Where thoughts of summer holidays now turn towards Israel, the Caribbean and America, it was once the height of exotica for British Jews to contemplate a week away in Bournemouth. Because, for a considerable post-war period, the seaside town's kosher hotels were the vacation venues of choice for Jews across the social spectrum. And the history of the most opulent, the Green Park, is being lovingly retold in a feature-length documentary under production and scheduled to debut at this year's UK Jewish Film Festival.
The title, 100 Weddings, reflects the Green Park's not inconsiderable contribution to Jewish matrimony. But the story is also a microcosm of the wider Anglo-Jewish experience explains producer Marsha Lee, who married into the owning family. "I wasn't there in its heyday but the stories I heard made me aware that it was part of an era people wanted to remember and preserve." She has brought on board as director historical film-maker Justin Hardy, whose credits include the Bafta-nominated drama, The Relief of Belsen, and The Man Who Crossed Hitler.
"It's a period of British social history that. as a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Oxford privileged twerp, I don't know nearly enough about," Hardy readily admits. "Yet every time I walk along the high street, I pass by the shops that are represented by the people who stayed at the Green Park - this who's who of characters who, in such a short time, have had a massive impact on our nation. The courage with which they picked themselves back up and preserved their community is truly one of the most impressive things I have come across in an historical context."
Writer Jack Fishburn adds: "It's the lawyer who takes you into the world of Hitler; the medical staff who take you into the world of Belsen. In this case, it's a Jewish hotel that takes you into the world of assimilation."
Ms Lee says the background to the hotel's opening in the rationing days of 1943 would justify a film in itself. The hotel was owned by the charismatic Ruby Marriott, his wife, Sarah Richman, and her four sisters.
Ruby Marriott's parents were furriers who moved to Torquay after experiencing financial problems. Inundated with requests to stay from family and friends, they decided to run a boarding house, and latterly a hotel, which Ruby and Sarah were involved in after their marriage in 1938.
When Sarah's brother heard about a newly built hotel in Bournemouth that was for sale, she persuaded Ruby to take a look and, with money borrowed from friends, relatives and business acquaintances, the Green Park took shape.
Among the many interviewed for the project was a soldier who stayed on the first night. "He talks about being on his Army base and how they told him there was a place to go for Passover," Ms Lee says.
One of Sarah Richman's sisters, Judy, was involved in the hotel from day one until its closure and, now 90, still lives in the nearby property she has shared with other family members for almost 60 years.
"I had never been to Bournemouth," she recalls. "I remember standing in the hall looking around. They had the old-fashioned switchboard and the phone was ringing. The porter said: 'The hotel's yours now. You'd better answer it.' That was the thing about it. It became so personalised. All the visitors were friends and we all took the reservations. We got to know their likes and dislikes. People wanted the same room at the same time of year. We were lucky that the hotel was custom-built with private bathrooms in every room, which was unheard of at the time. And we were Orthodox."
In the golden age of the hotel, from the 1950s to the early '70s, it was the holiday destination of the great and good. Guests included business leaders Jack Cohen, Charles Clore, Isaac Wolfson, Jarvis Astaire and Alfie Esdale, "who revolutionised the film industry", Ms Lee says.
"David [Lord] Young came here when he was a little boy," Miss Richman adds. "We had every member of the Wolfson family. There was a well-to-do clientele who could afford to come here three times a year."
For the era, it was the place for business networking. "Maybe some of the other people who came to the hotel wanted to be in the same place because everyone mingled."
There were seasonal crowds - Passover, summer, Christmas - and even some permanent guests. Food was plentiful and, says Ms Lee, "the finest. Chefs would come from the highest places. It was Claridge's on sea, not Grossinger's."
Women would send their clothes in chests to the Green Park ahead of their arrival. "Fashion was a big thing in the hotel. They wanted to wear gowns and look beautiful. They'd wear diamonds at breakfast. It was their way of saying: 'I survived.' It wasn't nouveau riche in the way you would find it today. They were all becoming refined, but at the same time they were very traditional."
Many of the non-Jewish staff were recruited from a top Venice hotel. They liked the life so much that some married a local girl or fellow staff member and stayed in the area, opening Italian restaurants. That was the case for Mimmo Zacchia, head waiter for more than 20 years, who has been interviewed for the film. He remembers coming to England with visions of Sherlock Holmes and finding himself in a very different culture.
The staff adapted quickly, with some involved in the Green Park gambling scene, getting betting tips on horses from guests. "One of them made a fortune," Ms Lee reports.
Although bikini images were used in advertising and "gigolos" hired to dance with women while the men gambled, the religious aspect was "exemplary. On Shabbat, there were services and it was full. People who had no Yiddishkeit in their lives would come to have a weekend of it. And after the kiddush there was the lunch and after the lunch there was the tea and after the tea there was the dinner. And people who stayed at other hotels came for tea at the Green Park. When you ask anyone, the first thing they talk about is the food."
Miss Richman says it was not uncommon for two chief rabbis, Brodie and Jakobovits, to both be staying for Yomtov - "in 40 years, there were so many people who never missed a Pesach".
Maybe so, but there was also what Ms Lee calls "the shidduch thing". In the dozens of interviews conducted for the documentary, "it's not like people talk about having walked along the beach. They talk about their first snog."
Among those sharing their reminiscences is Naomi Taub, who met her husband, Bernard, at the Green Park in 1965. "My future father-in-law happened to see me on the diving board and thought: 'That's a lovely girl for my son.' I was very shy at that age and too afraid to go up to the group of young people nearby, although I was desperate to talk to them. I walked past and little did I know that my future husband had been watching me all evening across a crowded room and had said to his mother: 'If that girl is religious, I am going to marry her.' Luckily I was.
"He asked me to join them and the rest is history. We waited a whole seven weeks to become engaged." The couple are still together.
The Green Park closed in 1986 - "a victim, like all the other British seaside resorts, of cheap and cheerful travel to sunnier climates", Ms Lee says. The closure left Miss Richman "flabbergasted. Four generations of some families had come to us. But times had changed and the world was bigger. The rapport between staff, guests and the family was incredible. I still send the staff birthday cards and they wish me 'good Yomtov'."
Mr Hardy says the film will "recreate the hotel through 3D animation. We'll go in through its doors, be welcomed in by a waiter, be taken into the ballroom. It's pretty ambitious."
The production team is still seeking more Green Park memories, and indeed wider recollections of post-war Jewish life in Britain, particularly photos and film footage. Although the intention is to focus on a handful of wedding stories, Mr Fishburn says, "we'll aim to identify a dozen more clinically, so there's a reason to say, 'there's me'. All 100 will have their moment."
Beyond the UKJFF, the makers hope the film will enjoy "a strong festival life", as well as a TV showing. Ms Lee says the mounting archive material may be passed on either to the Jewish Museum, the London Metropolitan Archives, or possibly an Israeli museum.
"Most religions propagate by conquest and conversion," Mr Fishburn concludes. "Judaism does so by stamping on a glass and yelling 'mazeltov'. Hopefully we'll capture that flexible strength."
