Bennett Cerf
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?[1]
Bennett Cerf
Bennett Alfred Cerf
May 25, 1898
New York City, U.S.
August 27, 1971 (aged 73)
Mount Kisco, New York, U.S.
- Humorist
- publisher
- businessman
- co-founder of Random House
2; including Christopher Cerf
Personal life[edit]
Cerf married actress Sylvia Sidney on October 1, 1935; they divorced six months later, on April 9, 1936.
On September 17, 1940, he married actress Phyllis Fraser, a cousin of Ginger Rogers, with whom he had two sons, Christopher and Jonathan.
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. A Mount Kisco street named Cerf Lane, named after him, runs from Croton Avenue in Mount Kisco.
Legacy[edit]
Random House published his posthumous autobiography, At Random: The Reminiscences of Bennett Cerf, in 1977, which Phyllis Cerf and a former Random House Editor Albert Erskine put together from his interviews for Columbia's oral history program along with his diaries and scrapbooks.[14]
Bennett Cerf Drive, just outside the City of Westminster in Carroll County, Maryland, is named after him. 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.