THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, September 21, 1994 TAG: 9409200049
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: BOOK BREAK
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY CRAIG SHAPIRO
LENGTH: Long : 109 lines
TEN YEARS AGO, producer Robert Evans prefaced a letter to Francis Ford Coppola with a description of show-business relationships. They're ``built on such strange personal emotions,'' he wrote, ``that they become three-sided: your side, my side, and the truth. . . .''
He was pleading with the Machiavellian director to re-edit ``The Cotton Club'' into the film they had envisioned - ``The Godfather'' with music - but the assessment also applies to ``The Kid Stays in the Picture'' (Hyperion, $24.95), the new tell-all autobiography from Hollywood's former boy wonder.
Your side, my side and the truth. As caveats go, it's small change. Evans' rise, fall and rise cut a deep and remarkable swath through recent motion picture history, and this candid, lively page-turner resonates with insight and no-holds-barred anecdotes each step of the way.
A radio and TV star in his native New York, Evans tried parlaying that early success into films but struck out. Fine. He joined his brother back East as a partner in Evan-Picone, the house of style that revolutionized the fashion industry by putting women in pants.
His return to Hollywood would make a movie.
Evans was in Beverly Hills to open E-P boutiques when Norma Shearer spotted the tall, handsome businessman lounging by a pool and cast him as her late husband, Irving Thalberg, in ``Man of a Thousand Faces.'' His first scene was with James Cagney. Back in New York, Darryl Zanuck saw him on the dance floor at the El Morocco. Evans was soon in California, testing to play bullfighter Pedro Romero opposite Ava Gardner and Tyrone Power in ``The Sun Also Rises.''
Zanuck never looked at another screen test. When his stars protested, the great producer, a bullhorn in his iron fist, barked: ``The kid stays in the picture. And anybody who doesn't like it can quit!''
It was then, Evans writes, that he learned what he wanted to be - a Boss.
Both films opened in the summer of 1957. A decade later, Charlie Bluhdorn handed Evans the reins to Paramount Pictures.
The roller-coaster ride that follows will keep even the casual fan up late. Within a few years, through ``The Odd Couple'' and ``Rosemary's Baby,'' Evans started Paramount's ascension from the bottom of the pecking order.
With ``Love Story,'' he saved his job and convinced Paramount's investors to keep the studio open. The staggering success of the Ali MacGraw-Ryan O'Neal weeper is credited with not only salvaging the U.S. film industry but also making it the world's foremost. The great irony is that no one wanted to do it. Michael Douglas, Jon Voight and Jeff and Beau Bridges all passed.
Nowhere, though, is the sideshow nature of Hollywood - and the combination of bravura and brilliance it takes to survive - better illustrated than in getting ``The Godfather'' to the screen.
Evans optioned Mario Puzo's unfinished ``Mafia'' for $12,500 to help the author repay a loan. In 1969, when the novel (with a new title) became the decade's No. 1 best seller, the Paramount chief was sitting on ``the Hope diamond of literature.''
And probably suffering flashbacks. No one wanted to make a film about organized crime.
Evans received threatening phone calls from a New York ``family''; he called on high-powered friends to call off the dogs. Paramount sent word to forget it if Marlon Brando played Don Corleone; the studio wanted to sell the rights to Burt Lancaster. Al Pacino had signed to do ``The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight''; Evans called on those same friends to spring the unknown actor from the contract. Richard Brooks, Costa-Gravas and Elia Kazan turned the project down; Coppola got the job by default.
As it became clear that ``The Godfather'' wouldn't make its Christmas 1971 opening, Paramount turned up the heat. Filming became a shouting match, with Coppola complaining that Evans was ruining the film and Evans, when not threatening to quit, ordering his director to add more texture.
History is the final vindicator. ``The Godfather,'' along with another Evans film, ``Chinatown,'' was among the 75 movies selected for preservation in 1991 by the National Film Registry.
Evans writes with the same vigor that he brings to his movies. Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty and Henry Kissinger are guys you'd want by your side; Coppola and Robert Towne, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of ``Chinatown,'' come off like Class A bastards.
Sometimes, so does Evans. He doesn't pull any punches in recounting the disintegration of his marriage to Ali MacGraw, his costly bout with cocaine, the false implication in ``The Cotton Club'' murder and the depression that drove him to contemplate suicide and commit himself to a mental institution.
Throughout, ``The Kid Stays in the Picture'' is sprinkled with rich anecdotes. Evans was in bed with Ford model Renata Boeck when President John F. Kennedy called asking to speak with her. He had to stay late in the editing room and couldn't attend a party at Sharon Tate's house the night she was slaughtered by the Manson family. Evans' lawyer in the ``Cotton Club'' trial, a man who became his close friend and confessor, was O.J. Simpson counsel Robert Shapiro.
The unlikely ride ends with Evans back at Paramount, producer of last year's ``Sliver,'' the recent ``Shadow'' and holding the rights to ``The Saint.''
It would be more than enough for most men. Evans, though, is still rolling the dice. Why? It goes back to a tip from Mike Todd when the teenage Evans was tagging along with the producer to his weekly gin game.
``That's what gamblin's all about, kid. It ain't no fun unless you play for more than you can afford to lose.''
At 64, Bob Evans is still beating the odds. MEMO: Craig Shapiro is video columnist for The Virginian-Pilot and The
Ledger-Star. ILLUSTRATION: Photos
Jack Nicholson, left, starred in ``Chinatown,'' one of the biggest
film hits for Robert Evans, right.
Ali MacGraw married Robert Evans after starring in ``Love Story,''
which saves his studio.
by CNB