23 Facts About Bennett Cerf

Bennett Alfred Cerf was an American writer, publisher, and co-founder of the American publishing firm Random House.

Bennett Cerf was born on May 25,1898, in Manhattan, New York City, to a Jewish family of Alsatian and German ethnicity.

Bennett Cerf's father Gustave Bennett Cerf was a lithographer; his mother, Frederika Wise, was heiress to a tobacco-distribution fortune.

Bennett Cerf died when Bennett was 16; shortly afterward, her brother Herbert moved into the Cerf household and became a strong literary and social influence on the teenager.

Bennett Cerf graduated from Townsend Harris Hall Prep School in Hamilton Heights in 1916, the same public school as publisher Richard Simon, author Herman Wouk, and playwright Howard Dietz.

Bennett Cerf 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 Cerf received his Bachelor of Arts from Columbia College of Columbia University and his Litt.

Bennett Cerf published Atlas Shrugged, written by Ayn Rand, though he vehemently disagreed with her philosophy of Objectivism.

Bennett Cerf 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.

Bennett Cerf later presented the book in question to Columbia University.

In 1944, Bennett Cerf published the first of his books of jokes and anecdotes, Try and Stop Me, with illustrations drawn by Carl Rose.

Bennett Cerf 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.

Bennett Cerf was inducted into Omicron Delta Kappa in 1967 at Florida Southern College.

Bennett Cerf twice was a juror at the Miss America pageant.

Bennett Cerf was interviewed in 1967 and 1968 by Robin Hawkins, a freelancer working for the Oral History Research Office at Columbia University.

Bennett Cerf said that he was "genuinely proud of" the awards that had been bestowed on him by The Yale Record and The Harvard Lampoon.

In July 1970, Bennett Cerf was the subject of an expose by Jessica Mitford, published in Atlantic Monthly, which denounced the business practices of the Famous Writers School, which Bennett Cerf founded.

Perelman's 1962 play The Beauty Part features the caricature Emmett Stagg of the book-publishing empire Charnel House, who was based on Bennett Cerf and played on Broadway by William LeMessena.

Bennett Cerf was similarly portrayed as publisher Bennett Blake on The Patty Duke Show in the 1964 episode "Auld Lang Syne".

Bennett Cerf married actress Sylvia Sidney on October 1,1935; they divorced six months later, on April 9,1936.

Bennett Cerf died of natural causes in Mount Kisco, on August 27,1971, aged 73.

Bennett Cerf Drive, just outside the City of Westminster in Carroll County, Maryland, is named after him.