What's My Line? Forums

Bennett Cerf's Treasury of Atrocious Puns is a book, that according to its jacket features "Here, in one awe-inspiring volume... all the puns Mr. Cerf has hoarded over the years." Whether or not this book really contains all of Mr. Cerf's infamous puns is doubtful, but no doubt this book, coming in at 123 pages and 19 chapters, contains as near to all of Mr. Cerf's puns that one could ever hope for (or hope dearly against.) The book comes "With Illustrations by Michael K. Frith." Frith was the former Executive Vice President and Creative Director for Jim Henson Productions and later co-founded Sirius Thinking Ltd. along with Bennett Cerf's son (the company founded the program Between the Lions, which in explaining the title, show executive producer Judith Stoia explained "Every good idea begins with a bad pun" -- crediting the line to Christopher Cerf.) The illustrations (there are sixteen total) are, by the way, quite excellent and several of them feature an amusing caricature of the pun-dit himself. The book jacket goes on to note of the puns "...Many never have appeared in print before. Dozens should never have appeared in print at all. But there always will be somebody to chuckle wholeheartedly at the very worst of them-- as long as Mr. Cerf is around, at any rate." And, in fact, there are still plenty of people to chuckle at them well after Mr. Cerf has passed on. On a similar note, Mr. Cerf comments in his opening chapter ("A Thumbnail History of Punmanship" -- almost all of the chapter titles are, in fact, puns themselves) on the durability of puns noting that "a pun that is priceless in 1969 may be utterly worthless a year later." Yet I'd say that at least 85% of the puns in the book should be understandable to today's readers without any special effort necessary. Some of the more notable puns from the book I specifically recall having heard on the program: - "A horse of a different cruller" - a pun first inflicted on Episode #767 that Bennett was so enamored with that he recycled it on Episode #851. - "Mr. Oppornokity" - the spelling of whose name we now know thanks to Bennett's book. Recited for our amusement (or annoyance) on Episode #831 - "Rudolf the Red Knows Rain, Dear" -- a pun with a holiday theme brought to us on Episode #692 Those who think they can bear it can find any of a number of used copies of the book on Amazon.com. I personally checked it out from the library after spotting a co-worker reading it. One other thing of note -- though "Mr. Daly" is implicated in all three puns when they're presented on the program, the only one actually referencing him in the book is the "horse of a different cruller" pun.

Oh, I think we're well aware that a fair bit of it isn't original material -- though some of it could only be his. You make a good point that a large portion of it is in the presentation -- it doesn't matter whose material it is if you can't present it worth a dime.

Does Bennett credit the "other authors" in the books?