Some 15 years ago, while working on a story about the New York Post’s famous Page Six column, I needed some perspective on the gossip industry.
So I sought out Bobby Zarem, who’d by then spent more than 30 years as a tireless, relentless entertainment publicist, with a client list that read like a Who’s Who of a certain era: Cher, Diana Ross, Dustin Hoffman, Kevin Costner, Michael Douglas, Ann-Margret, Al Pacino, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and more.
Zarem explained the delicate dance of getting gossip items placed — how one greases the wheels by offering juicy tidbits unrelated to one’s clients, just to keep the door open. “If you’re intelligent,” he said, “it’s never discussed.” But he told me how even that strategy didn’t always work, and sometimes, you just had to beg.
