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Bennett CerfBennett Cerf
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Session:         Page of 1029

About six weeks later the story editor of Fox came to New York. I've forgotten what his name was. In the course of the conversation I said, “What happened with Hangover Square? You suddenly became so avid to purchase it after you had turned it down cold. When we did accept your offer, which was double what you had made, the contracts were ready the next day.” He burst out laughing. He said, “We had a tough time keeping you from knowing it, but we were three weeks in production.” I said, “What do you mean?" He said, “Somebody goofed and didn't know that we didn't own the story. The company had done three weeks‘work on it when somebody discovered that we didn't own the property. If you had known that, you could have really murdered us.” That's what sometimes happened in the movies.

Also in the fall of 1942, we first became close to Samuel Hopkins Adams. We did his novel, The Harvey Girls.

Q:

You told a little bit about Adams.

Cerf:

I forgot to mention The Harvey Girls, which was a manufactured book which he did for us to order. This time I needed somebody to write a book about the Harvey girls.

Q:

Who were the Harvey girls? I guess it was before my time.

Cerf:

This certainly was before your time, Robbin. It was a story about the opening of the West. When the West was opened and the Santa Fe Railway was built, the only girls who could





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