Bennett Cerf
American publisher and author (1898-1971)
Bennett Alfred Cerf (born Benoît 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 16 years on the panel game show What's My Line?
Early life and education
Cerf was born on May 25, 1898, on 134 East 80th Street in Manhattan, New York City, to a Jewish family of Alsatian and German ethnicity. Cerf's father Gustave Cerf was a lithographer; his mother, Frederika Wise, was heiress to a tobacco-distribution fortune. She 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.
Cerf graduated from Townsend Harris Hall Prep School in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood of Manhattan 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.
Career
After graduating from Columbia University, Cerf worked briefly 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 at Boni & Liveright, a publishing company.
The public source identifies “Bennett Cerf” as american publisher and author (1898-1971). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Bennett, Cerf and American.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3403682. VIAF identifies the subject as 69683019. The Library of Congress control number is n50034324. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1898, 1971, 1916 and 1919.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bennett Cerf” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.