Activities of the Friends

Winter Reception. The exhibition "From Russia to Kiss Me, Kate:
The Careers of Sam and Bella Spewack" opened with a Friends
reception on Wednesday afternoon, March 10. On view are over
two hundred manuscripts, letters, first editions, photographs, mem¬
orabilia, programs, playbills, and posters depicting their remarkable
collaborative achievements in the theater, as well as their activities as
individual authors and journalists. Represented in the exhibition are
seventeen plays, musicals, and documentary films, including Boy
Meets Girl, My Favorite Wife, Weekend at the Waldorf, and their two
collaborations with Cole Porter, Kiss Me, Kate and Leave It to Me!.
Also on exhibit is a range of items, from the article by Bella in her
junior high school magazine entitled "Little Suffragettes Voting,"
to Sam's lecture to the Phi Beta Kappa Association in 1960 on
"The Anatomy of Humour." The exhibition, documented in a
handsome catalog, will remain on view in the Kempner Exhibition
Room through July 9.

Bancroft Awards Dinner. The Rotunda in Low Memorial Library
was the setting for the annual Bancroft Awards Dinner, held on
Wednesday evening, April 7, and presided over by Henry F. Graff
Chairman of the Friends. University Provost Jonathan R. Cole
announced the winners of the 1993 awards for distinguished books
in American history and diplomacy published in 1992: Charles
Capper, Margaret Fuller: An American Romantic Life, Volume L
The Private Years, published by Oxford University Press; and
Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the
Truman Administration, and the Cold War, published by Stanford
University Press. An award of four thousand dollars from funds
provided by the Edgar A. and Frederic Bancroft Foundation was
presented to the author of each book by the provost, and Mr. Graff
presented citations to the publishers.

Future Meetings. The fall exhibition reception will be held on
Wednesday afternoon, December 1; the winter exhibition recep¬
tion will be held on March 2, 1994; and the Bancroft Awards
Dinner is scheduled for April 6, 1994.
 

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