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Bennett CerfBennett Cerf
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Session:         Page of 1029

Mr. Harvey, a son of the founder. By this time, it's become a great business. The Harvey system owns not only the restaurants along the Santa Fe but the bookstores. The Harvey Bookstore in the Kansas City station is the best one in town. When I heard the full story, I said, “Lordy, what a novel could be built around the Harvey girls!”

Sam Adams, whom I had known from the Liveright days, seemed to me the right man for the job and he accepted. Not only was it a big success as a book, but he got a lot of money for the movie. That's the movie that featured that wonderful song, “The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe.” Do you remember it?

Q:

Yes.

Cerf:

That's The Harvey Girls.

We also did that year Suez to Singapore, which was the first of our series of huge successes in war books.

Q:

I thought that Tregaskis was really the first one.

Cerf:

Suez to Singapore really came first. Tregaskis‘Guadalcanal Diary came a little later in the war.

Suez to Singapore was the story of the sinking of those two British ships at Singapore, the Prince of Wales and the Repulse. It was a black day in Allied history. Everything was going wrong for us in 1942. We were losing the Philippines. The British were getting their heads knocked off in that part





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