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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

Files of the ESCO Fund Committee, Inc. and its related foundations ESCO Foundation for Palestine and ESCO, Friends, Inc. The files contain correspondence, reports, clippings, Board minute books, photographs and ESCO publications. Among the correspondence are Stephen Wise, Theodore Kolleck, Ernest Bloch, and Leonard Bernstein. The collection also includes papers relating to Frank and Ethel Cohen's personal (i.e., non-ESCO) Zionist and Jewish interests.

Correspondence, manuscripts, dispatches, documents, clippings and other printed materials concerning his career as an editor and correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune in Moscow, Berlin and New York, as a staff member of the Institute of Pacific Relations from 1932 to 1934, as deputy director in the Office of War Information overseas branch, 1941-44, as an owner and editor of the New York Star, 1948-49, as an instructor in communications at Sarah Lawrence College, 1950-1951, as a book editor at Simon and Schuster, Publishers, 1951-1970, and as an author and translator.