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Correspondence, manuscripts, memorabilia, photographs, phonograph and tape recordings, and printed files. Included are Cerf's personal correspondence files, 1929-1945, and the diaries and scrapbooks which he maintained from his school days throughout his active career. The diaries, in date-book format, contain terse notes on Cerf's meetings with authors and friends, on his travels and publishing activities; the scrapbooks contain correspondence and photographs, as well as memorabilia and printed items, and were annotated by Cerf and his wife, Phyllis Fraser Cerf Wagner. Also in the collection are manuscripts and proofs for Cerf's books including "The Laugh's on Me""Treasury of Atrocious Puns""The Sound of Laughter""Stories to Make You Feel Better", and "At Random: the Reminiscences of Bennett Cerf", which was edited by Phyllis Cerf Wagner and Albert Erskine, 1977. The papers also include condolence letters written at the time of Cerf's death, photographs and photo albums,certificates and awards, and miscellaneous printed material, including Random House and Modern Library catalogues. Among the major correspondents are: Truman Capote, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Edna Ferber, Moss Hart, J. Edgar Hoover, Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon B. Johnson, John Lindsay, Joshua Logan, John O'Hara, Jacqueline Onassis, Richard Rodgers, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Gertrude Stein, Adlai Stevenson, Harry Truman, and Robert Penn Warren

Correspondence, manuscripts, playscripts, screenplays, diaries, documents, contracts, financial records, photographs, phonograph records, motion pictures, playbills, posters, sheet music, cartoons, art work, memorabilia, scrapbooks, and printed materials. . The collection consists chiefly of correspondence and production files relating to the creation, production, and performance of their works for stage, screen, radio, and television, such as Leave It To Me and Kiss Me Kate (with music by Cole Porter), Boy Meets Girl, and My Three Angels. Correspondence (with twentieth century authors, playwrights, musicians, political figures, and actors) includes: George Abbott, Jean Arthur, Bennett Cerf, Katharine Cornell, Jo Davidson, George and Ira Gershwin, Alec Guinness, W. Averell Harriman, Lilli Lehmann, Mary Martin, Laurence Olivier, Mary Pickford, Cole Porter, Regina Resnick, Eleanor Roosevelt, Robert E. Sherwood, Lincoln Steffens, Kurt Weill, Rebecca West, and Thornton Wilder. There is also correspondence concerning Bella Spewack's work with the New York Girls' Scholarship, UNRA, and the Sports Center of Israel. In addition to the production files, there are manuscripts and typescript drafts for novels, short stories, and articles by the Spewacks.

Correspondence; biographical forms; typescript biographical entries, often corrected and amended by the subjects; documents; proofs; memoranda; notecards; photographs; clippings of reviews; and other printed materials for the project with the working title "Who's Who in the American Theatre." The materials were assembled by Walter Rigdon, editor, and James H. Heineman, publisher, from 1963, when the first biographical forms were sent out, until 1969, when plans for a second edition were abandoned. The 1101 page volume which was published under the title "The Biographical Encyclopaedia & Who's Who of the American Theater" includes 3350 biographical entries for theater people and a necrology of 9000 names, playbills from 1959-1964, histories of theater buildings and theater groups, production records of Plays staged in New York since 1900, a theater bibliography of 600 entries, lists of awards, and lists of foreign productions. Among those for whom original materials were included are Truman Capote, John Dos Passos, Richard Eberhart, T.S. Eliot, Arthur Miller, Elmer RIce, and Virgil Thomson.

The collection consists of the editorial and production archives of Random House, Inc. from its founding in 1925 to the 1990s. The correspondence and editorial files include many of the prominent novelists and short story writers from 20th-century American and European literature: Saul Bellow; Erskine Caldwell; Truman Capote; William Faulkner; Sinclair Lewis; André Malraux; Gertrude Stein and Thornton Wilder. Among the poets there are files for W. H. Auden; Allen Ginsberg; Robinson Jeffers; Robert Lowell; and Stephen Spender. In the area of theater there are files for Maxwell Anderson; Moss Hart; Lillian Hellman; Eugene O'Neill; and Tennessee Williams. Random House transacted business with many fine presses and noted typographers and the archives contain files for Nonesuch Press, Grabhorn Press and Golden Cockerel Press, as wll as for Bruce Rogers, Valenti Angelo, and Edwin, Jane, and Robert Grabhorn.

Correspondence, manuscripts, documents, photographs and printed material. The editorial, publicity, and production files detail the publishing of some 450 titles, mostly from the 1970s and 1980s. Among the cataloged correspondents are: Woody Allen, Christy Brown, Claude Brown, Pearl S. Buck, William F. Buckley, Jr.; James T. Farrell, Leslie A. Fiedler, Jack Higgins, William Inge, Elia Kazan, Henry Miller, and J. B. Priestley. There are nineteen manuscripts, most with authorial or editorial corrections, as well as publicity photographs of Christy Brown, Claude Brown, Chester Himes, and Robert Oppenheimer, Jack Higgins et al

Correspondence files and financial papers. The files include correspondence, contracts, clippings and programs, ledgers and financial accounts, submission books, and calendars and memorandum books. Authors for whom there are extensive files include the following: Truman Capote; Patrick Dennis; John Dos Passos; Lloyd C. Douglas; John Hersey; Alice Tisdale Hobart; Paul Horgan; William Humphrey; Frances Parkinson Keyes; Margaret Mitchell; Alan Paton; Kenneth Roberts; Lillian Smith; John Steinbeck; George R. Stewart; Ben Ames Williams; and Kathleen Winsor