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Bennett CerfBennett Cerf
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Session:         Page of 1029

had sold 3,000 tickets. Kantor thought this was very, very funny, and refused to do anything about it, but I was desperate. I was in charge of this group. Carl and I, I remember, went down on our knees in the hall of the Roney Plaza Hotel in Miami Beach, pleading with this confounded girl through the keyhole to please come out and appear at the meeting. The two of us were on our knees, pleading-- when suddenly two old ladies walked around the corridor and saw the great, dignified Carl Van Doren and me on our knees pleading through the keyhole. I don't think that I've ever been more embarrassed in my life.

Q:

Did you get her out?

Cerf:

The two ladies looked at us with some horror I guess, as though we were trying to get some hooker to come out of the room and do a strip tease for us. Yes, we wooed her out. She did it that night because she said that she was not going to let down all of these thousands of people. Then she said that she would under no circumstances tour with us anymore. “A collection of boors and buffoons,” I think she called us.

Q:

It may have been true.

Cerf:

It was true. We had made her life miserable.

As the years went by, however, for some reason or another, Kay Winsor forgot all the fighting that we had done





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