Bennett Cerf

Bennett Cerf

Known for: Acting
Biography: 1898-05-25
Deathday: 1971-08-27 (73 years old)

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Biography

Bennett Alfred Cerf (May 25, 1898 – August 27, 1971) was an American writer, publisher, and co-founder of the American publishing firm Random House. Cerf was also known for his own compilations of jokes and puns, for regular personal appearances lecturing across the United States, and for his weekly television appearances for over 17 years on the panel game show What's My Line? Cerf was born on May 25, 1898, in Manhattan, New York, to a Jewish family of Alsatian and German origin. Cerf's father Gustave Cerf was a lithographer; his mother, Frederika Wise, was heiress to a tobacco-distribution fortune. She died when Bennett was 15; shortly afterward, her brother Herbert moved into the Cerf household and became a strong literary and social influence on the teenager.Cerf graduated from Townsend Harris High School in Queens in 1916, the same public school as publisher Richard Simon, author Herman Wouk, and playwright Howard Dietz. 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. Cerf received his Bachelor of Arts from Columbia College of Columbia University (1919) and his Litt.B. (1920) from its School of Journalism. After graduation, he briefly worked as a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune and for some time in a Wall Street brokerage. He then was named a vice-president of the publishing firm Boni & Liveright.

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. They increased the popularity of the series, and in 1927, they began publishing general trade books that they had selected "at random". This began their publishing business, which in time they named Random House. It used as its logo a little house drawn by Cerf's friend and fellow Columbia alumnus Rockwell Kent.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. He published Atlas Shrugged, written by Ayn Rand, though he vehemently disagreed with her philosophy of Objectivism. He admired her "sincerity" and "brillian[ce]", and the two became lifelong friends.In 1933, Cerf won United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, a landmark court case against government censorship, and thereafter he was the first in the United States to publish James Joyce's unabridged Ulysses. (Originally published in Paris in 1922. One chapter from its previous serialization in Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap's Chicago-based literary magazine, The Little Review, had led to its being found "a work of obscenity".)

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. 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. After seizure, the United States attorney

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 office then sued under the Tariff Act of 1930, which allowed a district attorney to bring an action against obscene literature. Cerf later presented the book in question to Columbia University.In 1944, Cerf published the first of his books of jokes and anecdotes, Try and Stop Me, with illustrations drawn by Carl Rose. A second book, Shake Well Before Using, was published in 1949. Then, he became a member of the Peabody Awards board of jurors, where he served from 1946–1967 and 1970–1971. He was chair juror of the Peabody Jurors Board from 1954 to the end of his first term in 1967, and published a weekly column, "The Cerf Board", in the Sunday supplement magazine This Week. Cerf was also inducted into Omicron Delta Kappa in 1967 at Florida Southern College.

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.

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Ratings

Average 5.34
Based on 2.77 Thousand movie and tv ratings over time
1948
1950
1968
1970
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Information

Known For
Acting

Gender
Male

Birthday
1898-05-25

Deathday
1971-08-27 (73 years old)

Birth Name
Bennett Alfred Cerf

Birth Place
Manhattan, United States of America

Relationships
Sylvia Sidney (1935-01-01 - 1936-01-01), Phyllis Fraser (1940-01-01 - 1971-01-01)

Children
Christopher Cerf

Citizenships
United States of America

Awards
star on Hollywood Walk of Fame


This article uses material from Wikipedia.
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