Jovial Hotelman Sam Shaw of Manhattan put up another $25 in prize money last week and the Society of Fakirs was reborn out of the Art Students' League, with an exhibition, auction and dance. The original Fakirs, founded 40 years ago, was a convivial society of League students who wanted to raise money to give scholarships during the summer to deserving fellow members. They did this with an art exhibition of "fakes"; parodies of well known pictures, generally those exhibited in the National Academy, and a costume ball.
Burlesque paintings are usually popular with the public. Commercial artists joined the Fakirs to try their hand at burlesque and swell the scholarship fund. Since the National Academy makes a great to-do over donating its prizes, Patron Sam Shaw used to give a ist Prize of $25 in pennies and a hot mince pie to the best Fake of the year. The Fakirs Ball was even more appreciated by the public which quickly discovered that the Fakirs, in their anxiety for scholarships, had much more liberal ideas than the Beaux Arts Architects about the proper way to run a costume ball. There was no débutante-encumbered Pageant. Costumes could be anything at all, and very little of that. Broadway took the Fakirs to its bosom, as did collegians and Greenwich Village girls. Popularity was the death of the Fakirs Ball It got so tough it had to be killed. There were battles royal on the ballroom-floor. Drunken youths played the hat & coat game in the cloakrooms. Chorus girls had their clothes torn off. Somebody shattered the chandeliers in the Hotel Astor; next year the Fakirs rolled table tops down the Commodore stairway, injuring several passersby. The Fakir exhibitions stopped in 1917, but the Ball went on. In 1923 New York hotelkeepers banded together and announced that so far as they were concerned the Fakirs might hold their Ball in an armory, ball park, stadium or prize ring, but nor in any hotel in New York. After a few years of raucous reunions in downtown Webster Hall, the whole thing died.
Recently Art Students' Leaguers thought the memory of those ancient brawls was dim enough to try it again. As were the old Fakirs at their inception, the new society is limited to League students, but they have one more connection with the old society. Sam Shaw is still their patron and benefactor.