Like the self-made small-business owner or the stoic family farmer, the unrepentant, unapologetic hustler is a distinctively American type. From door-to-door salespeople to infomercial hawkers, the man who tries to sell a good or service with flash and fair is instinctively appealing to most of us — even when we might feel as though we’re being ripped off.
The noted New York press agent Bobby Zarem, who died Sept. 26 at the age of 84, was such a man. He made his name not by pushing pillows or toasters but by touting, with rare zest and zeal, people, projects, and even places. Although Zarem’s job title suggests a protagonist in a midcentury film noir — think Tony Curtis in the 1957 masterpiece Sweet Smell of Success — his actual goal was scarcely different from the publicists, marketing managers, and flacks of today: By cultivating relationships in the media, Zarem sought to generate as much positive publicity for a client as he could.
Of course, Zarem’s client list just happened to include more than a few legends in the entertainment industry. At one point or another, Michael Douglas, Dustin Hoffman, Diana Ross, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Sylvester Stallone were beneficiaries of Zarem’s tactics, which were an unusual combination of the hard sell and the soft touch. Seeking to generate stories about his clients, Zarem churned out overripe “pitch letters” that had the reputation for overselling whatever movie or project he was pushing.
“In this age of mass communications, I think people appreciate his handwritten letters,” actor and client Alan Alda told the New York Times in a 1997 profile of Zarem, which also noted that the publicist eschewed modern tools, such as focus groups or the internet — in other words, anything other than his own instincts and experience. Zarem called his peers in the field of publicity “handlers or caterers,” adding, “I’ve elevated publicity to an art form.”
Like many New Yorkers who seem inextricably linked to the city, Zarem was a transplant to the big city. The son of Harry and Rose Zarem, Bobby was born in Savannah, Georgia, though he visited New York often enough as a boy to have been bitten by the show-business bug. “One of my fondest memories was seeing Show Boat and then throwing up after I ate a box of chocolates,” Zarem told the New York Times.
Zarem tried to go the conventional route: He was educated at Phillips Academy Andover and Yale University, where his major was in political science. (“God, I might have ended up in Nixonian Washington,” Zarem told the Washington Post in 1978.) Entering the business world, Zarem landed first at what was then known as U.S. Trust and then at Columbia Artists Management. During a subsequent gig working for movie producer Joseph E. Levine, Zarem found that his true calling was a salesman of the stars.
His commitment to paying clients was unflagging. In 1977, brought on to manage the publicity campaign for the John Travolta disco drama Saturday Night Fever, Zarem quickly realized that the studio, Paramount, wasn’t much interested in selling the film to the critics. But instead of abiding by orders not to furnish still images to the press, Zarem bulldozed his way into Paramount’s New York offices. “I grabbed six color negatives and ran out,” he told New York in 2010. “And I sent one to Time, Newsweek, and People. Us wasn’t in existence quite yet. It was about to come out, and they put Travolta on the first cover.” Other movies he helped turn into hits included Rambo and Dances with Wolves.
Naturally, Zarem’s bend-the-rules techniques won him enemies, and sometimes he overstepped in facilitating relationships. He claimed credit — but perhaps deserved blame? — for introducing Mia Farrow to Woody Allen at Zarem’s favored dining establishment, Elaine’s.
Zarem’s clients came to include his own adopted hometown. In the 1970s, during one of the Big Apple’s lowest ebbs, he was among the team that dreamed up the “I Love New York” campaign to revive pride in the city. Former President Donald Trump is reported to have credited the slogan and its heart-shaped logo with the tripling of Manhattan property values.
Late in life, Zarem, who in 1997 helped make the Savannah-set book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil a literary sensation, decamped to Georgia, but perhaps he was most needed a few states north of the Peach State, in Washington, D.C. Would not the Trump administration’s messaging and communications have been a bit more focused and less chaotic had someone like Bobby Zarem been in charge?
Peter Tonguette writes for many publications, including the Wall Street Journal, National Review, and Humanities.
