At Random by Bennett Cerf

Author:Bennett Cerf [Cerf, Bennett]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-81999-4
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-05-22T16:00:00+00:00

One of my close friends was Harold Ross, the founder of The New Yorker; he was, I think, the greatest magazine editor we’ve ever had in this country. He was a strange mixture: people might imagine the editor of The New Yorker to be a polished gentleman, but Harold always looked as though he’d just gotten off a train from Sauk Center. He was a very naïve man and very prudish; he would never allow a bad word in The New Yorker. Anything salacious was killed by Ross, and that led to many fights with Alec Woollcott, who always tried to sneak in little off-color stories.

The book publishers very quickly got wise to the fact that The New Yorker was uncovering the smart young writers, and the minute Ross found one, sixteen publishers were after him. Of course, Ross would complain about this, and for that matter, about everything else.

I met Ginger Rogers through Harold, who adored her and was also a great friend of her mother, Lela Rogers. Though Ross was used to being waited on hand and foot, and nearly everybody was scared to death of him, Ginger treated him as somebody to be humored, laughed at and with. She would forget dates with him or come an hour and a half late, and he’d say, “That’s all right.” Ross took it absolutely meekly. Other people he would have screamed at if they were five minutes late. But Ginger was something else again! She’s a great girl.

Once in a while Ross and I would go to the theater together; he’d bring Ginger and I’d take my girl of the month. I also spent many weekends at his house in Stamford, and one of those visits turned out to be a historic event. On Saturday morning, July 15, 1939, I picked Ross up and we drove over to George Bye’s place. Bye was Eleanor Roosevelt’s literary agent, who that day was throwing a big picnic lunch in her honor.

Ross had told me that Lela Rogers was coming for the weekend, bringing with her, as he put it, “Ginger’s goddamn kid cousin.” When we got back to Stamford that hot afternoon, everybody was down by the lake in their bathing suits—the kid cousin in a little red-and-white-checked one. She was absolutely the cutest-looking kid I had seen in a long, long time. Ross said, “This is Phyllis Fraser,” and I walked right over and kissed her. She smacked me in the face. That’s the way we met; I was a fresh guy. All the next day we lazed around at Ross’s, playing badminton, croquet, Chinese checkers and backgammon. I was fascinated by Phyllis, of course, and spent most of the time talking to her.

She was just twenty-three at the time. I found out that she was born in Kansas City, Missouri, but when she was two her mother took her to Oklahoma, and when she was fourteen her Aunt Lela and Ginger took her to Hollywood to live with them. As small children Phyllis and Ginger adored each other and were like sisters, as they still are.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.