Bobby Zarem

Robert Myron Zarem (September 30, 1936 – September 26, 2021), commonly known as Bobby Zarem, was an American publicist.

Robert Myron Zarem was born on September 30, 1936, in Savannah, Georgia, the son of Rose (Gold) and Harry Zarem.

He was raised in an Orthodox Jewish household, and he is the youngest of three sons.

Zarem's father owned a shoe company and his mother was a pianist.

When he was a child, his parents would travel to New York City and bring him back autographed playbills and menus.

He would sometimes accompany them, attending Broadway shows that gave him a taste for glamour and stardom.

At age nine, Zarem and a friend skipped Sunday school to seek the autograph of actress Tallulah Bankhead, who was staying at the Savannah Hotel.

A bellhop at the hotel worked for Zarem's father on weekdays and told Zarem which room Bankhead was staying in.

Avoiding possible questions from the elevator operator, Zarem and his friend walked the eight flights up to Bankhead's room.

When Zarem and his friend knocked and told Bankhead they wanted her autograph, she shouted, "Go away! I don't sign autographs!"

The pair waited until the maid came by with a breakfast cart and crawled in behind her.

When they revealed themselves, Bankhead threw a copy of the Savannah Morning News at the boys and cursed.

Many years later, after Zarem had achieved success as a publicist, he would again ask Bankhead for her autograph.

She refused, saying, "I still don't sign autographs."

Zarem's trips to New York City became more frequent when his father moved there to receive treatment for lung cancer at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Zarem would stay with his father in the Waldorf Astoria, sitting by the front entrance and collecting autographs from the hotel's famous patrons.

When Zarem was thirteen, his father died from cancer.

The death left a deep impression on Zarem.

"I was scared to get close to anybody out of fear that that person, too, would disappear," Zarem said.

His eldest brother, Danny, took over their father's shoe company and paid for Zarem and their brother, Harvey, to go to college.

Though Zarem struggled with attention-deficit disorder (ADD) his entire life, he followed in the footsteps of his brothers and attended Phillips Academy Andover and Yale University.

He talked himself off the wait-list at Yale and graduated with a degree in political science.

After graduation, Zarem moved to New York City and worked for a year and a half at the United States Trust Company until he received a draft notice in 1960 from the Army, before ultimately joining the Air National Guard for a brief stint.

Zarem's first job in show business began at Columbia Artists Management, a job that lasted five years.

Zarem noticed that he had an affinity for public relations and artist promotion, and began his career as a PR agent under producer Joseph E. Levine in 1968.

Zarem became an agent by accident.

The company had seventeen minutes of the film The Lion in Winter starring Katharine Hepburn and Peter O'Toole.

Though Zarem had been working for the company in a business capacity, he invited a number of his friends to watch the preview of the film, a group which included some journalists.

When articles on the movie began to appear in publication, Zarem realized he had become a PR agent.

Levine later made him head of magazine publicity.

Zarem moved on to the PR firm Rogers & Cowan in 1969.

There he served some of his first A-list clients, including Ann-Margret and Dustin Hoffman.

He began handwriting long, personalized pitch letters and press releases that became industry legend.

He earned the nickname Superflack at a party he threw for Stevie Wonder in the late 1970s.

Mick Jagger and New York Times reporter Judy Klemesrud were standing by the elevator waiting to leave when Wonder finally showed up.

Zarem reprimanded Wonder for tardiness in front of Klemesrud.

She deemed him "Superflack", which was later popularized in a profile on Zarem in Newsweek.

After starting his own publicity agency in 1974, Zarem created lengthy, personalized pitch letters, a business style, and many campaigns.

His former clients included Dustin Hoffman, Cher, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, Michael Douglas, Michael Caine, Sophia Loren, Ann-Margret, and Alan Alda, among others.

In 1974, Zarem started his own agency: Zarem, Inc. He promoted Tommy which premiered in the West 57th Street subway station in front of hundreds of prominent New York socialites.