Childhood and education in New York City; Columbia College; SPECTATOR, JESTER; journalism; Wall Street; Boni & Liveright; purchase of Modern Library; partnership with Donald Klopfer; travels and meetings with European authors; marriage to Sylvia Sidney; trip to Russia; building up Random House; contacts with authors, editors, other publishers; marriage to Phyllis Fraser; World War II publishing; TR Y AND STOP ME and later books; magazine columns, radio programs, lecture tours; paperbacks, reprints, Bantam books, "What's My Line?"; role of an editor in a publishing house; dictionary and its promotion; purchase of other publishing houses; Singer, Knopf; stock issue, going public, 1959; purchase by Radio Corporation of America, 1965; educational developments, teaching machines; juvenile lists; spurt of growth in all publishing after World War II; purchase of Pantheon; foreign contacts; Peabody Awards Committee; director of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; Miss America pageant; Famous Writers School; many anecdotes about well known personalities in literary and entertainment fields
Authors; Publishers and publishing; Consolidation and merger of corporations; Authors and publishers; Book trade and industry; American literature--20th century; Popular culture; Cerf, Bennett, 1898-1971; Klopfer, Donald; Sidney, Sylvia, 1910-1999; Random House (Firm)
Format
oral histories
Genre
Interviews
Date
1968
Physical Description
1,029 pages
Note (Biographical)
Publisher
Note
Interviewed by Robbin Hawkins between September 20, 1967 and February 8, 1968
This interview is featured in Columbia University Libraries’ Notable New Yorkers website. Notable New Yorkers was a project of Columbia University Libraries Digital Program. The original website was developed by Columbia University Digital Knowledge V entures and published in 2006