A MOST UNCOMMON MAN AT THE UNCOMMON MARKET

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000100650001-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 21, 2010
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: January 15, 1980
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
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HOUSTON CHRONICLE (TEXAS)
15 January 1980
1A most uncommon mcan caftit thuv-
ncommon rwas?
He's a "junkman' who collects careers, roles and cultures
BY DAVID LEE ` - Born in Mathiston, Miss., 'Booth attend-
Cbronicle Staff ed Wood Junior College in his home town
Robert Henry Bocith jovially calls him-
self a "junkman." ..
He looks more like a movie actor in the
Orson Welles tradition.
Fact of the matter is, he has been both
- and a whole lot 'more.
Behind. the glass-topped counter,
amidst the clutter of his Uncommon Mar-
ket resale center' at 3401 Milam - "the
garage sale that got out of hand" - Bob
Booth holds forth in an atmosphere that
has become as much neighborhood social
club as salesror,m.
two or three days." It doesn't make his
customers happy, but then Booth has a lot
of other thinf? on his mind - always has
had.
In a benij;n manner, Booth is still role-
playing - unintentionally perhaps. But
even his appearance seems to allow for i
little else. A squared-off face almost sur-
rounded by a thicket of graying, mouse-
brown whAskers, set off by deep, piercing
eyes and capped by a Bob Hope nose. The
build of a sumo wrestler - which, inci-
dentally, he once was.
Booth.'has crammed more living into his
52 years than most manage in a lifetime.
With a voracious appetite for life, backed
by a.scattergun talent that nonetheless
targets with considerable authority,
Booth:, has delved into the nooks and,
crannes of life in two hemispheres.
Though he once served in the U.S.
Array, Booth has been mostly a soldier. of
for-Nne.
Even Fu Manchu would be hard press-
ed to match the many faces of Bob Booth.
Consider these roles at random: sol-
dier, Japanese movie star, writer of
,,admittedly bad pulp novels, restaurant
owner, pianist, night club operator, movie
script writer, inventor, publisher, travel
editor, student of Japanese society and
Far Eastern politics, stowaway, maga-
zine owner, ad agency chief - and appa-
renty victim of the late Sen. Joseph
McCarthy's?communist witch hunt of the
early 1950s,
Whoa!.
Who, really, is this man?
? ~..b_.45 . The army around," he said, "I just close down for . took him to Japan, where he
and then Mississippi State until he enlist-
ed in the army in 1945. Even then there
was a glimmer of what was to come, a
sort of striving after things just out of
reach, an excitement about the unattain.
able, yet clearly possible.
An avid Howard Hughes watcher since
early childhood, Booth yearned to be an
aeronautical engineer or a pilot, or both.
"But the mathematics and I just didn't
r mix," he admits. As for flying lessons:
"Just never seemed to get the time," he
said. "Still plan to do it though - one
was assigned to troop information and
education at Camp Zama outside of Tokyo i
and began a love affair with the Japanese
and their culture that would last until
1957.
For a few years, it was business as
usual for Booth - which is unusual busi-
ness for him. He did manage to begin a
study of the Japanese language that
would lead to complete fluency. And he
managed to land a job as a reporter with
the military daily newspaper, Stars and
Stripes, with an intent to stay on as a
civilian staffer once his army tour was
Once-discharged in 1948, Booth did stay
on in Japan. But not with Stars -and
Stripes. The money simply wasn't there.
Instead he took a two-year contract with
the military Post Exchange system as the
editor of Exchange Magazine.
But there was no rice growing under
Booth's feet. Even while editing Ex-
change, he was laying plans to found his
own English language magazines in
Japan. And, he.married a Japanese girl.
(They were later divorced.)
Once free. of his commitment. to the
Post Exchange, View and Preview maga-
zines - and a baby girl - were born.
"There was a crying need for maga-
zines like that," says Booth. "There wasi
little if anything in the likes of Stars andl
Stripes about movies, about entertain-
ment or about Japanese commerce and
industry. Booth's two magazines - View,
. in. Life. format, and Preview, in Readers
Digest format, supplied that and more::.. I
As Booth had predicted, the magazines
prospered, and so did he. "But it was
certainly not an ostentatious way of liv-
ing," he protests.
Certainly not. Only a. hilltop home, a
Silver Wraith Rolls Royce, a motorcycle
for kicks and part interest in a 37-foot
ship-to-shore motor launch. The launch
helped Booth test one of his many inven-
tions - the Hydro Bike, forerunner of the
sporty, one-man ski craft that race
around Clear Lake today.
But the magazines, even though they
grew to a full time staff of 24 and featured
Rod McKuen's first poems and the first
Honda motorcycle ads to appear in an
English-language publication, weren't
enough for Booth.
Ideas cascaded from his ;imagination
like water from a snowmelt on Mount
Fujiyama.
There was, for example,. the idea of
importing rebuilt V-8 engines from the
United States to be installed in Japanese
auto bodies for export. Possible. Also,
highly impractical.
Since the Japanese film Roshomon won
honors at the Cannes Film Festival in the
early 1950s, Booth also had in mind
producing films of his own in Japan for
international audiences. That was not to
be. But a career in motion pictures was in
the offing.
In 1952, like-minded Japanese movie
producers began advertising for foreign
residents to become actors in- such
movies-for-export.- Booth responded, not
looking for a job, but rather as a. maga-
zine editor intent on photographing and
interviewing the applicants.
"The first requirement was fluent Japa-
nese," he said, "and that I had. And then
there's the ham in me."
Almost before he knew it, Booth had
been signed to co-star in a film called
Port of Shadow, the first of a dozen co-
starring roles in Japanese films.
It was film-making that crossed his
path with the FBI and the McCarthy
mania of the early 1950s.
The movie was Red Light District,
again co-starring Booth. It was an una-
bashed examination of "social conditions
around U.S. military bases," said Booth
.-~
"But it was certainly not anti-American. I
persuaded the director to submit a copy
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of the script to the U.S. Embassy before
we started shooting, just to be sure. But
no one there even bothered to read it."
Yet the firs was condemned as-anti-
American by querulous reviewers..
FBT and the at probing Bcx2)th's
conduct as co ndence he has
e under the Freedom of Information Act
now s ws. su t: oot 's passport was
withdrawn by the Department of State.
Without benefit of passporL-Booth
stayed on in Japan, where he was fast
becoming at least a minor celebrity.
Movie roles led to legitimate theater and
nightclub appearances, where Booth
traded on his English-accented Japanese
for all it was worth as a stand-up comic,
played the piano, emceed variety shows
and, as he puts it, "played the buffoon."
The Japanese loved it.
But in 1957, with the Japanese economy
sinking to dismal depths and his maga-
zine business faltering, Booth decided it
was time to give up.
Still without a passport, he embarked
for New Zealand as a "ring boat" - an
old mariners' term for a stowaway.
Temporarily a man without a country, or
at least without evidence thereof. Booth
again managed success - with radio and
TV announcing assignments, a small ad
agency and a thriving coffee shop.
But by 1960 the tug of family and home
proved too strong to resist. The American
Embassy granted a one-way passport to
get Booth back to the United States and
Mississippi.
There Booth had planned to spend his
days writing. Instead he was drawn into
plans for a nightclub in Columbus, Miss.,
to be called the Southernaire. It was 11h
years in the planning, and was open for
barely three months before it was all but
washed away by a flood on the Tombigbee
River.
Disappointed, but not discouraged,
Booth tried his hand at writing and
producing in Hollywood- "I came very
close," he admits ruefully, "but not close
enough."
As almost a last resort,. he took a. Job
with Better Homes and Gardens in Des
Moines, Iowa, and he eventually became
"The pay wasn't really enough to get by
on," said Booth. So he took to writing pulp
novels as a quick income-booster. One,
for example, was originally . titled. The
Piano Player, later reworked and repub-
lished under the title The Lewd Dude.
But even that was. not enough, and.
Booth finally returned to Mississippi and
opened another independent, advertising
agency.
Then it was Houston's turn.
By 1971, Booth's half-Japanese daugh-
ter had become a promising young singer
and landed one engagement at Houston's
Tokyo Gardens. Booth came along, intent
on seeing young Scarlet to stardom. Scar-
let married instead and gave up her ca-
reer, but Booth stayed on in Houston.
Married to his current wife Winifred in
1975, Booth began the weekend garage
sales that finally led to the Uncommon
Market.
At first, it was largely to unload the
"junk" he and his family had accumulat-
ed in Mississippi. "But," he said, "friends
who didn't want to or couldn't mount their
own garage sales, began asking us if they
could add their stuff to ours. We said
okay, of course. One thing led to another
and here we are, in the business of selling
other people's junk."
For acting as middleman, Booth takes
30 percent of the sale price, and admits
that the business is doing tolerably well.
Advertising is virtually unheard of at the
Uncommon Market. Doesn't need it.
Word of mouth suffices. The store is a
hodge-podge, potpourri of just about
everything - from "tons of books" to
plants, clothes, cameras, furniture, bric-
a-brat and "whatever."
"I open and close as I please," said
Booth. The business potential is endless.
But who wants to spend the rest of his life
dealing in junk?"
Booth doesn't plan to and has dozens of
"projects" in the offing. One is a just-
completed novel titled Flood, based on the-
high water adventure that destroyed the
Southernaire night club in Columbus.
Then there is a long-planned book on
the Far East, a couple of `-film proper-
ties," that Booth has scripted himself,
some science fiction books in the planning
and designs for restaurants that Booth is
sure would be winners.
"Now," he said, "I'm just waiting to
get my hands free of the Uncommon Mar-
ket so I can dive into these things. I've got
enough projects to keep me busy a life-
time and more."
No doubt there will be more "projects"
to come. But in the meantime, uncommon
Bob Booth will continue to do business at
the same old market. . i
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