. Genealogy profile for Bennett Cerf Genealogy for Bennett Alfred Cerf (1898 - 1971) family tree on Geni, with over 230 million profiles of ancestors and living relatives. With Mr. Com mins's counsel and Mr. Cerf's instincts, Random House began to grow into one of the giants of the books business. In 1933, Cerf won United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, a landmark court case against government censorship and published James Joyce's unabridged Ulysses for the first time in the United States. Before 1951, Cerf was an occasional panelist on the NBC game show Who Said That?, on which celebrities tried to identify the speakers of quotations taken from recent news reports. So many editors are only editors because they haven't made it as writers. He married Hollywood actress Phyllis Fraser, a cousin of Ginger Rogers, on September 17, 1940. The publisher, therefore, made an arrangement to import the book and to have a copy seized by the United States Customs Service when it arrived. 2005 7 [9]. Bennett Cerf Drive, just outside the City of Westminster in Carroll County, Maryland, is named after him. Some European wag - maybe French? They don't know whether a book's published by Scribner's or Harper's or Doubleday or Random House. Bennett Cerf, one of the coun trys foremost book publishers, died late Friday night at his estate in Mount Kisco, N. Y. Burning fossil fuels for energy rel, Honour Nursing Professionals and Support American Farming Heritage with The Nightingale Project & True North 2022, The Nightingale Project and True North 2022: Celebrating Nurses and Preserving American Farming Heritage See the debate between Cerf and Briscoe here at the 11:40 mark: CERF: Mr. Briscoe, can I ask you a question? Questioned a few years ago by Geoffrey Hellmann of The New Yorker about his desire for celebrity, Mr. Cerf ex plained: Everyone has a streak of pure unadulterated ham. , -, -DVD . two of the prominent Protestant actors, Barry Fitzgerald and his brother Arthur Shields. After receiving his degree along with a Phi Beta Kappa key, he got a job as a clerk in the Wall Street brokerage house of which he was a cus tomer. You'd better send her right up to see me. I can't do that, demurred the husband. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. The elder Cerf was a French Jew. It is my favorite because I have never heard it from any other source, so it is unique to me. The show, in which pan elists attempted to guess the occupations of various guests, made Mr. Cerf a national celeb rity. If we lose our case, you keep the fifteen hundred. BRISCOE: Well, first of all, you are again, as I experienced last year, accepting statements as facts and you are asking questions on things that dont really comply with the facts. [Howard] Dietz was a friend whom I grew up with and he's one of the funniest men I know. He was unpretentious and, as viewers saw, was having a helluva time hamming it up, all the time. Published many giants of 20th century American literature, including William Faulkner, James Michener, and Ayn Rand. Journalist, TV Anchor, Radio personality, Voice Actor, Television Producer. I revel in it.. Perelman's 1962 play The Beauty Part features the caricature Emmett Stagg of the book-publishing empire Charnel House, who was based on Cerf and played on Broadway by William LeMessena. Looking for Irish book recommendations or to meet with others who share your love for Irish literature? Ill give you fifteen hundred dollars, he told Joyce, with the understanding that if we legalize the book, this is an advance against regular royalties of fifteen percent. To my mind, a bad editor is a frustrated writer himself. He describes them, in a lively breezy fashion, warts and all. / , Phyllis Fraserm. 2007 , , 9 [11]. In 1959, Maco Magazine Corporation published what has since become known as "The Cream of the Master's Crop." He was delighted with that; it was a lot more money then than it would be today. Published many giants of 20th century American literature, including William Faulkner, James Michener, and Ayn Rand. Raised in New York City, Cerf attended Townsend Harris High School, the same public school as composer Richard Rodgers, publisher Richard Simon, and playwright Howard Dietz; and he spent his teenage years at 790 Riverside Drive, an apartment building in Washington Heights that was home to two other friends who became prominent as adults, Howard Dietz and the Hearst newspapers financial editor Merryle Rukeyser. Cerf later presented the book to Columbia University. Bennett Cerf, the publisher and television personality who died last Friday at the age of 73, left an estate valued at more than $1million, according to his will, which was offered for probate in Manhattan Surrogate Court yesterday. At Random: The Reminiscences of Bennett Cerf by Bennett Cerf | Goodreads BRISCOE: Some people would like to suggest that we adopt these narrow measures because we are a Catholic country. In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations. Copyright 2023 Irish Studio LLC All rights reserved. It was one of the hottest days in the history of New York. In 1925, Cerf formed a partnership with his friend Donald Klopfer. Late in life, he suffered the embarrassment of an expos, written by Jessica Mitford and published in the June 1970 Atlantic Monthly, denouncing the business practices of the Famous Writers School, which Cerf had founded. Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. and other TV shows. He was, after all, Bennett Cerf, and he made very few pretenses about his love of pleasure and fun. It had whores, looters and drunks. Cloudflare Ray ID: 7c0a2be32b5a04f8 Johnnie Ray was 63 at the time of his passing. Which was true. "And so a great fight started when Joyce went over to the piano. took seven months before deciding whether to proceed further; although the assistant U.S. attorney assigned to assess the work's obscenity considered it a "literary masterpiece", he also felt it was obscene within the meaning of the law. His first wife was Sylvia Sid ney, the actress. [12] Cerf was the subject of Jessica Mitford's expos, published in the July 1970 issue of Atlantic Monthly, which denounced the business practices of the Famous Writers School, which Cerf had founded.[13]. The aide grew more and more furious as time passed and there was still no sign of MacArthur, but Truman calmed him by saying, "Oh, don't hold this against Douglas. He was the one who picked Joan Crawford for her name. He then was named a vice-president of the publishing firm Boni & Liveright. Nora said, Maybe this will teach you a lesson, you drunken I thought the time had come to retreat, and so she and I left Joyce still sitting on the floor, quite happy and in no pain. A Mount Kisco street (Cerf Lane) off of Croton Avenue bears his name. Cerf was known for his love of puns and good literature. the third. His offhand infectiousness could hardly have been in greater contrast to that of Al fred A. Knopf, whose manner and appearance resembled that of a Cossack sergeant. Humorist and publisher, one of the founding editors of Random House Inc. Notable New Yorkers - Columbia University CERF:[interrupting] That leaves lots of room. Green globe.svg . Did Bennett Cerf and John Daly get along? - Short-Fact How to Distinguish Between Viable and Non-Viable Tomato Seeds for Successful Planting. What happened to Bennett Cerf? - chroniclesdengen.com Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. In 2006, Peter Bogdanovich portrayed Cerf in the film Infamous. An old Connecticut Ag Experiment. 2006 [10]. Dietz countered, "But you have to remember, Mr. Mayer, I get in very late in the mornings.". His wife Nora was a typical Irish ladygarrulous and friendly. But what can we do to help? One of Truman's aides related an incident that happened when HST was president. Joseph, Missouri, U.S.died July 17, 2009, New York, New York), American journalist and pioneer of television news programming who became known as the most trusted man in America. He was the longtime anchor of the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite (196281), for which he reported on many of the most historic , Douglas Edwards Follow The 13th Apostle on Facebook. With a flair for commerce and advertising promotion, Mr. Cerf was something of a blithe spirit in the book worlda man quite different from the staid, tweedy gentlemenpub lishers who dominated Ameri can book houses prior to the nineteentwenties. He was 73 years old. Bennett Cerf Death Fact Check, Birthday & Date of Death - Dead or Kicking He was 73 years old. This groundbreaking compilation of jokes, gags, stories, puns, and wit became recognized, in time, as the essence of Bennett Cerf and his humor. Since it was illegal to bring Ulysses into the U.S. Cerf was shocked at the efforts they had to go through to get U.S. Customs to seize this important edition of Ulysses. "I SHALL RETURN! Cerf died in Mount Kisco, New York, on August 27, 1971, at the age of 73. Cerf had caught Briscoe in outright lies and half-truths. But the most interesting story was about the mystery guest who wasn't. A major figure of American publishing for more than four decades, Bennett Cerf died in 1971. They had two sons, Christopher and Jonathan. But after you've been on a national television show for a little while, a popular one like "What's My Line?" Birthday: May 25, 1898 Date of Death: August 27, 1971 Age at Death: 73 Live Live Death Statistics Worldwide and The United States Bennett Cerf - Biography This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. There is plenty of gossip and rather surprisingly, he goes on about not liking Dorothy Kilgallen. Critical reviews of the book were pasted into a special copy, which was duly imported and seized by U.S. Customs. ), Read More: Bloomsday is James Joyce's St. Patrick's Day for summer. Manhattan Townhouse That Was Longtime Home of Phyllis Cerf Wagner They received $1,000 each. They were stamping everything without opening it, saying, Get out; go on out. When our man arrived the customs inspector started to stamp his suitcase without even looking at it. One of these was his avid en gagement in nonpublishing ac tivities, chiefly Whats My Line?, on which he started in 1951. A Mount Kisco street named Cerf Lane runs from Croton Avenue and is named after him. "Modern Library Giant, 80 Today, Still Active". The two bought the rights to the Modern Library from Boni & Liveright and went into business for themselves. There is a extensive interview on you tube with Bennett Cerf discussing the old TV game show What's My Line and other panelists. He was 73 years old. Ron Pataky, now 78 years old, left his job at the Columbus Citizen-Journal in 1980. Morris Ernst made a brilliant defense of Ulysses before Judge Woolsey, wrote Cerf, who fully understood the points being made. One day at MGM Louis Mayer complained that Dietz was leaving too early in the afternoons. 2019, 10 [13]. History: Humorist Bennett Cerf was regular visitor to Palm Springs TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. Cerf twice was a juror at the Miss America pageant. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it. September 25, 1977. on Nov. 9, 1942; accepted by Random House for publication two days later, and chosen as a . (Meanwhile, I'll leave all these poor plebe bastards here to die torturous deaths"). Even when I started writing books, and some people came to know my name, they didn't know what I looked like. His last day in the anchor chair at the CBS Evening News was on March 6, 1981; he was succeeded the following Monday by Dan Rather. Upon Fred Allens death in 1956, Random House book publisher co-founder and humorist Bennett Cerf became the anchor panelist who would usually, but not always, introduce Daly. This censorship debate is somewhat reminiscent of what happened when OCasey submitted The Plough and the Stars to the Abbey Theatre in 1926. Soon after Cronkite took over from his predecessor Douglas Edwards, the then 15-minute broadcast was expanded to 30 minutes, making it the first half-hour nightly news show on American network television. Every taxi driver would greet me by name, and I loved it. Bennett Cerf, the publisher and television personality who died last Friday at the age of 73, left an estate valued at more than $1million, according to his will, which was offered for probate in Manhattan Surrogate Court yesterday. Mr. Cerf was president, a post he held until 1965, when he became chairman of the board. Bennett Cerf, eminent publisher and punster, was a founder and chairman of Random House Books, a writer and editor of many humor books, and a popular panelist on television's long-running game show, What's My Line? *Dermot McEvoy is the author of the The 13th Apostle: A Novel of Michael Collins and the Irish Uprising and Our Lady of Greenwich Village, both now available in paperback, Kindle and Audio from Skyhorse Publishing. We are as broadminded and as civilized and as sensible as you people are here. The plane landed and the general wasn't there. At Random | Random House Group Get out, cried the manufac turer. Bennett Cerf Many of his evenings were given over to dinner par ties, either as a guest or as a host. Beverly Cole of Town Real Estate at 132 E 62nd St., a house that has been owned by Bennett Cerf, . As the founder of Random House, Mr. Cerf was a leader in American publishing. Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features. He was one of the great men of the literary world, who made New York City the leader in books, art and communica tions, Mayor Lindsay said yes terday. Edited compilations of humor and joke books. He received his Bachelor of Arts from Columbia University (1919) and his Litt.B. Early Random House books included a Kentillustrated Candido and a lavishly print ed Adventures of Tom Saw yer. But by 1933 the Depres sion put an end to the market for such luxuries, and Random House turned to trade books by acquiring the rights to Eu gene O'Neill's plays and the works of Robinson Jeffers. Now it has nothing to do with the Church or with the censorship body forbidding these plays. I have enjoyed every mo ment of it, he said in an in terview for this article. Finding aid to Bennett Cerf papers at Columbia University. Cerf married actress Sylvia Sidney on October 1, 1935; but the couple divorced on April 9, 1936. The easy part was stumping the panelconsisting of regulars Cerf, Dorothy Kilgallen, Arlene Francis and guess panelist Vincent Priceabout his kosher meat company. Not to mention such unliterary types as Frank Si natra. I revel in it. (More on Cerf and his live on-air confrontation with Robert Briscoe on censorship later. Ex-husband of Sylvia Sidney , , , , , , , . A maker of eyeglasses has just moved his shop to an is land off Alaska, and is now know as an optical Aleutian. When he died suddenly in 1971 his wife and sons took on the task of completing the book using the . He published Atlas Shrugged, written by Ayn Rand. This night he was not appearing as a politicianhe was still a TD in Dil ireannbut as a businessman, a purveyor of kosher meats. one of the guests was Robert Briscoe, the erstwhile Jewish Lord Mayor of Dublin. The two went out for drinks one night and . OCasey, at that point the most important Irish playwright of the 20th century, withdrew his play in a pique of anger. It is hard to imagine the chutzpah of McQuaid ordering a playwright of OCaseys esteem to make structural alterationsbut that was the Catholic Ireland of 1958. With Modern Library doing well, Mr. Cerf and Mr. Klopfer established a subsidiary to pub lish limited editions. When Joan Crawford became a star, the first time they brought her to the [MGM] New York office, she was taken around the office and introduced to all the executives. Thus began their formidable publishing business, which in time they named Random House. The Modern Library series, one of the forerunners of the paperback, has since become a staple of Random House. In the case of Joyce, it tisnt actually a Joyce play at all, its some kind of script which somebody has written from a Joyce play. At the last minute he welshed.. It used as its logo a little house drawn by Cerf's friend Rockwell Kent. Sometimes lost in the two-continent struggle, is how Ulysses finally got into the United States, thanks primarily to one Bennett Cerf, the intrepid publisher of Random House in New York. Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. 2005 " ' '' ", " , "[3]. In 1919, he received his B.A. Volunteered for the U.S. Army in World War I. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time, and its effects can be seen all around us. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. If he minded the loss of his king ship, he kept it to himself. He began his career with a commitment to journalism as well. His most recent book, published by Doubleday, was called The Sound of Laughter and he in troduced it by saying in the foreword: It is aimed straight at your jocular vein, and I can only hope that detractors will be limited to a Boeing 747.. He had the great ability for inspiring friendship, and he was, for ex ample, on close terms equally with John Hersey and John O'Hara. Published James Joyce's Ulysses in the US after winning landmark Supreme Court obscenity case. Over the years he added Sinclair Lewis, W. H. Auden, Gertrude Stein, William Saroyan, James Michener, John O'Hara, Robert Penn Warren, Truman Capote, Kathleen Winsor and Robert Jay Lifton. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. His col lected jokes also were printed in more than 20 books that had total sales of more than five million copies. 2 When was Walter Cronkites last broadcast? It turns out that pure sand can also be used for seed starting. 1960 (Knopf) (Pantheon), "Everyman's Library", . Read More: James Joyce quotes on love and life in honor of Bloomsday, It was Becketts turn next. She gave them all the icy star treatment, very uppety and condescending. He gave them pretty much free rein, while he took charge of major ad campaigns and finan cial dealings with the authors. With Donald S. Klopfer, in 1925 Cerf acquired the Modern Library imprint, which subsequently became a highly profitable series of reprints of classic books. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. In the nineteen fifties Mr. Cerf branched out into young people's books, publishing works on American and world history, nature and science. Ginger was a first cousin to Bennett's wife, Phyllis Fraser. Vastly expanded from its original 109 titles, it now includes 400 books. 2017 , ", 60 [12]. Click to reveal In the case of the OCasey play Mr. OCasey refused to have certain technical changes made in his play, which made it impossible to put the play on within the limits of our theatre festival director. This included a towns house on East 62d Street and his 42acre estate in Mount Kisco. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. Refer to each styles convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates. Did Bennett Cerf and John Daly get along? famous for: anchorman of the CBS Evening News. Half of the estate was bequeathed to Mr. Cerf's widow, Phyllis, who also received the Cerf houses at 132 East 62d Street and on Orchard Road, Mount Kisco, in Westchester County. After getting Rockwell Kent and Elmer Adler to redesign the books and after binding them in cloth, the partners went out to peddle them, and with such success that by 1927 they had recouped their invest ment of $210,000. Unrivaled Mac notes apps for fuss-free note-taking, 6 Actionable Tips for Improving Your Websites SEO, Copyright 2023 | WordPress Theme by MH Themes. Why is Walter Cronkite the most trusted man in America? Bennett Cerf sure could dish. Last December he underwent a ma jor abdominal operation at the hospital. Their temptation is always to rewrite books because they think that they can do it better. Cerf claimed that of all the awards he had received in his life, he was "genuinely proud of" those bestowed on him by humor magazines The Yale Record and The Harvard Lampoon. Well pay all the court expenses, and if you win the case, youll get a royalty on Ulysses for the rest of your life. , Cerf traveled to Paris and set up an appointment with Joyce through Joyces French publisher, Sylvia Beach of Shakespeare & Company. The com pany moved to 201 East 50th Street, where Mr. Cerf had a more functional, if less grand, office. In 1932, Random House had the rights to publish the book in the United States, and they arranged for a test case to challenge the implicit ban so as to publish the work without fear of prosecution. Person to Person--Phyllis and Bennett Cerf - YouTube He had flown to (I think) Manilla to meet with MacArthur. Bennett Cerf Intelligent, Thinking, Rights 8 Copy quote I can't say this too often - that a little humor can make life worth living. people's business. When Beckett learned the story, wrote Bair, he withdrew permission for his plays. He, moreover, was genuinely warmhearted and lik able and hard working, and much of his displayhis lavish houses, his devotion to Cadil lacs, his dining at Toots Shor's, his selfpublicitywas forgiven him. Anybody who says that he doesn't like it, I think is a liar. In 1959, Maco Magazine Corporation published what became known as "The Cream of the Master's Crop", a compilation of Cerf's jokes, gags, stories, puns, and wit. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience. And since its titles would be chosen at random, they called it Random House.

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