Janice Shay

For more than 50 years Bobby Zarem has lived the American Dream. Mind you, this is not the middle class dream of a suburban house and 2.2 kids, although he still lives in his childhood home in Ardsley Park and keeps an office in New York City.

No, Bobby Zarem has achieved what every red-blooded American has wanted since Al Jolson opened his mouth to sing in front of a camera and the talkies were born: Bobby knows movie stars. Lots of movie stars—famous people who call him at all times of the day and night, take him out to dinner, travel to exotic places with him, send him flowers on his birthday, ask him to look after their dog—well, I’m not sure about that last one, but you get my meaning. He is best buds with people we’d give a year’s worth of paychecks to meet.

Savannah-born Bobby Zarem has been a successful publicist for more than half a century. In 2010 he moved back to Savannah, but he’s quick to note that he is by no means retired and still conducts daily business through his partner out of his New York office.

You may think because he’s a Southern gentleman Zarem must hew to politesse and be modest about his work and his illustrious friends. You’d be wrong. One is immediately and literally star-struck upon entering Bobby’s house, which is littered with pages of scripts, contracts, messages signed “from Arnold” or “Cher,” piles of pages and notes for his memoir (more on that sure-fire blockbuster later), and framed snapshots of Bobby with people whose faces I know—we all know—quite well.

Bobby was born in 1936 at Telfair hospital, which at that time was next door to what is now the Sentient Bean. He happily admits he’s been obsessed with movie stars since he saw his first movie at age 4. Part of a large family, he says, “There always seemed to be a relative willing to take me to the movies.” He went every week, and now admits—with a guilty grin—that by the age of 5 he had seen and learned things from movies that a child wouldn’t normally know at his age. It didn’t matter, he was hooked.

Read more in the October/November issue of South!