Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Bennett CerfBennett Cerf
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Session:         Page of 1029

more than the Saturday Review did! The Saturday Review was always one step in front of the sheriff in those days. I think that I got $150 a column at the end. I started for less. I started with This Week for about eight times that! After a while, it was simply too much trouble to do two columns a week. I couldn't do it. I talked to Norman and said that I had better quit Trade Winds. “Anyway,” I said, “I think it's time for a change.”

They gave me a great big farewell luncheon. I hated to give up “Trade Winds.” I hate to give up anything, I guess! It was much more fun than my This Week stint because everybody that I knew read “Trade Winds.” The Cerf Board was in a Sunday supplement that a lot of people used to put milk bottles on, you know; and I wouldn't get as many letters from This Week as I did from SRL, although the circulation was about twenty-five times as big. “Trade Winds” brought enormous response--college professors and authors and real book lovers.

Q:

I love Saturday Review. I think...

Cerf:

It was much better then. It was the Saturday Review of Literature then. Now they've included everything under the sun and it's become mighty successful. Of course now it's owned by McCall's. The sale was great for Norman Cousins and Jack Kominsky. They both got rich, and today they have a big fat magazine with page after page of colored





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help