Each of the inductees were commemorated with a fine-art portrait that will become part of The Players’ permanent collection. The unveiling was part of a fundraising dinner at the Booth mansion at 16 Gramercy Park South.
Honorees include playwright Edward Albee; actors Ethan Hawke, Martha Plimpton and Jack Klugman; actor and drag legend Charles Busch; cabaret star Steve Ross; actor Fritz Weaver; actor Brian Murray; journalist Jerry Tallmer; and astronaut Scott Carpenter, who celebrates the 50th anniversary of the first orbit of Earth this year. Posthumous inductees include Clark Gable, Janet Leigh, Sidney Lumet and Augustus Saint-Gaudens.
The night featured a performance by K.T. Sullivan as well as speeches from Judith Ivey, Kate Mulgrew, Jim Brochu and Sherrill Milnes.
Last year’s honorees included Jerry Stiller, Eli Wallach, Anne Jackson and Judith Malina; producer and playwright Robert Brustein; former mayor of New York City David Dinkins; and journalist Nat Hentoff.
* In 1888, Edwin Booth, America’s pre-eminent Shakespearean actor, and 15 other incorporators, including Mark Twain and General Tecumseh Sherman, founded The Players. Its purpose: “The promotion of social intercourse between members of the dramatic profession and the kindred professions of literature, painting, architecture, sculpture and music, law and medicine, and the patrons of the arts.”
