Bob Booker, Writer-Producer on ‘The First Family’ Comedy Album, Dies at 92
Bob Booker, the veteran writer and producer whose crowning achievement was the hugely popular 1962 comedy album The First Family, which poked fun at President John F. Kennedy and won the Grammy for album of the year, has died. He was 92.
Booker died Friday of heart failure at his home in Tiburon, California, his family announced. He spent 75 years working in the recording industry and in radio, film and television.
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Booker also teamed with George Foster to write the cult film The Phynx (1970), about a rock band who goes to Albania to rescue celebrities (among them Colonel Sanders and Leo Gorcey of The Bowery Boys) taken captive by communists.
He wrote and produced five seasons (1987-91) of the syndicated sitcom Out of This World, which starred Donna Pescow, Maureen Flannigan and friend Burt Reynolds, who as a favor agreed to voice the extra-terrestrial father on the show.
Booker and partner Earle Doud wrote and produced The First Family, which starred Vaughn Meader as JFK. The album became the biggest and fastest-selling record in history, selling 1 million copies a week for the first six weeks and ultimately selling 7.5 million copies.
Three years after Bob Newhart’s live The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart became the first comedy album to win album of the year, The First Family was honored at the Grammys with that prize as well.
Kennedy was known to have enjoyed parody, and when once asked about the album, he jokingly replied, “I listened to Mr. Meader’s record, and frankly, I thought it sounded more like Teddy [the president’s youngest brother] than it did me.”
Born on Aug. 1, 1931, in Jacksonville, Florida, Booker started his career on the radio in 1958 at Miami’s WINZ-AM, where in an afternoon-drive slot he interviewed the likes of Jack Benny, Connie Francis, Nat King Cole, Eartha Kitt and Frank Sinatra.
After moving to New York City in 1960, he eked out a living by writing an article for Playboy magazine and coming up with a series of gag record greeting cards before hitting it big with The First Family.
Booker wrote and produced 16 other comedy albums, including 1966’s When You’re in Love the Whole World Is Jewish — later produced as a play directed by Jason Alexander — Al Tijuana & His Jewish Brass, also released in 1966; and 1977’s Out of the Closet.
Booker wrote and/or produced more than 400 episodes of television. His credits included the 1973 NBC Follies variety show, the 1976 ABC cult classic Paul Lynde Halloween Special and ABC’s Foul-Ups, Bleeps and Blunders, hosted by Don Rickles and Steve Lawrence in 1984-85. That last one helped establish an extensive comedy videotape library that Booker marketed globally for decades.
In 1966, Booker met actor-dancer Barbara Noonan in 1966 on a blind date set up by producer-actor Ike Jones and actress Inger Stevens. They would elope at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas in 1968, with director Arthur Hiller and musician Tiny Tim serving as witnesses, and often worked together.
During his final days, Booker recently finished a memoir and continued plugging along on a variety of other projects, following his grandfather’s advice that one should “never retire.”
In addition to his wife of 55 years, survivors include his daughters, Laura and Courtney, and his grandchildren, Emma, Jack, Lucy and Charlie.
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