5 THE CORNELL CLUB - NEW YORK , 6 E A ST 44TH STREET, NEW YORK , NY 10017, 212.986.0300, WWW.CORNELLCLUBNYC .COM Informed. Entertained. Engaged. While The Club has temporarily suspended normal operations, our staff is still working behind the scenes on everything from operations and membership (welcome to our newest members!) to programs. ~ We’re rolling out a series of webinars to keep you informed, entertained, and engaged. ~ We’ll keep you updated as speakers are confirmed. Visit the club calendar to take a look at what’s coming up! ~ Reminder on how to Log On to Member Accounts • Your user name is your eight character membership number with zeros as placeholders. • Accounts starting with a letter Z9999 are entered as Z0009999. • Accounts starting with a number 99999 are entered as 00099999. • Your initial password is your last name. You will be prompted to choose a new password. Questions? Contact us at
[email protected]. Refer a Friend or Colleague for Membership Both the Member and New Member will receive a $100 house credit to use towards club usage such as dining, programs,and guest rooms. • NOTE: The referral house credit cannot be combined with any other membership offer. • Click here to refer a candidate for membership. Or contact
[email protected] CLUB PROGRAMS THROUGH THE YEARS One of the highlights of Club Membership is the full range of social and educational programs hosted by The Club. Many have become a tradition, and some events stand out as especially memorable. What were some of your favorite programs? Share your stories by contacting the Program Department at
[email protected]. Thanks to Scott Pesner ‘87, former Chair of the Arts & Entertainment Committee for sharing his story! My Cornell Club Memory: The Way We Were by Scott Pesner ‘87 When The Cornell Club-New York opened, I joined the Arts & Entertainment Committee (which I would eventually chair). At the time, there was a Club member, Robert, who was a film buff and had extensive connections within the motion picture industry. Over the first few years The Club was open, he helped put together several screenings of classic movies, which featured a special guest associated with the film. I remember Gwen Verdon and Betty Comden participating in these events. The first event of the kind that we would do was “The Way We Were” featuring screenwriter Arthur Laurents ’37, one of the “100 Most Notable Cornellians”. There would be dinner with Mr. Laurents before-hand (I was excited for that), followed by a brief introduction, the film, then the Q&A. I should mention that this was in the days before DVDs and The Club having a projection system, so we were using the (now) old- fashioned reel-to-reel film projector. When Clark Ford ’53, The Club’s ProgramManager at the time and I went to make sure the film was ready to go, we discovered the film was spliced together incorrectly. Clark managed to find a splicing machine; needless to say I missed dinner as Clark and I raced to put the film back together. However, as the film was being shown, a Club member who seemed to have more than one glass of wine at dinner came up the aisle and said that we were showing the middle of the film. Fortunately, Mr. Laurents (not known for being polite) calmly said to me the film was fine—it started with a flash forward (whew). What I would discover that night was the connection of the film to Cornell. Laurents wanted to make a film with a strong Jewish woman at the center, mainly for Barbra Streisand, whom he had given her big break to in “I Can Get It for You Wholesale” (Miss Marmelstein, anyone?). He went back to his Cornell days and remembered a woman he admired, Fannie Price ’37, who headed the Young Communist League on campus, and was considered a campus radical at the time. He had lost track of her, but wondered what had become of her, and “The Way We Were” was that story. Unfortunately, Laurents was fired from the project and several screenwriters, including Francis Ford Coppola and ironically, Dalton Trumbo, were brought in to work on it. Eventually, after 10 drafts, Streisand insisted that Laurents be brought back to finish the screenplay, which he did. Unfortunately, because of all the delays with the script, the window to use Cornell in the film was missed and Union College was used instead. During the Q&A, Laurents also fielded questions about his other film work (among them “Rope” and “The Snake Pit”) and his achievements in the theater, which included writing the books for “West Side Story” and “Gypsy” (he would eventually direct Broadway revivals of each and win a Tony for directing “La Cage Aux Folles”). As the evening ended, a familiar-looking gentleman came up to me and asked me directions to the restroom. I recognized him immediately from the many appearances in movies and television, as Harold Gould PhD ’53 (best known to people now as Miles on “The Golden Girls”). Of course, Gould comes from an Ithaca family (many remember Gould’s in Collegetown). I would meet Mr. Laurents one more time, at a co-sponsored Harvard/Cornell event at the Harvard Club in 2009, for a talk and an autograph signing of his latest book, “Mainly on Directing”. He didn’t remember me, but I have that autographed book sitting proudly on my bookcase. (For more about “The Way We Were” and his career, I recommend his autobiography “Original Story by Arthur Laurents.”)