We’re poor little lambs who have lost our way
Baa-baa-baa
We’re little black sheep who have gone astray
Baa-baa-baa
In a stately old building in Manhattan one recent night, nearly 100 actors, playwrights, lyricists and producers gathered around a piano and sang those words with gusto.
Nobody was too shy to give their all to “The Whiffenpoof Song,” a melancholy ballad that has long been the signature song of Yale University’s a cappella group and a hit for Rudy Vallee and Bing Crosby.
Nobody was embarrassed. Nobody was … sheepish. For the people in the room were members of the Lambs, the nation’s oldest social club for theatrical professionals. Former members include Irving Berlin, Charlie Chaplin and George Gershwin.
The recent frolic, as the Lambs call their parties, had a touch of the bittersweet. It was their last night at the Midtown clubhouse that had served as their headquarters since 1976. In the coming weeks, the society will move into a larger, more affordable space above the Sapphire Gentlemen’s Club on Broadway.
The most senior Lamb at the gathering was Steve DePass, 92, a musician and songwriter who joined during the Eisenhower administration.
“Fred Astaire, Spencer Tracy, all the Lambs of renown, I knew them all,” said Mr. DePass, who was seated on a red settee beside a painting of a nymph plucking a lyre for a flock of lambs. “I’ve performed for kings and queens. I sang for J.F.K.”
He did not seem glum about leaving the old place behind.
“There’s a song, ‘Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home,’” Mr. DePass said, “and that’s how I feel. The physical edifice doesn’t mean so much as the spirit of the Lambs itself. With old clubs like ours, there’s often talk about dwindling membership — but as you can see tonight, that hasn’t been our problem.”
Nearby, members in their 20s and 30s drank sparkling wine under the gaze of portraits showing deceased Lambs in top hats. Meg Spectre, a 27-year-old actor, clutched a Balenciaga purse with a Susan Alexandra sheeplike charm attached. She was still a “lambkin,” as initiates are known.
“In today’s downtown theater and D.I.Y. film world, people my age aren’t really in contact with older people,” she said. “So a place like this, where we can chop it up with professionals who decades ago went through what we’re going through now, is a blessing.”
The writer Tara Isabella Burton, 34, sipped wine beside a painting of a nude woman frolicking with lambs.
“Being a Lamb means throwing yourself into a community, and a way of being, that’s possibly outmoded,” she said. “I’m sad to leave, but the Lambs is about its community. It’s not trying to be SoHo House.”
Ben Van Diest, 67, nursed a whiskey as he looked at a photograph of himself as a boy with his father, a former Lamb, standing next to Yogi Berra. The occasion had been a Lambaste, as the club’s roasts are known, honoring the Yankee in the 1970s.
“The young members ask why there are so many paintings of naked women with lambs,” Mr. Van Diest said. “I explain to them this was a men’s-only club way back when.”
“Thank goodness for all these young new members, though,” he added. “There were some really lean years for a while.”
From the ninth-floor terrace, Kevin C. Fitzpatrick took in the view of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Mr. Fitzpatrick, 59, is the club’s 36th Shepherd, as its presidents are known.
“They’re young New Yorkers looking for community,” he said. “This city can be a lonely place. But I always tell them: ‘I’m the Shepherd, not your father. I’m not your dad. You have a dad.’”
“Old and young members enter as strangers and leave as friends,” he continued. “The old ones ask, ‘What’s an Instagram reel?’ Young ones ask, ‘What do you mean you once had bar carts in the office?’ They’ll tell them, ‘Yeah, people even had sex in the office.’ They learn it was once a different time.”
Downstairs, Oji Miller-Fernandes, an illustrator, was savoring his last moments in the clubhouse with Peter Kingsley, a Shakespearean actor with a mustache.
“I just turned 30,” Mr. Miller-Fernandes said.
“What a coincidence,” Mr. Kingsley said. “I just turned 80.”