Art, Entertainment, Assasination

Hubert Humphry, running for President, made the last presidential campaign speech at the ghostly and run down Little White House in Sea Girt. There were no trainsloads or snarled traffic; instead, it was a simple fundraiser for 3,000 paid donors under a tent. They paid $100 for a glimpse of the Vice President, who had authored the Civil Rights Act as Senator and was selected by Lyndon Johnson for VP after Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. Humphry’s prime opponent for the nomination was Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who was gunned down at a campaign event in Los Angeles just after Kennedy had won the Califonia Primary, and Humphrey had won New Jersey. The assassination of Martin Luther King and 54 days of racial unrest had voters looking for change. George Wallace ran as an independent and split some of the southern Democrats, and the nation turned to Richard Nixon, the former Republican VP from a more stable time.

Leo Luft lost the Sea Girt Manor (Rods) in a sheriff’s sale to a group from North Jersey who opened Pals Aweigh, run by Ray Calentone. They refreshed the restaurant. Across the street, Mr. Anthony’s Couffiers salon opened. Permanent waves were the most popular doo.

Along with a renewed respect for the environment, there was a surge in appreciation for landscape art. Ruth Vail, a watercolorist who expanded into oils and seascapes, opened a Gallery on Washington Blvd. She painted oceanscapes from a friend’s glass porch on the ocean which allowed her to paint any weather. The lighthouse was used for painting instruction and as a studio, and seven members of the Community Club displayed their paintings at the Lighthouse porch for the first time in 1968. The Lighthouse Painters added and a junior division continued into the 1970s. Artists were popping up everywhere.

Live music was changing. After playing the Tremont, Jimmy Byrne had purchased the Keynote in 1964, the old Lou’s Cottage Inn. He played mostly piano and sang, or his brother Bobby did the same. Jimmy, Bobby, and his dad Jim Sr. were all talented entertainers who even brought their Irish Rebel Music to Carnegie Hall.

The Byrne’s Jim Sr. and Jimmy and Bobby (colorized publicity shot)

But it was his purchase of the Sea Girt Inn a year later that would really shake things up. Jimmy broke the large ballroom and the inn into 11 different bars. He used Art Stock, the biggest promoter in NJ to bring in a steady stream of acts, mostly appealing to young people. Fats Domino, The Four Seasons, Dionne Warwick, the Coasters, the Platters all played the Inn. Older people went to dinner and walked the boardwalk in their dinner jackets. Their kids hit many different bars and pubs but they all wound up at Jimmy’s by three in the morning for closing time.

The place held over 3,000, and everyone came to Jimmy’s to hear Jimmy, Bobby, and the band belt out Alabama Jamborie and I Don’t Wanna Go Home. 125 Sea Girters signed a petition. The bar was in Wall township, but the parking spilled far into the west side of Sea Girt, and the neighbors wanted a parking ban.

Bobby still entertains. Here is his version of I Don’t Wanna Go Home: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovFhlx6N4Y0