The NY Times has an interesting article today about Krazy Tyrone, ne Paul Krohn, who is the last of the Catskills “tummlers,” (pronounced TOOM-ler, with the oo as in look, it is derived from the Yiddish word for noisemaker) the in-house jesters whose sole job is to keep hotel guests amused before, during and after the all-you-can eat meals. Alan King, Danny Kaye, Billy Crystal, Jerry Lewis and Jackie Mason all got their start as tummlers.
After the jump, read the full article about this latest “last of a dying breed.”
August 5, 2005
From the Catskills’ Last House Jester, Kosher Corn
By Andrew Jacobs
MONTICELLO, N.Y., Aug. 3 – Blanche Pearlman and Mary Borack were moving slowly through the lobby of Kutsher’s Country Club on their way to bingo when they were ambushed by the man in the tutti-frutti-patterned Spandex unitard, striped leggings and gold Star of David around his neck.
“Nice purse, ladies,” said the man, known in these parts as Krazy Tyrone. “You got some Danish in there?” They tried to wave him off, but Krazy Tyrone is not so easily thwarted. “Do you believe in sex before marriage?” he asked. “I don’t,” came the answer before they could respond. “It holds up the wedding.”
He had just started telling Mrs. Pearlman that she was so sweet that she could give a man diabetes when the public address system ruined his punch line.
“Alfred Silverman to the front desk. Alfred Silverman to the front desk.”
The momentary distraction gave the women a chance to escape and Krazy Tyrone was left to find other victims, including a corpulent man with a cane who was told: “You’re a nice advertisement for Kutsher’s food. You’re eating like you’re going to the electric chair.”
For the last two decades, Krazy Tyrone’s life has been an unending cascade of ribald one-liners, sexually loaded Yiddishisms and of course, a daily Simon Sez tournament where the come-on is $1,000 in moist prize money that’s kept wadded up in his sock. “I’m so good, no one has ever won,” he said pulling out a harmonica and playing “Oh Susannah” with his right nostril.
A startlingly flamboyant man who moves like Pee-wee Herman on amphetamines, Krazy Tyrone, n� Paul Krohn, is the last of the Catskills “tummlers,” the in-house jesters whose sole job is to keep hotel guests amused before, during and after the all-you-can eat meals. When he is not playing host to trivia contests or demonstrating his jump-rope prowess by the pool, Mr. Krohn can be found at one of the hotel’s Ping-Pong tables playing with the skillet or rubber hand he keeps stowed in his duffel bag of tricks. When bored, he’ll have other staff members take photos of him hamming it up next to guests who have fallen asleep on one of the hotel’s many sofas. “Hey lady,” he’ll shout across the cavernous lobby. “How did Captain Hook die? He had jock itch and scratched himself with the wrong hand.” Many of his favorite quips, most of them unprintable, involve breasts.
Mr. Krohn’s occupation is unique to the borscht belt, where hundreds of hotels and bungalow colonies competed for the affections of the millions of New York City Jews who made the Catskills their summer refuge before air-conditioning, cheap airfare and changing tastes drained the region of its lifeblood.
The hotel tummler (pronounced TOOM-ler, with the oo as in look) was often a steppingstone to bigger careers in comedy. Alan King, Danny Kaye, Billy Crystal, Jerry Lewis and Jackie Mason all got their start as tummlers. Others, like Mr. Krohn, 49, never left the mountains, although he makes frequent freelance appearances at nearby Hasidic bungalow colonies or at lavish bar mitzvahs in New Jersey, where his Simon Sez challenge is a big draw. “I like to frustrate spoiled Jewish kids,” he said grinning. “They all think they’re so smart but no one ever lasts a minute.”
Before he was hired at Kutsher’s in 1986, he worked at Grossinger’s, until that hotel went the way of countless other borscht belt landmarks. Although a handful of big hotels survive, none of the others have a full-time entertainer. “I’m the last of the great tummlers,” Mr. Krohn said as he slipped a whoopee cushion beneath the bottom of an unsuspecting guest. “After I go, that’s it.”
During the apex of Catskill culture in the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s, as many as 100 hotels employed tummlers, who would work in exchange for room and board and a modest salary. Part resident comic, part activities director, part hotel cheerleader, the tummler – derived from the Yiddish word for noisemaker – was expected to field guest complaints, organize talent shows, jump into the pool fully clothed or dash screaming through the lobby pursued by a knife-wielding chef.
Mr. Krohn is seemingly beloved by the regulars at Kutsher’s, although Mark Kutsher, who runs the sprawling 400-room place with his mother, Helen, winces at some of Mr. Krohn’s more off-color antics. “Sometimes I’m afraid of what he’s going to say,” he said, as Mr. Krohn darted through the lobby, late as usual, to Simon Sez.
June Macklin, a retired business owner from Queens who has been vacationing in the Catskills for five decades, said Mr. Krohn was part of the reason she kept coming back. “It’s a compulsion, this culture,” she said. Then glancing around the nearly deserted pool, she added, “and it’s dying before our very eyes.”
Mr. Krohn, too, is addicted to the place, although he has ambitions for greater stardom. Raised in Utica, N.Y., and trained as a special education teacher, he took a job at Grossinger’s at age 25 and became the assistant to Lou Goldstein, the self-proclaimed king of Simon Sez. One day when Mr. Goldstein had a nasty bout of sciatica, Mr. Krohn filled in for him and guests began clamoring for his absurdist style.
An exercise fanatic who runs and lifts weights daily, Mr. Krohn became a jump-rope superstar, landing in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most skips (332) per minute. He also excels at table tennis – he was once nationally rated – and can speak eight languages and offer up facts about world capitals, American presidents and other arcana with the rapid-fire delivery of an auctioneer. (“There are 360 dimples on a golf ball, 119 grooves on a quarter, 1,752 steps on the Eiffel Tower. …”)(Actually, there are 1,665 steps, according to the tower’s official Web site.)
His other hobby is being a compulsive flirt, and some of his most prized possessions are his snapshots of comely guests and seasonal hotel employees. He was married once, to a Briton who he says left him after she got her green card, and he still pines for a woman who died in a car accident many years ago. “I haven’t loved anyone since,” he said. Most nights, when everyone else is asleep, he takes her photo to the hill behind the golf course and stares at the sky for hours. He rarely sleeps more than two hours a night, he says, and refuels with quick naps between acts.
Home is a small room at the hotel, its walls covered with lime green shag carpeting, its closets stuffed with tools of the trade: a screechy violin, a battery-powered dancing rabbi and a dog-eared ventriloquist’s dummy named T. J. Justin Sinclair. There is also a Hershey’s Kiss outfit, 42 pairs of running shoes and a photo of him urinating behind the Hollywood home of Joan Collins. “I’m not normal,” he said, deadpan.
He is, by his own description, a melancholy man, albeit a good actor who can shine on cue. “I think about suicide a lot,” he said, sitting in his room during a break in his funnyman routine. “My final quest is to get on the Letterman show and then I’ll have nothing to live for.”
There was not much time for self-pity, however. A busload of elderly women had just arrived and Mr. Krohn was expected at a 3:45 p.m. event headlined “Trivia Time With Krazy Tyrone, the Master of Memory.” Realizing he was late again, he dropped the dummy, pulled on a red, white and blue spangled outfit and headed out the door dragging his duffel bag. “Hey lady,” he shouted at the first person he saw, “You got a Danish in that purse?”
