It was ten years ago this week that fire destroyed the former Brown’s Hotel in Loch Sheldrake in a blaze that was tragic for so many reasons it doesn’t seem to matter whether or not it really was the largest fire in Sullivan County’s history, as many reports at the time suggested.

While that distinction, at least in terms of property damage, probably belongs to the August, 1909 conflagration that destroyed much of the village of Monticello’s main street, the Brown’s blaze no doubt involved more manpower than ever before deployed at a fire in the county.

The spring of 2012 was a particularly rough one for old Catskills resorts, as the blaze at the former Brown’s came shortly after major fires at the Gibber in Kiamesha Lake and the Tamarack in Greenfield Park, and was followed several weeks later by one at the Aladdin in Woodbourne, irreplaceably subtracting significant landmarks from the county’s Golden Age of tourism.

The fire also proved once again how quickly history is forgotten.

For one thing, despite dozens of television and newspaper reports at the time, the Brown’s was not the inspiration for the 1987 movie “Dirty Dancing.” While many savvy viewers of the film maintain there was a veiled reference to Brown’s in the dialogue, most maintain that Grossinger’s was actually the thinly disguised setting for the story.

Eleanor Bergstein, who wrote the script, has said she used a composite of several Catskill hotels she had visited as a youngster as her inspiration, but there are more similarities to Grossinger’s in the story than to either the Brown’s or the Nevele, which some have also cited as the model for Kellerman’s. To confuse things even further, some news reports went so far as to claim the movie was filmed at the Brown’s, when it was actually shot in North Carolina and Virginia.

The distinction most often attributed to the Brown’s in news accounts of the fire, however, was that it was where the comedian-actor Jerry Lewis worked as a tummler, or a busboy or otherwise got his start. Although the account of those years of Lewis’ life is somewhat hazy, those stories were simply inaccurate.

Prior to purchasing the Black Appel Inn in Loch Sheldrake in 1944, Charles and Lillian Brown managed the Ambassador Hotel in Fallsburg for the Merl family. Among the entertainers on staff there were Danny and Rae Lewis (previously known as Levitch). The Lewises were seasoned entertainers, and had worked at the Jewish resorts in the Catskills, as well as those in Lakewood, New Jersey, for many years. In fact, it was while they were employed for the summer at the President Hotel in Swan Lake that their then six year old son Joey made his stage debut.

Danny and Rae were performing at a fundraiser for either the Red Cross or the local fire department—reports vary – when the little kid walked on stage and began singing “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime.” While it was contrived to look like a spur of the moment performance, it had actually been well rehearsed. The applause he received that night removed any doubt from little Joey Levitch’s mind that he wanted to be an entertainer, just like his parents.

Danny and Rae had worked for Charles and Lillian Brown at the Hotel Arthur in Lakewood, and when the Brown’s took over as managers of the Ambassador, they hired the couple there. Young Joey was largely neglected by his parents during their tenure at both hotels, and Charlie Brown felt sorry for the boy, taking him under his wing. Joey worked as a tea boy when he was old enough, and then on the athletic staff for a short time—before injuring himself so badly he had to resign—and finally as a bus boy.

All the while he was secretly preparing to enter show business, a career his parents openly discouraged. With the covert help of Charles and Lillian’s daughter, Lonnie, Joey developed an act pantomiming and lip synching to records, and made appearances throughout the summer of 1941 at the Nemerson, the Laurel Park, the Waldemere, Youngs Gap, and the Flagler, billing himself as “Joey Levitch and His Hollywood Friends.”

Early in 1942, sixteen year old Joey Levitch quit school to pursue a full-time career in show business, adopting the professional name of Jerry Lewis. He again worked as a busboy at the Ambassador during the Passover holidays that year, and with the help of Lonnie Brown and Irving Kaye, another hotel employee who had become a surrogate parent of sorts, began to get bookings outside the mountains, in theatres on Staten Island, in Buffalo, Toronto, Montreal and Boston.

By the time Charles and Lillian Brown—Jerry had taken to referring to them as Uncle Charlie and Aunt Lillian—paid $70,000 for the Loch Sheldrake resort, Jerry had left the mountains and had refined his act, forsaking the pantomime for more traditional, if no less frenetic, comedy.

Although he frequently visited the hotel, and usually ended performing— typically staging it as an entirely impromptu appearance-- Jerry Lewis was never a busboy or a waiter, or even a tummler, at the Brown’s.

John Conway is the Sullivan County Historian. E-mail him at jconway52@hotmail.com.