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Bennett CerfBennett Cerf
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Session:         Page of 1029

Q:

I can see that.

Cerf:

When George got sick, one of the things that hurt was that he was out in Hollywood, doing a picture for Samuel Goldwyn. It was a show featuring his song “Love came right in...” ...Suddenly he started complaining about severe headaches. He had always complained so about any little illness, that none of us took it too seriously. But this time it was a brain tumor; and by the time doctors found it out, it was too late. I don't know whether they could have saved him anyway if they had caught it earlier, but I still remember how horrified we all were because we had laughed at him. We'd say, “Oh, you and your damned headaches and your constipation and everything else. We're sick and tired of hearing of them.” But this time it was fatal. I was down at George Kaufman's house over the weekend in Bucks County. We turned on the radio Sunday night, and suddenly we heard. “The man who said that he had enough songs in his head to compose continuously for the next hundred years died tonight in Hollywood at the age of thirty-six of a brain tumor-- Mr. George Gershwin.” I still remember our horror. George Kaufman, who everybody thought was a pretty tough fellow, went over to the wall--I can still see him--and leaned against it with his head in one arm, pounding the wall with his other fist. He couldn't talk. This was his reaction--pounding the wall. This friend whom we had kidded so unmercifully... George Kaufman was one of his greatest tormentors. They





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