The Lambs Will Host 150th Anniversary Gambol

The Lambs have announced that tickets are on sale for their first Public Gambol in nearly 60 years, to be held Monday, Dec. 2, at the Cutting Room, 44 East 32nd Street. The social club is celebrating its sesquicentennial with a banquet and an original musical comedy, written and directed by Maura Campbell (The Non-Essentials).

 

“We are not only celebrating our 150th anniversary, but also the 50th anniversary of admitting women to the all-male Lambs Club, which saved us from extinction,” said Shepherd Kevin Fitzpatrick, the Lambs' president. “The Lambs have added 100 members in two years, and we once again have the talent to put on a big show, and celebrate our history with New York.”

 

The Gambol features members including emcee Gus Rosendale (WNBC-4), Jason Trachtenburg (Trachtenburg Family Circus), Peter Dizozza (Theatre for a New City), Melodie Wolford (The Baker's Wife), Jenna Esposito (the Voice of Little Italy), and Eric Hoffman (Supersound). The musical follows a celebratory dinner at the Cutting Room. 

 

Public Gambols began in the 1880s, and continued through the Gilded Age into the Jet Age. The Lambs invited the public to see the biggest stars of the era—all men—at Broadway theaters, the old Metropolitan Opera House, and on all-star tours of the East Coast. There has not been a Public Gambol since the 1960s, and this is the first one with women Lambs' members. Women were admitted to the Club in 1974.

 

“This night is a throwback to the 1930s, when The Lambs held Gambols at the Astor Hotel, or the 1940s at the Waldorf-Astoria,” Fitzpatrick says. “The splashy dinner-and-a-show club night is lost today, and the Lambs are so happy to be gamboling in the Cutting Room.”

 

The Lambs have been located in 14 different clubhouses and meeting rooms since the organization was launched at Delmonico's in December 1874 by six actors and friends. Over the years as show business grew, so did the club, ultimately reaching 1,700 members in the Jazz Age. The Lambs helped create the Actors Fund, Actors' Equity, ASCAP, SAG, and the Actors Home. Today, the clubhouse is located inside 3 West 51st Street, a landmark building it moved into in 1976.

 

Tickets are $200.00 and include a 2-hour open bar, dinner, and performance. 

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