S. J. Perelman
Personal Information
Description
Sidney Joseph Perelman was born in Brooklyn, NY, the son of a dry goods merchant. In childhood he moved with his family to Providence, Rhode Island. Perelman, who wanted to be a cartoonist, practiced drawing on cardboard from his father's store. He was a premedical student at Brown University from 1921-1925, where he began publishing cartoons to the campus humor magazine. After graduating from University, he contributed cartoons and essays to the weekly humor magazine Judge. In 1930 he took a job with College Humor. His first book, Dawn Ginsbergh's Revenge, was published in 1929, and Groucho Marx was asked to write a recommendation for the dustjacket. A few years later, Marx hired Perelman as a sceenwriter, and the script was eventually produced as the film Monkey Business. Perelman wrote several more screenplays, collaborating with his wife, Laura Perelman, on all of them he wrote after 1935. Perelman was at the same time writing regular contributions to The New Yorker, and he left Hollywood for New York in the 1940s, where he continued to write plays and essays. In 1956 he returned to Hollywood for one final film, Around the World in 80 Days. He spent the remainder of his life in New York working on essays and articles, publishing eight more collections before his death. In 1978 he was presented with a special National Book Award for his contribution to American letters.
Books
The rising gorge
A collection of humorous pieces, many first appearing in the "New Yorker."
Conversations with S.J. Perelman
In these pages one of the delights of sophisticated conversation lives again. His interviews collected in this book comprise a treasury of wit. Perelman (1904-1979) was one of America's best writers and, undeniably, one of its wittiest talkers. His great ability to take the tired English language and make it new and shiny was perhaps his most amazing feat. For his seemingly effortless contributions to the world of humor and to an avid, exhilarated readership flourishing over six decades the New York Times Book Review declared him a national treasure. Spanning his entire career, these conversations show that from the beginning he was a unique practitioner and a professional curmudgeon. He discusses his progress from youthful cartoonist to comic writer. He amuses listeners with accounts of hilarious adventures in Hollywood working with the Marx Brothers and later with Mike Todd on Around the World in 80 Days, for which Perelman won an Academy Award for scriptwriting.
The Last Laugh
The Swiss family Perelman
Humorist writer Perelman chronicles his around-the-world adventures with his wife and their two children.
Great Short Stories of the World
The leader of the people / John Steinbeck Mr. Know-all / W. Somerset Maugham Vanka / Anton Chekhov The happy prince / Oscar Wilde The old demon / Pearl S. Buck The sailor-boy's tale / Isak Dinesen Young Archimedes / Aldous Huxley Butch minds the baby / Damon Runyon Suspicion / Dorothy L. Sayers Hautot and his son / Guy de Maupassat The open boat / Stephen Crane My Oedipus complex / Frank O'Connor The snows of Kilimanjaro / Ernest Hemingway A letter to God / Gregorio López y Fuentes The little Bouilloux girl / Colette The ruby / Corrado Alvaro Six feet of the country / Nadine Gordimer [The boarding house]( / James Joyce The brute / Joseph Conrad A double game / Alberto Moravia Maternity / Lilika Nakos Lead her like a pigeon / Jessamyn West God sees the truth, but waits / Leo Tolstoy The walker-through-walls / Marcel Ayme [The lottery]( / Shirley Jackson The McWilliamses and the burglar alarm / Mark Twain The Augsburg chalk circle / Bertolt Brecht The overcoat / Sally Benson Blind MacNair / Thomas H. Raddall The procurator of Judaea / Anatole France The open window / Saki (H.H. Munro) María Concepción / Katherine A. Porter My Lord, the baby / Rabindranath Tagore The end of the party / Graham Greene Modern children / Sholom Aleichem Babylon revisited / F. Scott Fitzgerald Carrion spring / Wallace Stegner Just lather, that's all / Hernando Téllez The secret life of Walter Mitty / James Thurber The rocking-horse winner / D.H. Lawrence The Sunday menace / Robert Benchley The Mezzotint /Montague R. James The alligators / John Updike Pelageya / Mikhail Zoshchenko Haircut / Ring Lardner The burning city / Hjalmar Söderberg Fireworks for Elspeth / Rumer Godden The old chief Mshlanga / Doris Lessing Who cares? / Santha Rama Rau Over the river and though the wood / John O'Hara Dental or mental, I say it's spinach / S.J. Perelman The drover's wife / Henry Lawson The huntsmen / Paul Horgan The guest / Albert Camus Patience / Nigel Balchin Among the paths to Eden / Truman Capote Admiral's night / Machado de Assis The bet / Anton Chekhov The man who could work miracles / H.G. Wells A country love story / Jean Stafford A worn path / Eudora Welty The outstation / W. Somerset Maugham A priest in the family / Leo Kennedy The cop and the anthem / O. Henry Marriage á la mode / Katherine Mansfield The nightingale / Maxim Gorky The launch / Max Aub The wreath / Luigi Pirandello The eighty-yard run / Irwin Shaw You were perfectly fine / Dorothy Parker Luzina takes a holiday / Gabrielle Roy