S. J. Perelman

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.