[4] The first Friars Frolics were held in 1911, with Abbot George M. Cohan working with Will Rogers, Irving Berlin, who wrote "Alexander's Ragtime Band" for the event, and Victor Herbert.

[3] In 1924, Walter Donaldson wrote the music for "My Blue Heaven" one afternoon while waiting in the club for his turn at the billiard table.

In 1950, Sam Levenson and fellow comedian Joe E. Lewis were the first members of the New York Friars Club to be roasted.

[6] The Friars Club moved into a permanent headquarters in 1957, in an English Renaissance mansion built for Speyer & Company investment banker Martin Erdmann by architects Alfredo S. G. Taylor and Levi in 1908.

[11] The club’s board of governors also elected Barbara Sinatra, Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, Eydie Gorme, Barbra Streisand, Elizabeth Taylor, Dinah Shore, Phyllis Diller and Martha Raye, to honorary membership.

[12] In May 2023, it was reported that the club was facing foreclosure on the Martin Erdmann House due to a building flood, the COVID-19 pandemic and financial irregularities.

The columnist Earl Wilson put it this way in 1964: "Long ago a New Yorker asked the difference between the Lambs, Friars, and Players, since the membership was, at the time, predominantly from Broadway."

[41] It featured previously unseen footage of roasts and interviews with Friars such as Milton Berle, Buddy Hackett, Sid Caesar, Steve Allen, Henny Youngman, Jeffrey Ross, Larry King, Ed McMahon, and Phyllis Diller.

The inaugural Friars Club Comedy Film Festival was held in September 2009, opening with the American premiere of the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man.