TV producer/writer Bob Booker, who spent 75 years working in television, radio, film, and the recording industry, died July 12 at his home in Tiburon, California, at age 92 from heart failure, according to his daughter, Laura Booker.
Booker was best known for the Grammy Award-winning album, The First Family,
In 1963, Booker, with partner Earle Doud, wrote and produced The First Family, a lampoon of President John F. Kennedy and his family starring Vaughn Meader. The album became the largest- and fastest-selling record in the history of the record industry, selling one million copies per week for the first six weeks and ultimately selling 7.5 million copies. The First Family went on to win the Grammy for Best Album that year.
JFK was known to have enjoyed parody, and when asked about the album, he replied, “I listened to Mr. Meader’s record, and frankly, I thought it sounded more like Teddy than it did me.”
Booker went on to write and produce 16 other comedy albums, including Al Tijuana & His Jewish Brass (1966), Out of the Closet (1977), and When You’re in Love the Whole 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 were responsible for the writing on the cult film The Phynx (1970), about a rock ‘n roll band called The Phynx who went to Albania to rescue an exceedingly large group of kidnapped celebrities, ranging from Colonel Sanders to Leo Gorcey.
Booker wrote and produced more than 400 television episodes, including the NBC Follies with Sammy Davis, Jr., the cult-classic The Paul Lynde Halloween Special (1976), 50 Years of Country Music, Christmas Gold, The Hit Squad, Cotton Club, and Comedy Break, where Ellen DeGeneres and other up-and-coming ‘80s comics made their television debuts.
He also wrote and produced five seasons of the syndicated sitcom Out of This World (1987-1991), starring Donna Pescow and Maureen Flannigan, as well as his friend Burt Reynolds, who as a favor agreed to play the extra-terrestrial voice of the father, Troy Garland.
He produced numerous “out-take” television shows, including the series Foul-Ups, Bleeps and Blunders, hosted by Don Rickles and Steve Lawrence, and established an extensive comedy video tape library that he marketed globally for decades.
Born in Jacksonville, Florida, Booker made his start at the radio station WINZ-AM in Miami in 1958. In his afternoon drive slot, he interviewed top entertainers of the time, including Jack Benny, Connie Francis, Nat King Cole, Eartha Kitt, and Frank Sinatra. A move to New York City in 1960 proved more difficult than he anticipated, and Booker eked out a living by writing an article for Playboy magazine and coming up with a series of gag record greeting cards, before hitting big with the First Family Album in 1963.
Booker met his soon-to-be wife, Barbara Noonan, a Manhattan-born actor and dancer, in 1966 on a blind date set up 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 friend and director Arthur Hiller and musician Tiny Tim serving as witnesses. Booker and wife Barbara would go on to work together, with Barbara as producer on a number of television programs in the 1980s.
During the final days of his life, Bob continued to work on a variety of projects, following his grandfather’s advice that one should “never retire.” He recently finished a soon-to-be-published memoir, Behind the Scenes in Hollywood, and two days before he passed, he was busy dictating instructions about projects he wanted to pursue or complete.
He is survived by his wife of 55 years, Barbara Noonan Booker, daughters Laura Booker (SJ Dodd), Courtney Wilkins (Dennis Wilkins), and four grandchildren, Emma, Jack, Lucy and Charlie.