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Bennett CerfBennett Cerf
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Session:         Page of 1029

Cerf:

Oh, yes, he's married to Lucinda Ballard, the stage designer. He wrote “The Bandwagon,” and “Three's a Crowd,” you know.

Q:

He's still with MGM?

Cerf:

Oh, no, he's retired. And speaking of Dietz, there's another famous humorist I love--Frank Sullivan. Frank is a a very sick man today; lives in virtual seclusion up in Saratoga, New York. Liveright published a couple of his books. He's a darling man. One time we were publishing in the Modern Library some translation of one of the Roman writers--I've forgotten which one it was--and the fellow who did it was a Columbia professor. He came in to see me one day and told me, “I don't know whether this will interest you or not, Bennett, but a friend of mine is going to England for the summer, and he left behind a lot of filthy motion pictures. Tonight we're going to run some of them down in a house down in Chelsea. Would you like to come?”

I said, “I've never seen a dirty motion picture in my life, and I'll be there!”

That evening I stopped in for a preliminary drink at a speakeasy called Moriarity's.

Q:

That's still in existence.

Cerf:

No, this was not P.J.'s. Moriarity was a very elegant





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