1968: "The Mating Market" at the Concord Hotel | Man Alive | BBC Archive

Up in the Catskill Mountains, two hours' drive from New York City, stands the Concord Hotel, a vast concrete camp renowned for one speciality - dating.

Here most weekends a human hotchpotch of 3,000 men and women can pay as much as 100 dollars a day to be herded together, like cattle in a market, and forcefully paired off by a social hostess called Rose. Girls living dull city lives plan their robes and their roles weeks ahead; men who are normally office clerks promote themselves to lawyers and doctors. Many of the women are hunting for husbands. Many of the men are not hunting for wives.

It's a loud, brassy, boozy, free-for-all. But despite the seemingly jolly veneer, the more honest among the participants admit that the whole scene can be a sad charade, where even the snow on the ski-slopes is artificial.


Clip taken from Man Alive, originally broadcast on BBC Two, 9 October, 1968.





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