Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Bennett CerfBennett Cerf
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Session:         Page of 1029

“What's My Line?" They wrote back and said, “Do you realize that this is the man who published Whittaker Chambers?" Johnson wrote a letter of apology. I never met Johnson, but was mighty pleased when one of his TV victims named Falk gave him his come-uppance in court.

Q:

Did you get to know Whittaker Chambers at all?

Cerf:

Yes, indeed! When the book came out, some of my liberal friends--just as I had reacted at first--wouldn't even read it. They said, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself for publishing this book. You've sold out to the enemy.” But one night we decided to have a dinner party to which we would invite anybody who wished to question Whittaker Chambers. He agreed to this veritable inquisition.

By this time we had become friends with Tom Murphy, who was the judge in the Whittaker Chambers case. He is a great big, burly man with a very attractive wife...and a great big bushy mustache. Another claim to fame, in my opinion, is that his brother, Joe Murphy, was a great pitcher for the New York Yankees. Tom Murphy always used to protest that here he was, the judge in the Chambers-Hiss case, and people still would say, “Hey, aren't you Joe Murphy's brother?" Joe Murphy was known as “The Fireman” because he saved so many games for the Yankees. Well, Phyllis and I, by now, had become friends with the Murphys.

I had never before met Whittaker Chambers‘wife, Esther,





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help