Phyllis Cerf Wagner R.I.P.

[Reza]

NY Times November 26, 2006

Phyllis Cerf Wagner, 90, Socialite and Collaborator With Dr. Seuss, Dies

By RICK LYMAN

Phyllis Cerf Wagner, who led a whirlwind life as the socially dynamic wife of two of New York’s most prominent men but who was always proudest of collaborating with a former advertising colleague, Dr. Seuss, on a series of landmark children’s books, died on Friday. She was 90.

Mrs. Wagner died at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital of complications from a fall in the bedroom of the home on East 62nd Street where she had lived since 1941, said her older son, Christopher Cerf.

A newspaper and magazine columnist, movie actress, publisher, writer of radio soap operas, advertising executive and civic fund-raiser, she lived at the center of Manhattan social life, entertaining successive generations of the city’s artistic and political elite, first as the wife of the Random House co-founder Bennett Cerf, then as the wife of former Mayor Robert F. Wagner.

As a hostess and occasional confidante, she hobnobbed with the most famous people of the day, including Frank Sinatra, William Faulkner and Truman Capote.

“In my dad’s day, it was theater people mixing with book people,” said Jonathan Cerf, her younger son. “In Bob Wagner’s day, it was political people mixing with powerful people from the private sector.”

While she was a teenager in Oklahoma City, Ginger Rogers, her cousin, invited her to move to Hollywood to try acting. Family legend has it that Ginger Rogers got her stage name because as a child, Phyllis had trouble pronouncing her real one, Virginia.

With Ginger Rogers’s help, Phyllis Fraser landed small roles in several films beginning in 1932, including 1934’s “Little Men” and 1938’s “Vivacious Lady,” though her biggest part was opposite John Wayne in “Winds of the Wasteland” in 1936.

By 1939, she realized acting was not her future, so she moved to New York, joined the advertising agency of McCann Erickson and began writing radio plays. She shared a desk at the agency with an illustrator named Theodor Seuss Geisel.

Years later, after he became Dr. Seuss and, in 1957, published his breakthrough book, “The Cat in the Hat,” Mrs. Wagner suggested to him and his wife, Helen, that they collaborate on a series of learning-to-read books. Their new imprint, Beginner Books, eventually included classic titles like “The Cat in the Hat Comes Back” and “Green Eggs and Ham.”

They worked together for more than a decade and often fought, eventually parting professionally. “They had some disagreements which were memorable,” Christopher Cerf said. “They were both perfectionists and would argue about every comma that went on the page.”

Shortly after she arrived in New York in 1939, Ginger Rogers introduced Phyllis Fraser to Harold Ross, editor of The New Yorker, who decided that she would make a nice match for Bennett Cerf. He introduced them at a party and they were married in 1940. Mr. Cerf died in 1971.

He encouraged her to remain professionally active, so she wrote a column for Newsday, often chronicling her encounters with celebrities. She also often took pictures for the book jackets of some of Random House’s most renowned authors. Later, she wrote a household hints column for Good Housekeeping.

In the 1950s Mr. Cerf was a regular panelist on the television program “What’s My Line?” His wife sometimes filled in as a guest panelist, and she was also a regular on the panel of an early ’50s quiz program called “Down You Go.”

A few years after her husband’s death, she was introduced to former Mayor Wagner. They married in 1975. The couple lived in the same town house that the Cerfs had purchased in 1941 but made regular forays to Rome in the late ’70s when Mr. Wagner was President Jimmy Carter’s envoy to the Vatican.

In 1980, Mrs. Wagner co-founded the Women’s Committee of the Central Park Conservancy and worked tirelessly to raise money to revive Central Park. After Mr. Wagner’s death in 1991, she returned to work, joining the advertising firm of Wells Rich Greene. Part of her job was to organize elaborate parties to attract clients.

“My mother was an incredibly gifted hostess, wonderful at putting people together,” Jonathan Cerf said. “She did it with enthusiasm. But the thing that always made her proudest was those books that helped so many children learn to read.”