[6] 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.
[5] Zarem would stay with his father in the Waldorf Astoria, sitting by the front entrance and collecting autographs from the hotel's famous patrons.
[citation needed] Though Zarem struggled with attention-deficit disorder (ADD) his entire life, he attended Phillips Academy Andover and Yale University, as his brothers had.
[9] 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 time.
[11] He discovered an affinity for public relations and artist promotion, and began his career as a PR agent under producer Joseph E. Levine in 1968.
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, including some journalists, to watch the preview of the film.
He promoted Tommy which premiered in the West 57th Street subway station in front of hundreds of New York socialites.
Mick Jagger and New York Times reporter Judy Klemesrud were waiting by the elevator when Wonder finally showed up.
[15] Publicist Peggy Siegal claimed he had thrown a typewriter across a desk at her for incorrectly taking down a phone message, but he denied the charge by pointing out how difficult it would have been to miss her with such a large instrument at such close range.
However, several magazines were already eager for material on the film, and when Martha Duffy, art editor for Time, asked Zarem how soon he could get her pictures, he stormed the Paramount office.
When the Saturday Night Fever's marketing director refused to give Zarem any pictures, Zarem pushed the marketing director onto a couch and rushed across the hall to the art department, taking six color negatives that he sent to The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, and People.
A picture from the meeting gained significant media attention and earned Schwarzenegger a spot on 60 Minutes, helping to establish his fame.
Zarem claimed that he conceived the idea to make Planet Hollywood a national chain, developed the signature aesthetic of the restaurants, and put together its financiers, Keith Barish and Robert Earl.
and 1990s, Zarem promoted the films Tommy, Saturday Night Fever, The China Syndrome, Rambo, Scarface, Pee-wee's Big Adventure, and Dances With Wolves.
In 1975, Zarem was walking home from Elaine's on Second Avenue in Manhattan, and realized "you could have rolled a coin down the street and nobody would have stopped it.
Distraught by the decline of New York's reputation as a cultural hub and declining Broadway ticket sales, William Doyle hired Zarem and brought on the advertising agency Wells Rich Greene to implement his ideas for the television campaign starring Broadway stars, which helped turn around tourism for the city.
Governor Hugh Carey raised $16 million for the campaign, and when it proved a success, New York mayor Ed Koch started claiming credit for the slogan, as did Wells Rich Greene.
[21] When Rich became involved in the Democratic Party and began donating hundreds of thousands of dollars, critics accused her of angling for a pardon for Marc, and believed Zarem was masterminding her campaign.
[21] These charges peaked in January 2001, when President Bill Clinton issued a number of pardons on his last day in office, including one for Marc.
Zarem was responsible for attracting A-list names to the event and often met with SCAD students in an advisory capacity.
He asked her to stop writing negative press about his clients but Smith refused, turning the disparaging focus of the column on Zarem himself.
The feud started when she approached Zarem and asked him to pass on a note to Kirk Douglas, with whom he was eating lunch.
"[9] Zarem died in his native Savannah on September 26, 2021, aged 84, from complications of lung cancer, the same disease that claimed his father.
"[10] He trained PR agents such as Peggy Siegal, Jason Weinberg, Liz Rosenberg, and Peter Himler,[5] and mentored filmmakers like James Kicklighter.
Today there is no schedule or program anymore, because there are so many outlets that by the time major publications learn something it's already been out on Gawker or Nikki Finke.