An ode to love kitsch as we mourn heart-tub inventor Morris Wilkins

An ode to love kitsch as we mourn heart-tub inventor Morris Wilkins

For admirers of American kitsch, this has been a week of mourning: Morris Wilkins, the creator of the world's first heart-shaped hot tub in the 1960s, died of heart failure at age 89.

In 1958, Wilkins and a friend bought a hotel in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains. Their Cove Haven helped transform the whole region into a honeymoon mecca, particularly when Wilkins hit on the tub idea. (Literally hit on it, according to one tale in the New York Times that says a regular whirlpool was accidentally squeezed into heart shape as it was maneuvered around a corner. He introduced the so-called Sweetheart Tub to the resort in 1963, according to the official history, and we found it mentioned in the media as early as a 1967 Toledo Blade article.)

It was an innovation that spoke directly to the new libertines of the 1960s and '70s. "If Mr. Wilkins did not single-handedly instigate the sexual revolution, he was on the barricades," the Times writes in his obituary, "brandishing a fleecy pink bath towel while exhorting newlyweds to enjoy his 'cruise ship on land,' as his son Thomas Wilkins put it." Not unexpectedly, it met with equal measures popularity and disapproval. In its first issue of 1971, titled "The New Shape of America," Life magazine included a two-page spread of an amorous honeymooning couple enjoying a bubble bath, with this accompanying copy:

"Is part of the new national Us a surfeit of affluent vulgarity? How about a honeymoon lodge, for instance? Apparently, just being with each other isn't enough. We need, or think we need, some affirmation — mirrors, heart-shaped pools — to tell us we're really here at last. And a camera, courtesy of the thoughtful management, to remind us later when we try to recall just what it was like for those strangers, ourselves."

The caption says: "A brand-new bride records her honeymoon bubble bath on film at Cove Haven, a Pennsylvania resort exclusively for newlyweds." The camera trigger is visible in her hand.

To honor Wilkins' contributions to and influence on the nation's cultural landscape — which included not just the heart-shaped tub but the 7-foot-tall two-person Champagne glass, also for, uh, bathing — Yahoo Homes is publishing Katherine Wisniewski's slideshow ode to the lusty design genre that the Poconos pioneered.

Click here or on a photo for the slideshow.

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