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A safe haven for New York City actresses that went out of fashion years ago will be open for business later this year after a fundraising windfall, organized by one of the stars of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”
Cynthia Darlow, who plays Mrs. Moskowitz on the Amazon Prime series about a struggling comedienne in 1950s New York, began efforts to revitalize the Rehearsal Club three years ago at the height of the #MeToo era. The original women-only Midtown meeting place that provided housing and cheap meals to theater professionals beginning in 1913 shut its doors in 1979.
Among the donors are Carol Burnett and Blythe Danner, who will have rooms named after them at the new club site at the Hudson Yards, Darlow said. Like Darlow, they were residents of the original Rehearsal Club when they were struggling to break into show business in the city. Darlow moved into the club in 1973 when she arrived from Virginia to look for work on Broadway.
“It’s been amazing,” said Darlow, who is working with a group of women theatrical professionals to bring the club back to life. “The buzz is really accelerating.”
The group is hoping to admit its first residents to a wing of the Webster Apartments, a 13-story women-only residence in Hudson Yards, by the end of the year, she said.
Darlow, who is on the group’s board of directors, told The Post that an anonymous donor pledged $100,000 to the project provided that TRC, a non-profit, match the donation by June. “We’ve done it and donations are still coming in,” she said.
In addition to their housing initiative, TRC is planning a book and documentary about the history of the boarding house, which was founded by Jean “Daisy” Greer, a daughter of the city’s Episcopal Bishop and church deaconess Jane Hall. Its first location was on West 46th Street in the heart of the theater district. In the 1920s, the club moved to two brownstones on West 53rd Street that it rented for $1 a year from philanthropist John D. Rockefeller.
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