BALTIMORE (Map, News) - When John Lennon faced deportation after his anti-war activism landed him on the Nixon administration’s ‘enemy list’ in the early 1970s, supporters such as Baltimore teenager Stuart Zolotorow stepped to his side.

Zolotorow spent years gathering signatures for The National Committee for John and Yoko, the idea of immigration attorney Leon Wildes, who believed a symbolic petition drive would champion the ex-Beatle’s cause.

“We needed to demonstrate that John’s was not simply a typical case, that many people would be upset if he was forced to leave the country,” Wildes said in an interview with The Examiner. “It was an attempt to keep them here, stay the deportation, until we could appeal the decision and prove his case had been handled illegally.”

Lennon’s immigration case is at the center of a new documentary at The Charles, called “The U.S. vs. John Lennon.” The film reveals documents, old FBI files and interviews with ex-FBI agents and G. Gordon Liddy, among others, confirming wire-tapping and illegal surveillance were used to keep tabs on Lennon with approval from the highest levels of government.

On Sept. 2, 1980, Zolotorow, who had kept in touch with one of the couple’s assistants and heard they working on the Grammy-winning “Double Fantasy” album, traveled to New York to see if he could meet and snap a picture of Lennon and Ono together. He did, three months before Lennon was killed on Dec. 9.

“I just walked into the Dakota and asked the doorman to ring them up,” Zolotorow said. “I told him if he did — I’m sure they’ll say they were expecting me.”

That wasn’t entirely true, but Lennon said it was fine and that they’d be down in 10 minutes.

“When they came downstairs, I asked if we could go outside for a shot,” Zolotorow said. “But I was so nervous I kept fumbling with all equipment. The harder I tried the worse it got. But John saw how nervous I was and made jokes and laughed and tried to put me at ease, which was impossible.”

Zolotorow, a budding photographer then and a professional now, got one great shot (on the front page today), but previously it was only published in a British Paul McCartney fan magazine. The picture, like the film, is as much a portrait of a couple in love as it is a cautionary, political drama.

“I’m not very political,” Zolotorow said, “I relate more to John as a artist and musician. But he was a beautiful person. All he said was ‘Give peace a chance’ — how can you not like a guy like that?”

rcassie@baltimoreexaminer.com