Today is the birthday of American humorist, author and stylist, Sidney Joseph Perelman (1904-1979).
S.J. Perelman was best known for his contributions to The New Yorker, and his collaborations in writing for film, including work on Around the World in 80 Days (1956) and the Marx Brothers films Monkey Business (1931) and Horse Feathers (1932).
Perelman’s books were mainly collections of essays he’d done for The New Yorker which, according to the Encyclopedia of World Biography include “Acres and Pains (1947), Westward Ha! or Around the World in Eighty Clichés (1948), The Ill-Tempered Clavichord (1952), The Road to Miltown or Under the Spreading Atrophy (1957), The Most of S. J. Perelman (1958), Chicken Inspector No. 23 (1966), and Baby, It’s Cold Inside (1970), which introduced the raffish Irish poet Shameless McGonigle. But the best of Perelman, culled largely from Crazy Like a Fox (1944), is to be found, quite aptly, in The Best of S. J. Perelman (1947).”
Perelman died in New York City in 1979.
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