first for the award-winning playwright—
illuminates the cult of celebrity that is touched upon indirectly in the three nonfiction works. Together, the four provide a powerful look at female experience in
the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Photography by Sarah Shatz ’97
Catskill
Tania Grossinger ’56
Mountain High
A
fter summer vacation in the 1950s, Tania Grossinger ’56
would return to Brandeis and talk about the friends she had
hung out with over the summer. But unlike her classmates,
she counted among her friends singer Eddie Fisher, heavyweight boxing champion Rocky Marciano, baseball player Jackie Robinson, and
opera singer Jan Peerce.
For Tania Grossinger, home was the world-famous Grossinger’s
Hotel in New York’s Catskill Mountains, which in the 1950s accommodated tens of thousands of guests annually. Owned by her second
cousins, Jennie and Harry Grossinger, the hotel was also home to
Tania’s mother, Karla Grossinger, the resort’s social hostess, who was
reputedly able to greet visitors in thirteen languages.
Grossinger chronicles her unusual, dramatic upbringing in her
memoir, Growing Up at Grossinger’s. Originally published in 1975, the
book was re-released this June by Skyhouse Publishing, which declares
it “a contemporary classic.”
Although the hotel closed in 1986, Grossinger says interest in the
popular resort area—so dear to Jewish vacationers that it became affec-
“Growing up at Grossinger’s, I learned to
think for myself and not to envy money or
possessions. I learned what I didn’t want
to be like. Some people never learn that in
a lifetime.”
tionately known as “the Borscht Belt”—has been increasing as younger
adults become curious about their parents’ early lives. She also credits
the era’s cachet to the perennial allure of Dirty Dancing. The 1987 film,
which featured Jennifer Grey, Patrick Swayze, and Jerry Orbach, was
based on the story of a dance teacher at Grossinger’s, and Eleanor
Bergstein, Dirty Dancing’s writer, used information from Growing Up
at Grossinger’s in the film.
While Tania rubbed elbows with the rich and famous, her life was
not always glamorous. She and her mother shared a room, and Tania
quickly learned that the folks that staff kids called “LPGs,” or Lousy
Paying Guests, always came first and were always right. If guests
included a girl her age, she had to socialize with her, even when she
didn’t want to. She and the other hotel children circumvented this
problem by taking young visitors into the tunnels underneath the
hotel. There they would play hide-and-seek, making scary noises until
the frightened newcomers went running to their mothers, vowing
never to rub elbows with the staff children again.
18
Brandeis University Magazine | Summer ’08
By Tana Goldberg
Although her formal schooling took place in Liberty, New York,
where a staff car transported the children each day, Tania received quite
an extracurricular education at Grossinger’s. She learned to play the
trumpet from a member of the hotel band. She picked up basketball
tips from university players who formed Grossinger’s team each summer. But she never learned to clean a room, make a bed, or roast a
chicken, because those tasks were always performed by the housekeeping and kitchen staffs.
The downside to growing up at Grossinger’s was a lack of privacy.
Her mother, as well as the aunts and uncles of the Grossinger family,
were very busy, and Tania had no traditional sense of family life.
Still, she learned some important life lessons at an early age.
“Growing up at Grossinger’s, I learned to think for myself and not
to envy money or possessions. I learned what I didn’t want to be like.
Some people never learn that in a lifetime,” she says.
After completing high school at fifteen, Tania was admitted to
Brandeis, where she frequently received care packages made by Rocky
Marciano’s mother, who lived in Brockton, Massachusetts, and felt bad
when she heard Grossinger had never had a home-cooked meal. One of
the packages was delivered to the dorm by the boxing champion himself.
To the campus’s delight, Tania used the trumpet-playing skills she
had honed in the Catskills to form a Brandeis mambo band, Tania y
sus Mamboleros. Her group often entertained soldiers at Fort Devens.
Some things she had learned at Grossinger’s got her into trouble,
though. For example, a hypnotist who entertained at the resort had
shared with her the skills of the trade. When Grossinger’s Brandeis
roommate expressed skepticism, Tania hypnotized her, using the
word “strawberry” as a trigger. The next day, as the two girls attended
a large history class in Ford Hall, Grossinger whispered “strawberry,”
and suddenly her roommate stood up and belted out “The Star
Spangled Banner,” she says.
That night, Dr. Abraham Maslow, chairman of the psychology
department, visited Grossinger in her dorm. When she told him she
wanted to major in psychology, he said, “I’d better become your
adviser, because, if not, you can get us all in trouble.”
While attending on a full scholarship, Grossinger also worked many
hours each week in the university’s public relations department. In that
role, she was chosen to be the student tour guide of Massachusetts
senator John F. Kennedy when he first visited Brandeis.
In the years following graduation, Grossinger married briefly and
built a career in public relations and as a writer. She had her own PR
agency for a while and was one of the first publicists to put authors
on talk shows. Over the course of her career, she worked with clients
ranging from feminist author Betty Friedan to Playboy magazine.
As a travel writer, food writer, and restaurant consultant, she has
penned articles for national newspapers and magazines. Currently
she is the travel and lifestyle correspondent for Sally Jessy Raphael’s
new nationally syndicated radio, XM satellite radio, and Internet
talk show, TalkNet.
“This means I travel any place I want in the world and then go on
the air and talk about it,” says Grossinger, who chronicles her latest
projects on her Web site, www.taniagrossinger.com.
“When I visit other hotels, I don’t compare them to Grossinger’s,” she
says, “because no hotel was ever like Grossinger’s, and no hotel ever will be.
I’ve never quite agreed with those who say you can’t go home again. On
the contrary, I spend more time wondering if you can ever really leave.”
Tana Goldberg is a freelance writer based in Woburn, Massachusetts. She
also serves as director of communications at Solomon Schechter Day School
in Newton, Massachusetts.