Steel Pier Showplace of the Nation

 

xxxx

Steel Pier – Showplace of the Nation – Atlantic City by Steve Leibowitz (Down the Shore, 2009)

There’s a new and important book out on the history of the Steel Pier.

So many great things happened at the Steel Pier in Old Atlantic City you know there had to be a good book about it, and Steve Liebowitz has written it.

This new, coffee table book, chock with plenty of pictures, takes you back to the Glory Days of Atlantic City, a place that many people would prefer to go to than the glitzy casinos today.

As explained by Liebowitz, after the boardwalk lined the beach, they started extending it out over the ocean, creating piers, that competed with each other by offering entertainment rides and shows, but the Steel Pier stood out above the rest after Frank Gravatt bought it in 1925 and began to book vaudeville acts.

Gravatt was a local, who started out delivering newspapers and married a Somers, Flora Somers, from English Creek, and although uneducated, he had a savvy business sense. By the time he was through, Gravatt would own the local Buick dealership, Indian motorcycles franchise, the Golden Gate Motel, the Shelburne, Traymore and Lafayette Hotels, WFPG radio and was director of Chelsea Bank, as well as owning the Steel Pier. But he did it by working hard and even after successful he wasn’t above climbing a latter to replace a burnt out light bulb.

Besides Gravatt, the other big name behind the Steel Pier was Hamid, George Hamid, Sr. and George Hamid, Jr. who took over the Pier after the Storm of ’44, and brought the Showcase of the Nation into the modern era.

While Gravatt was an entrepreneur, Hamid was a showman, actually from a circus family from Lebanon, a troupe of tumblers and acrobats who traveled the world circuit with Buffalo Bill Cody.

The first time Hamid, Sr. came to Atlantic City he entertained on the beach for tips, doing acrobats and sleeping under the boardwalk.

After buying Million Dollar Pier and moving into John Young’s famous house #1 Atlantic Ocean, he worked with Gravatt at the Steel Pier but they had a falling out and after the Storm of ’44, Hamid had to get a straw buyer to purchase it because he didn’t think Gravatt would sell it to him at any price.

From Vaudeville to Hollywood, the diving horse to the diving bell and dolphins, from Big Bands to Rock & Roll, it’s all there, and while Liebowitz’s story is an easy read and full of historical tidbits, the pictures really make the book special. As Liebowitz notes, it wasn’t a matter of which photos to use, there were so many it was hard to pick the ones to leave out, and maybe someday they will put them all on a web site.

Although grandmom might be more interested in the exciting things that went on at Steel Pier in the 30s and 40s - the Glory Years, when the Steel Pier was the number one entertainment attraction on the East Coast, and really was the “Showplace of the Nation,” the Rock & Roll era has more appeal to younger readers, and me.

It doesn’t seem that long ago when the Rolling Stones came to Atlantic City for the second time, in the l980s, for their Steel Wheels Tour, and I went over to George Hamid’s office which was then on Tilton Road in Northfield.

Did he remember the Stone’s show at Steel Pier in the 60s? Sure, Hamid, Jr. said, digging into one of a dozen filing cabinets and coming out with a bill of acts for the day the Stones played Atlantic City, along with the McCoys and Rick Derringer.

Hamid, Jr. explained to me then that their family were circus people, who had also taken over the New Jersey State Fair and the Aquarium in Philadelphia and ran other major attractions around the country as well.

The Steel Pier always had good music as part of their entertainment package but when rock & roll came along, they booked Bill Haley & the Comets shortly after their hit “Rock Around the Clock” became an international sensation, and then had Ed Hurst and Dick Clark feature rock and roll acts all summer long throughout the late fifties and sixties.

Hamid said his biggest mistake wasn’t paying the $12, 500 Elvis wanted, after one hit song, so Elvis went on to forever bypass Atlantic City, never playing there in his entire career.

But practically everybody else played the Steel Pier, either on the way up or as super stars in their own time – with Ricky Nelson holding the one day records of over 44,000 paying customers in one day – August 31, 1958, said to be the first rock concert. It was also his debut solo show, and he was introduced by an opening act, the standup Henny Youngman, whose one-liners didn’t go over well with the young crowd, and was “a theatrical mismatch if there ever was one,” quipped Hamid.

Nelson’s record would have been surpassed by the Beatles, who were booked to play Steel Pier for $25,000, a new record pay out for any band, but Hamid realized that they were too big for even the pier’s biggest room, so they were moved down to the boardwalk to the old Convention Hall, just days after the Democratic National Convention in August, 1964.

Although the Beatles’ small sound equipment was drowned out by the huge hall and the screaming girls, so nobody could actually hear them, it was a cultural phenomenon that’s still being recycled.

The Beatles stayed at Gravatt’s Lafayette Hotel, which was surrounded by thousands of adoring fans, but John Lennon was intent on seeing Steel Pier, which he had heard so much about but didn’t get a chance to play, so he dressed in disguise, slipped out of the hotel through the kitchen and sneaked up to the boardwalk just to see the Steel Pier.

The British Invasion of the United States landed at Atlantic City first, with Herman’s Hermits, Dave Clark Five, Peter and Gordon, Freddie and the Dreamers and the Animals, all hitting the Atlantic City beach before they went anywhere else in the country.

Liebowitz was fortunate to get through to many important people who performed there, and got first hand quotes from most of them, recalling their time well spent there, including Frankie Valli, Smokey Robinson, Joey Bishop, Al Martino, Chubby Checker and Alan King.

While this book will be popular with those who collect Atlantic City memorabilia, those who like old photos and everything to do with show business, Hollywood, the Big Band era and rock & roll, it is also a new and important historical resource, and my only complaint is that it’s index is incomplete and such a book should have a good index.

If Atlantic is to look to its past in order to forge a new future, it would be good to start with this book, not only for the ideas and forces that once brought it out of the depression and the Storm of ’44 to make it the “Showplace of the Nation,” but to see the kind of men that it will take - like Gravatt and the Hamids, to turn things around.

From sleeping under the boardwalk to owning it, they showed how it can be done.

You can read other books of local interest by William Kelly at http://billsbooksblog.blogspot.com
He can be reached at billykelly3@yahoo.com

Photo:
http://billsbooksblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/steel-pier-showplace-of-nation.html