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Bennett CerfBennett Cerf
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tape it. Bill Paley of CBS was there and said, “You fool, why didn't you tell me? I'd have had equipment here and we would have taped the show.” Well, it's lost now because most of it was extemporaneous.

Q:

That's what's so great, too. Sometimes that's the best.

Cerf:

I can't tell you the big stars who got up and enter- tained--everybody that you've ever heard of!

That Moss took charge of this show was typical of Moss. One hilarious number was a quartet with Adolf Green of Comden and Green, myself, Martin Gabel and Moss himself. We were four washwomen from Doubleday, Little Brown, Simon and Schuster, and Random House. We came out with pails and mops and sang a song that Moss wrote for us. Each one of us had a chorus about what we found in the trash basket at night--manuscripts and personal letters. It was a screamingly funny song. Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz did a whole little one-act play, “The Story of Act I," with songs that they wrote just for this evening. Thank the lord we made a record of that. It was the highlight of the show. There's a lovely song in it called “It Happens Just Once in a Life- time,” and Kitty sang it. It's particularly poignant now that Moss is dead.

I must tell you just a few more Moss Hart stories. When he and George Kaufman did The Man Who Came to Dinner, which was I guess their greatest joint success, it was about





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