Zolotow remained devoted to pop culture, literature (one of his closest friends was poet Delmore Schwartz),[6] politics, and magic.
As a child, Zolotow recalled seeing Harry Houdini perform at Coney Island and based his novel, The Great Balsamo, on the famous magician.
Strangely enough, one of Zolotow's first books, published only in London in 1948, was about Dr. Maurice William, a Ukrainian-born New York dentist and former Socialist, whose 1920 critique of Marxist economics had supposedly influenced Chinese statesman Sun Yat-sen, shortly before his death, to rethink his earlier sympathy for Communism.
[7] Other biographies by Zolotow include Shooting Star, about John Wayne, Stagestruck: The Romance of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, concerning the husband and wife Broadway legends, and Billy Wilder in Hollywood, about the Oscar-winning director and screenwriter.
[8][9] He also wrote shorter celebrity profiles on such entertainers as Tallulah Bankhead, Walter Matthau, Grace Kelly, and Milton Berle.