His mother died when he was only 15, leaving Cerf $125,000 that his maternal grandfather had placed in trust for him. In the early 1950s, while maintaining a Manhattan residence, Cerf managed to acquire inexpensively an estate at Mount Kisco, New York, which became his country home for the rest of his life. 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. 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. 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. Bennett Cerf on the Mystery Guest Who Wasn't He is known for his musical contributions to Sesame Street, for co-creating and co-producing the award-winning PBS literacy education television program Between the Lions, and for his humorous articles and books. one of the guests was Robert Briscoe, the erstwhile Jewish Lord Mayor of Dublin. 2007 [5]. He was unusually vituperative when he talked about the incident, wrote Bair in her Beckett biography, and he used it to illustrate his theory that the Catholic Church, toward which he had long been hostile, and the British government were responsible for the surprising number of great writers who had appeared in the short time since the nineteenth century. , " " " '". It was one of the few, experiences that; made Mr. Cerf fume, even years later. If I were this year as I was last year, chairman of the festival council I would have also have taken the same line as was done this year. Featuring 22 questions on a wide range of Bennett Cerf topics, it's not for the casual fan. It is my favorite because I have never heard it from any other source, so it is unique to me. Bennett Cerf - Biography - IMDb The first step is to understand the causes of climate change and how we can reduce our impact on the environment. Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. 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. 1960 (Knopf) (Pantheon), "Everyman's Library", . This is the location of the Random House Westminster Distribution Center and Offices, one of two Random House distribution facilities in the U.S., as well as the location of Bennett Cerf Park. "And so a great fight started when Joyce went over to the piano. Husband of Phyllis Fraser Did Bennett Cerf and John Daly get along? - Short-Fact They want to know what's in the book and who wrote it. Bennett Alfred Cerf (May 25, 1898 August 27, 1971) was an American publisher, one of the founders of American publishing firm Random House. The book has had an enormous sale; it is one of the leading Modern Library and Vintage Giants and sells thousands of copies every year. Morris Ernst made a brilliant defense of Ulysses before Judge Woolsey, wrote Cerf, who fully understood the points being made. Finding aid to Bennett Cerf papers at Columbia University. When I met him, Joyce was just over fifty, wrote Cerf. As a publisher nobody knew who I was. His partner in the purchase was his best friend, Donald S. Klopfer, then 23. The council was unwilling to override the archbishops veto.. A maker of eyeglasses has just moved his shop to an is land off Alaska, and is now know as an optical Aleutian. Have you heard about the sultan who left a call for seven in the morning? Cerf, who died in 1971, left behind a wonderful memoir of his years running Random House called At Random. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. See the debate between Cerf and Briscoe here at the 11:40 mark: CERF: Mr. Briscoe, can I ask you a question? Her son, Peter Gabel, said she had suffered from Alzheimer's disease for many years. " " . TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. Son of Gustave Cerf and Frederika Wise in 1951 and continued until the show's CBS network end in 1967. - sneered about Truman and MacArthur something to the effect of, As Georges Clemenceau said, "War is too important to be left to the generals. What difference does it make who published it? The cause of death was not immediately. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. Watering every day with just a teaspoon or two works well. 's view might have been undesirable associations. 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. Bennett was 73 years old at the time of death. 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. Did Bennett Cerf have children? He describes them, in a lively breezy fashion, warts and all. At the last minute he welshed.. Cerf, the co-founder of the publisher Random House, wasn't new to the desert. In 1977, Random House, the company that Cerf had co-founded, posthumously published his . There was a long bench in front of it, and Nora grabbed one end and Joyce the otherboth pulling in opposite directions. Gertrude Stein, Bennett Cerf and the Culture of Celebrity". This leads me to my favorite conspiracy theory. He was the one who picked Joan Crawford for her name. Bennett Cerf Drive, just outside the City of Westminster in Carroll County, Maryland, is named after him. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. The play contained a portrait of Dublin as not quite the pious Catholic capital of Ireland. Bennett Cerf was born in 1898 in Manhattan and graduated from Columbia University with a degree in journalism. Why is Walter Cronkite the most trusted man in America? His father, Gustave Cerf, was a lithographer; and his mother, Frederika Wise, was an heiress to a tobacco-distribution fortune. It was then that Bennett Cerf, the man who got Ulysses into America, asked a pointed question. Many of his evenings were given over to dinner par ties, either as a guest or as a host. One thing that has changed is personal - there isn't anti-Semitism in the profession, Mr. Klopfer said. Does Optimus Prime die in Transformers 3? Read More: Paparazzi hounded James Joyce after his late marriage to Nora Barnacle. The will, dated Aug. 15, 1968, was filed for probate by the law firm of Weil, Gotshal and Manges. Censor: A self-appointed snoophound who sticks his nose in other , -, -DVD . 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. The last thing I heard from her as I got in the cab was, Someday Im going to write a book for you, Bennett, and Im going to call it My Twenty Years with a Genius-So-Called. . Best known as publisher and founder of Random House. Even though he vehemently disagreed with her philosophy of Objectivism, they became life-long friends. History: Humorist Bennett Cerf was regular visitor to Palm Springs Bennett Cerf Dies; Publisher, Writer - The New York Times On February 24, 1990, he died at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles of liver failure. She died when Bennett was fifteen; shortly afterward, her brother Herbert moved into. I wonder, he mused, if you'd be so anxi ous to marry my Rosalie if I didn't have a penny? I think I'd love her twice as much, vowed the suitor fervently. 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 (1962-81), for which he reported on many of the most historic Which was true. I revel in it. (More on Cerf and his live on-air confrontation with Robert Briscoe on censorship later. Everywhere that I went, people would yell, "Hey, Bennett." In one ad endorsing Heub lein's martinis, he was shown dueling with Moss Hart, the playwright. ^ Mitgang, Herbert (January 23, 1982). September 25, 1977. I had a small talent, and it was fun. es / houziz/ ) 1. a building for human habitation, esp. His second wife was Helen Nichols, who, as a child actress, had changed her name to Phyllis Fraser. 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. It always takes him some time to get down from the cross.". Johnnie Ray was 63 at the time of his passing. The plane landed and the general wasn't there. I could tell you stories about him by the hour.. [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 two bought the rights to the Modern Library from Boni & Liveright and went into business for themselves. Mr. Cerf, in his turn, became a count with a fiefdom. The Modern Library series, one of the forerunners of the paperback, has since become a staple of Random House. It used as its logo a little house drawn by Cerf's friend Rockwell Kent. Cerf received his Bachelor of Arts from Columbia College of Columbia University (1919) and his Litt.B. His col lected jokes also were printed in more than 20 books that had total sales of more than five million copies. So in March1932, I had lunch with Ernst and said, If I can get Joyce signed up to do an American edition of Ulysses, will you fight the case for us in court? I added, We havent got the money to pay your fancy priceshe was a very high-powered lawyerbut Id like to make you a proposition. And since its titles would be chosen at random, they called it Random House. When he came to publish a book about the Federal Bureau of Investi gation, its agents, without tell ing him until afterward, inves tigated his career, apparently lest he harbored what in the F.B.I. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Join IrishCentrals Book Club on Facebook and enjoy our book-loving community. 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. Yet, in 1960, Mr. Cerf bought out Mr. Knopf for about $3million, and the two men got along well, with Mr. Knopf operating his fiefdom under Random House overlordship. This night he was not appearing as a politicianhe was still a TD in Dil ireannbut as a businessman, a purveyor of kosher meats. More than 50 million copies have been sold. They don't know whether a book's published by Scribner's or Harper's or Doubleday or Random House. A major figure of American publishing for more than four decades, Bennett Cerf died in 1971. Mr. Cerf assembled a corps of editors that included, in ad dition to Mr. Commins, Albert Erskine Jr. and Jason Epstein. to expand it to its maximum.. Our agent, frantic, said, I insist that you open that bag and search it. The inspector looked at him as though he was an absolute lunatic, and said, Its too hot., I think theres something in there thats contraband, our agent said, and I insist that it be searched., So, furiously, the fellow had to open the suitcase. Woolseys famous decision, which took him some time to write concluded that Ulysses is a sincere and serious attempt to devise a new literary method for the observation and description of mankind. He ruled that it was not obscene and could be admitted to the United States. Journalist, TV Anchor, Radio personality, Voice Actor, Television Producer. Only the most dedicated enthusiasts will be able to answer . 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.. The publisher and co-founder of Random House Bennette Cerf was also known for his own compilations of jokes and puns, for regular personal appearances lecturing across the United States, and for his television appearances in the panel game show What's My Line?. I had heard Morris Ernst, the great lawyer, say one night that the banning of Ulysses was a disgrace and that hed like to wage a fight to legalize it, wrote Cerf in At Random. Shields, who fought in the GPO in 1916, famously said that he did not want to have to say his prayers in Gaelic. So, there was some serious irritation among the players, but eventually the play went on and managed to cause the usual opening night riot at the Abbey. That would include all the reviews and comments by some of the literary stars of the day including Ford Madox Ford, Edmund Wilson, and Ezra Pound. Cerf married actress Sylvia Sidney on October 1, 1935; they divorced six months later on April 9, 1936. Is it easy to get an internship at Microsoft? She was 93. This kind of censorship especially stuck in Becketts craw. We dont pay any attention to it. But the agent persisted, I demand that you seize this book., After a short argument, the customs inspector called over his chief and said, This fellow wants me to seize this book. Then the chief started to argue; he said that was ridiculous. 1935 . 1936 . BENNETT CERF, the late cofounder and for many years head of Random House, was my friend, but that was no particular distinction because he had thousands of them. 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. A wealthy manufacturer re garded the young man pleading for his daughter's hand with deep suspicion. What kind of family did Bennett Cerf come from? He was unpretentious and, as viewers saw, was having a helluva time hamming it up, all the time. What are the physical state of oxygen at room temperature? But what can we do to help? ' ' , , , -15 " , ", -1982, , - [4]. In 1925, Cerf and Donald S. Klopfer formed a partnership to purchase the rights to the Modern Library from Boni & Liveright, and they went into business for themselves. Jokes concocted or recounted by him appeared in Saturday Review for many years and until his death in, newspapers that bought his syndicated columns. (One chapter had been published in Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap's The Little Review, a Chicago-based literary magazine, which had led to its being found "a work of obscenity".) Cloudflare Ray ID: 7c0a2be32b5a04f8 2006 -30% 2010. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. Indeed, the public side of his extroverted personality, which was exhibited for 16 years as a weekly panelist on the television parlorgame show What's My Line?, tended to obscure his almost 50 years of less conspicuous activity as a powerful shaper of the coun try's literary and cultural life. If he minded the loss of his king ship, he kept it to himself. , 110 , 550 8,000 , [6]. What do they care? 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. When President Truman and General MacArthur met, Truman and everyone around him noticed how MacArthur shook hands with Truman, rather than saluting his Commander in Chief. On the morning agreed upon, wrote Cerf, I walked into Sylvia Beachs, and there was James Joyce sitting with a bandage around his head, a patch over his eye, his arm in a sling and his foot all bound up and stretched out on a chair. After seizure, the United States attorney He'd come west from Manhattan in the 1930s and stayed at the B-Bar-H Ranch, starting a yearly tradition of . In the run-up to this celebration, IrishCentral is taking a look at books, recent news, and theories about James Joyce and his works. There was also a dramatized version of Ulysses, called Bloomsday, scheduled. You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. 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. 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. He married Hollywood actress Phyllis Fraser, a cousin of Ginger Rogers, on September 17, 1940. A Mount Kisco street (Cerf Lane) off of Croton Avenue bears his name. A second book, Shake Well Before Using, was published in 1949. [6], Cerf's talent in building and maintaining relationships brought contracts with such writers as William Faulkner, John O'Hara, Eugene O'Neill, James Michener, Truman Capote, Theodor Seuss Geisel, and others. 2007 , , 9 [11]. (September 17, 1940 - August 27, 1971) (his death, 2 children), (October 1, 1935 - April 9, 1936) (divorced), View agent, publicist, legal and company contact details on IMDbPro. In the early 1950s, while maintaining a Manhattan residence, Bennett and Phyllis Cerf bought an estate at Mount Kisco, New York, which became his country home for the rest of his life. Cerf takes it from there: Since that copy had to be the one that would be used as evidence, we got somebody to take it over to Europe and bring it back on the Aquitania, and had our agent down at the dock when it landed. After earning the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for his "contribution to the education and enjoyment of America's children and their parents," Dr. Seuss died on September 24, 1991, at the age of 87, in La Jolla, California. It does not store any personal data. one that is lived in by a family or small group of people. The office then sued under the Tariff Act of 1930, which allowed a district attorney to bring an action against obscene literature. j Bora ln IN Bom, May 25 1898 - Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States, Aug 27 1971 - Mount Kisco, Westchester, New York, United States, Gustave Cerf, Fredericka Cerf (born Wise), Helen Brown Cerf (born Nichols), Sylvia Cerf (born Sidney), May 25 1898 - New York, (Manhattan), New York, USA, Aug 27 1977 - Mount Kisco, Westchester, New York, USA, Aug 27 1971 - Mount Kisco, Westchester County, New York, USA, Sophia "sylvia" Sidney (Adopted) (born Kosow), 1910 - Manhattan Ward 12, New York, New York, USA, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States, Mount Kisco, New York City, New York, United States, ANU Museum of the Jewish People (formerly Beit Hatfutsot) Exhibit Project, Jewish Publishers, Printers, and Book Dealers, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennett_Cerf. signed up for all the subjects he was bad at. Cerf died of natural causes in Mount Kisco, on August 27, 1971, aged 73. [5] He spent his teenage years at 790 Riverside Drive, an apartment building in Washington Heights, which was home to two of his friends who became prominent as adults: Howard Dietz and Hearst newspapers financial editor Merryle Rukeyser. Bennett Alfred Cerf (1898 - 1971) - Genealogy 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.
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