Legendary New York publicist Bobby Zarem dies at 84

Bobby zarem, the colorful New York press secretary who replaced Ann-Margret and Diane Keaton, was instrumental in Oscar campaigns for Dancing with the wolves and Shakespeare in love and helped create the I Love New York campaign, has passed away. He was 84 years old.

Widely regarded as the king of Big Apples advertising in the 1970s and 1980s, Zarem passed away Sunday morning at the same house in Savannah, Georgia, where he grew up. Bill Augustin, a friend and colleague, tells Hollywood journalist.

In 1974, thanks to a loan from restaurateur Elaine Kaufman at the eponymous Upper East Side hangout where he dined twice a week from 1963 to 2010 and where in 1979 he introduced Mia Farrow to Woody Allen, he left Rogers & Cowan to start their own public relations operation, Zarem Inc.

Zarem brought with him a few important R&C clients, including the Music Director Robert stigwood, and quickly caused a stir with a post-premiere black-tie party he hosted at a new subway station at West 57th Street and Sixth Avenue for Tommy (1975), a film produced by Stigwood in which Zarem starred Ann-Margret. Some 700 bigwigs attended, and the event is still discussed in public relations circles.

As his own boss and with a small staff working under him in a busy office, Zarem undertook a wide variety of projects helping Dustin Hoffman land in the 1974s. Lenny (and marijuana on New Years Eve) to promote Pumping iron.

But the campaign Zarem was most proud of which he says he created and spent three and a half years making, although others including Mayor Ed Koch also claimed the credit was I Love New York. (later changed by advertising agency Wells Rich Greene to I [heart symbol] New York), which put a positive spin on his adopted city at a time when it hurt.

I was walking home from Elaines on a Saturday night in 1975 and realized you could throw a quarterback on Second Avenue and there was no one or car to stop it, he said in a 2015 THR profile. The city was in terrible shape, tourists weren’t coming because the crime scene had been grossly exaggerated and the city was slipping into the East River. When I got home that night, I decided that someone needed to do something. And the slogan was there that night.

He dug into his deep Rolodex which he then accused Peggy Siegal, who made her debut as a secretary before becoming a mainstream publicist, of stealing from her, an accusation she denied and began to lobby. on contacts from virtually every segment of New York life, among them Broadway producer Hal Prince and ex-mayor John Lindsay, to support a full-fledged campaign to restore New York’s image.

He had the keys to the city, Siegal said. It was just a crash course in learning the concentric social circles of New York’s cultural elite. (She also accused Zarem of throwing phones and typewriters at her, a charge he refuse.)

In the end, the state legislature and governor secured $ 16 million in funding, and what started out as TV commercials turned into massive sales of merchandise and a currency that continues to this day. ‘hui. The I Love New York campaign saved New York City, Zarem said. I have seen my creativity come to life and it is the most exciting feeling a person can have.

In the ’80s and’ 90s, as other PR firms were taken over by large conglomerates, Zarem continued to walk at his own pace. He consults for studios and individuals; aid Dancing with the wolves and Shakespeare in love win the Oscar for best film; and presented himself on screens, as a third baseman in Durham Bull (1988), as himself in a 1998 episode Law and order and as a model for the character of Al Pacinos in People i know (2002).

Through it all, Zarem was alternately charming (he was known to write handwritten and personalized pitches, letters and invitations, sometimes in the hundreds) and vulgar (after learning that the gossip columnist Liz smith was one of the negroes in Robin Adams Sloan’s syndicated column, which often targeted his clients and he sent notices announcing Smiths’ marriage to his partner, Iris Love, effectively knocking them out).

During this time, many of those who had started their careers working for him began to rise to positions of power themselves, including Liz Rosenberg, who became Madonnas’ personal publicist; Jason Weinberg, a senior executive; and Siegal, who turned the Oscars season’s trendsetters screening and reception into an art form.

Zarem was born on September 30, 1936 in Savannah but, of course, it was made in Manhattan.

His first glimpse of New York City came at the age of 12 when he traveled there with his father, who needed treatment for throat cancer. Zarem, oblivious to the gravity of his father’s situation, spent 10 days scrambling between their base at Waldorf Astoria and Broadway shows, falling in love with the grit and glamor of the city. Her father, who owned a shoe business, died a year later.

Zarem spent the rest of his childhood fantasizing about show business, consuming fan movies and magazines, and collecting celebrity autographs. My dream was to be around them, he says.

Zarem overcame a debilitating case of ADD to graduate from Phillips Academy Andover in Massachusetts (234th out of 236 students in his class, he would admit) and then Yale, where he majored in political science.

A week after graduating from college, he was back in New York City, seeking a job in entertainment. It took him five years to find one that he worked at an interim bank, a job he hated but, thanks to a friend, he eventually landed at the Columbia Artists Management art agency and was put in charge. the Macys Theater Club account, the reservation of film screenings and theatrical performances at preferential rates for subscribers.

Ultimately, Zarem excelled at it, so much so that legendary showman Joseph E. Levine hired Zarem to promote his company’s films in such clubs, and it was in this capacity that Zarem began to understand. the means of advertising. Buyers attended early screenings of Levines’ films to consider them for their clubs, and Zarem realized that he could shape their impressions by reacting audibly at certain times, which invariably brought the rest of the audience to react in the same way.

I learned probably the most important thing for a publicist to know, he recalls. Not only can people be guided, but people must be guided.

As part of an independent concert in 1969, Zarem hosted a star-studded fundraiser which was covered in The New York Times and caught the attention of Rogers & Cowan, Hollywood’s premier PR agency at the time. R&C dispatched the senior executive Paul Bloch to hire Zarem, who was immediately put in charge of overseeing the Jackson 5s’ east coast affairs. He subsequently brought an impressive list of clients which included Ann-Margret, Keaton and Stigwood.

However, the outspoken, freewheeling Zarem, who drank heavily at the time and had a penchant for the news himself, was never suited to the button-down business. And when R&C imposed a moratorium on commissions, he left to start his own business.

Around 2000, life in Manhattan began to focus on Zarem. I would sit on my patio in New York City and imagine I was in Savannah Beach, he says. The things that were there [in New York] it made me want to go all those years as a kid didn’t really exist anymore, at least the way I knew them.

In 2010 he returned to Savannah full time and devoted his attention to the Savannah College of Art and Designs Savannah Film Festival. He had started consulting for the event in 1998 and would remain involved until 2014.

In fact, I made my dream come true, he said. I have movie stars in Savannah.

Zarem, who was predeceased by his brothers, Daniel and Harvey, never married. When you work until 3 a.m. and are up at 8 a.m. and in the office at 9:30 a.m. or 10 a.m., you don’t have too much time for personal relationships, he said. If I had been married, I couldn’t have done a damn thing that I did. I was obsessed.

In his later years, Zarem found happiness in the living room of his Savannah home, surrounded by signed photos of people he has spent his life making famous. He received visitors from here and elsewhere, wrote his memoirs and gazed at his beloved city through a picture window.

I really don’t miss New York, I love it here, he said. I’m sitting here now and I realize what I’ve been through, how many fights I’ve had, how many people fuck me up, but that’s just the industry. I finally stopped taking it personally and realized it was just the world’s way. What I love most is looking back and seeing that I survived.

He added: Do you know I really don’t regret a fucking thing I did. I really don’t have one.