Bobby Zarem even did the heavy lifting for Arnold Schwarzenegger

He was known as Superflack – the most influential publicist in the world – whose galaxy of superstars made him one as well.

Publicist Bobby Zarem. Picture: Getty

OBITUARY
Robert Myron Zarem Publicist. Born Savannah, Georgia, September 30, 1936; died Savannah, September 26, aged 84.

Bobby Zarem saw the same psychologist twice a week for 33 years, “but not as long as Woody”, he would say of his friend, filmmaker Woody Allen. He put his neurosis down to problems stemming from his obsession with meeting stars.

As a child he would walk his hometown streets “pretending it was Beverly Hills and imagining that a star lived in each house: Betty Grable. Lana Turner. Rita Hayworth. Gene Tierney.”

He would write to theatres where stars were performing seeking their autographs.

By 1947, Tallulah Bankhead was one of the most famous women in the world, as much for her dissolute lifestyle as her work on stage and in films. She had recently starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s acclaimed Lifeboat and was in town performing in Noel Coward’s Private Lives and staying at the Savannah Hotel.

Zarem and a friend skipped Sunday school, determined to get Bankhead’s autograph. They climbed the stairs to the eighth floor – avoiding the lift driver – and knocked on Bankhead’s door.

“Who is it?’’ she asked sternly from behind the closed door. The boys told her. “Go away. I don’t sign autographs.’’ They waited until a maid turned up with room service and sneaked in behind her. Bankhead threw a newspaper at them and screamed “get out of here you motherf..kers!”

As a boy Zarem knew Johnny Mercer (whose song Moon River was inspired by the waterways of Savannah) and CNN founder Ted Turner.

Zarem first went to New York with his father, a shoe wholesaler, and mother, who played piano and loved the theatre, which they would combine with business trips. He was bright and studied political science at Yale, where a lecturer was William F. Buckley, soon to become America’s legendary conservative commentator. He said he challenged everything Buckley said, but that Buckley marked him highly. Later they became friends.

After a stint in the National Guard, he moved to New York and worked as an agent at the Columbia Artists Management group. He had a natural genius for winning publicity for artists, events and films, and by doing so became a star himself.

In 1974 he started his own agency and blazed a trail with an idiosyncratic style as his client list grew to include Alan Alda, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, Kirk Douglas and his son Michael, Cher, Michael Caine, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Diana Ross, Jack Nicholson, Stevie Wonder, Sophia Loren, Ann-Margret and even Michael Jackson, some of whom he was charging $10,000 a month.

He was known for handwriting long personal letters to newspaper journalists asking that stories be written on an artist or a film. He would sometimes add that if they didn’t publish something he would kill himself. They did and he didn’t.

He hosted an opening night party for the Who film Tommy in a New York subway station. He effectively created Schwarzenegger when asked to promote the unknown bodybuilder’s 1977 docu­drama, Pumping Iron. The athlete wanted to meet Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, which Zarem arranged, making sure the encounter was photographed and the picture widely distributed. Schwarzenegger would marry Maria Shriver, the niece of Onassis and her first husband, president John F. Kennedy. Zarem also helped launch Schwarzenegger’s Planet Hollywood restaurants. He had already been part of the birth of the Hard Rock Cafe.

When Paramount and Bee Gees manager Robert Stigwood saw an early version of the shoestring-budget Saturday Night Fever they thought it was dross and were cautious about how to promote it, even though they had hired Zarem for the job. He went to the Paramount office, stole stills from the film and distributed them to New York media. The film was an instant hit, raking $US1m a day.

Zarem was sent a copy of John Berendt’s debut novel, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, about a 1981 murder in Savannah. Only 25,000 copies were printed. Zarem organised a column item in the New York Post about the book and it started selling, eventually sitting on The New York Times’ bestseller list for 216 weeks.

By the summer of 1975, New York City had become an urban wasteland: the murder rate had doubled, car-jackings were rife and a pamphlet with the image of a skull was handed out at the airport warning people of the dangers of downtown. Broadway was dying.

Zarem came up with the “I Love NY” campaign, which included the red heart-shaped logo. That single idea – promoted with the cream of the city’s acting talent – is credited with saving the city.

Months before Bankhead died, Zarem, by now well established, bumped into her. He again asked for her autograph. She declined: “I still don’t sign autographs.”