TV producer/author Bob Booker, who spent 75 years working in tv, radio, movie, and the recording trade, died July 12 at his dwelling in Tiburon, California, at age 92 from coronary heart failure, in line with his daughter, Laura Booker.
Booker was finest recognized for the Grammy Award-winning album, The First Household,
In 1963, Booker, with associate Earle Doud, wrote and produced The First Household, a lampoon of President John F. Kennedy and his household starring Vaughn Meader. The album grew to become the largest- and fastest-selling document within the historical past of the document trade, promoting a million copies per week for the primary six weeks and finally promoting 7.5 million copies. The First Household went on to win the Grammy for Greatest Album that yr.
JFK was recognized to have loved parody, and when requested in regards to the album, he replied, “I listened to Mr. Meader’s document, and admittedly, I assumed it sounded extra like Teddy than it did me.”
Booker went on to put in writing and produce 16 different comedy albums, together with Al Tijuana & His Jewish Brass (1966), Out of the Closet (1977), and When You’re in Love the Complete World is Jewish (1966) which was later produced as a play in New York and Sydney, Australia, directed by Jason Alexander.
Booker later teamed with George Foster. They have been answerable for the writing on the cult movie The Phynx (1970), a few rock ‘n roll band referred to as The Phynx who went to Albania to rescue an exceedingly giant group of kidnapped celebrities, starting from Colonel Sanders to Leo Gorcey.
Booker wrote and produced greater than 400 tv episodes, together with the NBC Follies with Sammy Davis, Jr., the cult-classic The Paul Lynde Halloween Particular (1976), 50 Years of Nation Music, Christmas Gold, The Hit Squad, Cotton Membership, and Comedy Break, the place Ellen DeGeneres and different up-and-coming ‘80s comics made their tv debuts.
He additionally wrote and produced 5 seasons of the syndicated sitcom Out of This World (1987-1991), starring Donna Pescow and Maureen Flannigan, in addition to his buddy Burt Reynolds, who as a favor agreed to play the extra-terrestrial voice of the daddy, Troy Garland.
He produced quite a few “out-take” tv exhibits, together with the sequence Foul-Ups, Bleeps and Blunders, hosted by Don Rickles and Steve Lawrence, and established an intensive comedy video tape library that he marketed globally for many years.
Born in Jacksonville, Florida, Booker made his begin on the radio station WINZ-AM in Miami in 1958. In his afternoon drive slot, he interviewed high entertainers of the time, together with Jack Benny, Connie Francis, Nat King Cole, Eartha Kitt, and Frank Sinatra. A transfer to New York Metropolis in 1960 proved tougher than he anticipated, and Booker eked out a dwelling by writing an article for Playboy journal and arising with a sequence of gag document greeting playing cards, earlier than hitting huge with the First Household Album in 1963.
Booker met his soon-to-be spouse, Barbara Noonan, a Manhattan-born actor and dancer, in 1966 on a blind date arrange by producer/actor Ike Jones and Swedish actress Inger Stevens. The couple would go on to elope at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas in 1968 with good buddy and director Arthur Hiller and musician Tiny Tim serving as witnesses. Booker and spouse Barbara would go on to work collectively, with Barbara as producer on various tv applications within the Nineteen Eighties.
Throughout the closing days of his life, Bob continued to work on a wide range of initiatives, following his grandfather’s recommendation that one ought to “by no means retire.” He lately completed a soon-to-be-published memoir, Behind the Scenes in Hollywood, and two days earlier than he handed, he was busy dictating directions about initiatives he needed to pursue or full.
He’s survived by his spouse of 55 years, Barbara Noonan Booker, daughters Laura Booker (SJ Dodd), Courtney Wilkins (Dennis Wilkins), and 4 grandchildren, Emma, Jack, Lucy and Charlie.
