Daily News from New York, New York • 752

aRe Eighth (there are 30 in a 10-block area), the nightly turnout of tens of thousands of decent citizens discourages the weirdo, uneasy away from his creepy kind. But The Lambs, east of Times Square, was outside that island of safety, and the dirty movies, whoretels and clip joints sidled up close to them, bringing with them the pusher, the pimp and the mugger. All this, compounded by the general indifference of young men toward joining clubs of any sort, was just too damaging; membership dwindled and the mortgage was foreclosed by the Tremont Savings Bank in January 1975. In May of that year the building was bought by the Church of the Nazarene, whose pastor, the Rev. Paul Moore, has been a leader in subsequent Times Square cleanup drives.

He invited the Lambs to continue using the premises, but they declined. The fact that the bar where Barrymore roistered has been converted to (shudder) a soda fountain, and liquor is barred from the premises, may have had some small influence in that decision. Thrown out into the storm by cruel mortgage-foreclosers like the wretched heroine of a melodrama, are they now condemned to wander, "poor little Lambs who have lost our Not a bit of it. The redoubtable troupers have charmed their way into the quarters of the Women's Republican Club at a fine address, 51st St. and Fifth Ave.

They have taken over an entire floor, installed their card and pool tables and hung the walls with the portraits of their first century's presidents, from Montague through such as Thomas Meighan and William Gaxton to today's Tom Dillon. Their traditional Round Table stands in the dining room with its great silver bowl, and they have the use of the ballroom for parties, such as a traditional "Low Jinks" which was held recently, with a healthy turnout of 150 gamboling the night away. continued on page 38 Dean a that she revealed herself at evening's end, to the chagrin of the stuffed shirts (the tradition was that no woman had ever set foot in the club); and the other, likelier version that the members knew damn well that it was Ethel all the time and enjoyed the put-on thoroughly. The classic story is about his banishment from the club. As he held forth on the fickleness of woman and other favored topics, actors massed about him in worshipful chorus, he would occasionally brandish his stick for emphasis.

Now the bartenders took great pride in their glassware, and would wince every time Jack turned theatrically to fling his glass into the fireplace- especially since there wasn't any fireplace. Their back-bar was grandly a-glitter with highly polished stemmed crystal. One night when it was particularly drunk out he came up with his most smashing gesture of all, reaching out with his stick to sweep the lot off the shelf to the floor in smithereens. They banished him for a year. The night he returned a friend said to him, as he took up his old place, "Jack, I've been on tour, and I just heard this incredible story that you had been barred from the club for a year.

Whatever was it for?" Barrymore lifted his stick. "Why, for doing this," he said grandly, and "SMASHHHHHH!" there they all went again. Those were the gladsome days. But they ended, shockingly. Who would ever have thought that the location the Lambs chose for themselves on 44th within a block of Shubert Alley and a dozen Broadway theaters, would work against them? But it did, as the purveyors of prurience, narcotics and outright violence besieged midtown in a loathsome horde, infecting Broadway and the blocks running east of it as they did Eighth Ave.

to the west. The theater itself survived, because with the way the playhouses swarm between Broadway and SUNDAY NEWS MAGAZINE NEW YORK, OCTOBER 30, 1977 of The Friars Buddy Howe on stairway above bust of club's late Abbot Joe E. Lewis. 11.