 | |||||||
|
|
|||||||
Artie Shaw left home at age 15 to play in a band. He was an extraordinary musical talent.
He was married 8 times - most well known were the movie stars Lana Turner and Ava Gardner (whose husbands also included Micky Rooney and Frank Sinatra). Shaw was earning an incredible $60,000 weekly in the pre-WWII period. He joined the Navy early in the war.
He appeared at Fern Brook on September 7, 1941, shortly before he enlisted in the Navy. He abruptly quit the music business in 1954 and survived to age 94 when he died in December 2004.
The new corporation, however, could not sustain major success at Fern Brook. Other area attractions out-distanced Fern Brook for patrons. For Memorial Day 1941 Sans Souci had 10,000 visitors; Rocky Glen had 25,000; 5,000 at the lakes picnic grounds and Sandy Beach; but only 2,000 danced to the music of Reggie Childs.
It was hoped that a reconstructed Trucksville-Dallas highway would expand summer traffic but World War II and gas rationing was to follow. A headline orchestra to appear at Fern Brook was Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Orchestra on September 6, 1942, three months before Peal Harbor.
During the war years the headliner bands faded and the dance hall featured more “populist” dances - modern, square, farmer, and polka. By Summer 1942 the dance hall was also used for roller skating. An account states that the park’s roller coaster was dismantled during the War to build a coaster at Rocky Glen - but this account is very likely wrong. The bands most identified with Fern Brook in the war years were locally based but excellent.
Glen Gray (1906-1963) started his own band at age 13 and saxophonist Gray’s orchestra was the first swing band to be featured on radio in 1935. The band remained popular until the end of World War II in 1945.