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Activities of the Friends

Meetings

' ^HE series of Friends' events for this academic year came
to a culmination on Monday, April 23, ar rhe Bancroft
Awards dinner in the .Men's Faculty Club. The high
point of the program was the announcement by President Kirk
of the names of the winners of the prizes for rhe two books judged
by the Bancroft Prize Jury to be the best in the field of American
history published during 1955: Last Full Measure: Lincoln the
President by J. G. Randall and Richard N. Currenr, and Henry
Adams by Elizabeth Stevenson. He then presented the two $2,000
awards to Miss Stevenson and jointly to Professor Randall's widow
and Professor Current. Certificates were presented to Mr. Edward
H. Dodd, Jr., President of Dodd, Mead and Company, and to
Mr. George P. Brett, Jr., President of The Macmillan Company,
the publishers respectively of the two books.

The principal speaker of the evening, Oscar Hammerstein II,
gave an enthralling and oprimistic report on the vitality of the
stage today, pointing out that although there are many fewer
legitimate theaters now than there were, say, twenty years ago,
drama via the stage, motion pictures, and television is reaching
more people than ever before. "Shakespeare who was so success¬
ful in writing for those in the pit and those in the boxes, would,"
he said, "ha\e been delighted if one of his plays could have been
performed to an audience of forty million people on one exening,
a possibility which exists today."

August Heckscher, Chairman of the Friends, was master of
ceremonies.
 

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