Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/276

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ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN

variety players, but its destinies are controlled by Mr. Albee and his associates, not by the members.

Whether there is no similar need among the women of the theater, whether they lack the fraternal spirit, or what, the other sex have only one club, the "Twelfth Night", and that of no such scope as the Lambs or Players or Friars.

The Actors' Equity Association now is housed in a hundred thousand dollar building in West Forty-fifth Street and has accumulated a surplus of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars since the actors' strike; but Equity properly is not a club, but a union.

For thirty-seven years the profession has conducted the most efficient and one of the greatest charities I know of, the Actors' Fund of America. Any one in the theater, from scrub woman to star, may call upon it. With very small dues it has amassed assets of two million dollars. Donations, bequests and benefits account for its wealth. It gives away something like one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year without conditions or red tape, and does it with an overhead of only fourteen per cent where normally much less than fifty cents

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