Located in the heart of Glacier National Park, the Many Glacier Hotel has welcomed millions of people into the wilderness and is truly deserving of the nickname, “Showplace of the Rockies.”
But when Ian Tippet, the newly appointed hotel manager, arrived at Many Glacier in the fall of 1960, he only saw problems. The walls were too thin. Half of the rooms looked out on the parking lot and not the lake. And there were an endless number of stairs. The heating and cooling system wasn’t that good either.
“The place was hot as hell on some days and cold as hell the next,” Tippet said recently. “I thought to myself, ‘How will I ever keep guests happy here?’”
But Tippet found a way to please his guests and in the process created a legendary music program that would span more than two decades. From 1961 to 1983, Tippet and his employees entertained guests with nightly concerts, sing-alongs and hootenannies. Every summer would end with a Broadway show put on by the employees. And within a few years, the program got so big that Tippet was getting employment applications from music and theater students from around the country.
“We did everything in grand style,” Tippet said.
The Many Glacier Hotel was itself built in grand style by the Great Northern Railway in 1915. The building was one of a group of hotels and chalets built by the railway to promote tourism in the newly formed Glacier National Park.
While the hotels and their settings were spectacular, the wilderness lacked evening entertainment. To make up for that, hotel mangers would often bring in musicians to play for guests. The practice continued through the 1950s, until Don Hummel’s Glacier Park, Inc. took over the hotel in 1960.
Hummel decided to assign Tippet to Many Glacier for the 1961 season. Tippet was born in England and as a child attended the Royal Academy of Music in London. Despite his passion and talent for music, he decided to go into the hospitality business and attended the Westminster Hotel School. It was there that he earned a scholarship to work at one of the premier hotels in Chicago. He ended up in Glacier Park in 1950 and over the next 10 years worked at the Glacier Park Lodge, Swiftcurrent Motor Inn and Lake McDonald Lodge.
To make up for Many Glacier’s ruggedness, Tippet decided to focus on musical entertainment at the hotel and began actively recruiting music and theater students to work during the summer. Within a few years he developed a nightly music program, with everything from sing-alongs to variety shows, all of it put on by employees. But music wasn’t just for the evenings and it wasn’t uncommon for the wait staff in the dinning room to break into song during the dinner hour.
Other traditions included the Miss Glacier Park Pageant competition held among Many Glacier, the Glacier Park Lodge and the Lake McDonald Lodge. The grand finale was held at Many Glacier and judges included the park superintendent and a former governor of Montana. And every July 4, Many Glacier employees would pile into an open top Red Bus and parade between the hotel and Swiftcurrent.
But the grandest tradition during the Tippet era was the annual Broadway show put on in August. Employees would spend weeks getting ready for the performance. In many cases, Tippet hired employees based on the type of musicians and performers he needed for that year’s show.
“Even though we had all this talent, it was a massive undertaking because the kids had to practice and build sets all after putting in a full day of work for the hotel,” Tippet said, adding that although the music programs was a huge part of working at Many Glacier, no one was ever paid for their performances (although some music majors could receive college credits).
Competition to work at Many Glacier was stiff and Tippet often received thousands of applications every year (Tippet also worked as GPI’s top employee recruiter and eventually become a vice president within the company).
Many of the employees of the Tippet era have fond memories of late-night rehearsals and working long hours to get ready for their big Broadway premiere in the wilderness. Christopher Hopkins worked at the Many Glacier gift shop in 1983, the year the employees put on “Kiss Me, Kate.”
“It was the best three months of my life,” he said. “We were all doing what we loved and it was a blast.”
“Kiss Me, Kate” would be the last musical put on at Many Glacier. The music programs were cut back when new management took over and Tippet was moved to another site in the park. In the end, the employees of the Many Glacier Hotel performed 27 different Broadway musicals in 23 years.
With the arrival of Xanterra Parks and Resorts in 2013, music has made a modest return to the hotel, according to general manager Marc Ducharme. Twice a week, employees put on a hootenanny.
“Historic preservation doesn’t just mean preserving buildings, it also means preserving cultures,” Ducharme said.
Tippet, who is now 84 and worked in Glacier Park for more than six decades, said he is happy that the music has returned to Many Glacier – a tradition Tippet began five decades ago in hopes of keeping his guests happy.
“People would always tell me ‘Oh my room wasn’t perfect, but the music was amazing,’” Tippet said. “It helped us get past those five flights of stairs, the hot rooms and those paper thin walls.”