Producer Robert Evans dies at 89

Hollywood legend, Robert Evans, the colorful, larger-than-life producer known as “The kid,” produced the 1977 John Frankenheimer thriller, “Black Sunday,” “The Godfather,” and “Love Story” died October 26. He was 89.

The producer of the film that made me really want to make movies – to the point that I tried to ‘swede’ it in high school – has died. You bet your ass he did.

Hollywood legend, Robert Evans, the colorful, larger-than-life producer known as “The kid,” produced the 1977 John Frankenheimer thriller, Black Sunday, which would forever change the way I thought of films.

He died Saturday night and was 89.

This is a big loss for Hollywood and filmmakers who were influenced by 60s and 70s films. Evans rose in the decades which featured a group of risk-taking filmmakers. And Evans would green-light those risks.

You bet your ass he did.

It’s been said that few characters (and there are many) match the Hollywood story of Evans. He had looks and money and was given starring roles in a few movies – he couldn’t act – and, with no studio experience, was handed the keys to drive Paramount Studios in the 1960s.

When he left the studio, his first film as a producer was the classic Jack Nicholson/Faye Dunaway film noir classic, Chinatown. Other hits would follow including Marathon Man and Urban Cowboy.

Black Sunday was destined to be another hit for Evans with Robert Shaw, Bruce Dern and a Goodyear blimp crashing into the Super Bowl.

But, Universal released the inferior flop Two-Minute Warning – about a sniper at the Super Bowl – and that blew any chances for Black Sunday to gain a theatrical audience, even with all the good reviews.

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But Evans would still go on and produce more hits than flops. He was a one of a kind. He was Musso and Franks. Evans was Hollywood.

Robert Shapera’s, his real name, life was a continuous roller-coaster filled with drugs, beautiful women, seven marriages, extreme highs and lows. He was destined for something more from birth. By the age of 18 he had worked on more than 300 radio shows and the occasional TV show and play according to Variety.

According to Variety, Evans was discovered (or rediscovered) by the Beverly Hills Hotel pool by actress Norma Shearer. She would ask Evans to play her deceased husband, the legendary MGM exec Irving Thalberg, in the film The Man of a Thousand Faces.

Darryl Zanuck then cast him as a bullfighter in the 1957 version of Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. The other actors pleaded with Zanuck to replace Evans, but Zanuck sent a telegram saying “The kid stays in the picture,” which provided the title for his eventual autobiography.

As Evans would learn, looks only take you so far. But Evans would discover his talent lied in his salesmanship and judgement of films.

Evans linked up with Charles Bluhdorn of Gulf & Western, which owned Paramount Pictures. In 1966, Bluhdorn controversially named Evans VP in charge of production. It was the smartest decision he could make as Evans would go on an unprecedented run overseeing Rosemary’s Baby, The Godfather as well as The Italian Job (1969), Love Story (1970) and Harold and Maude (1971).

After being demoted at Paramount, Evans went on to produce iconic films including Marathon Man (1976), The Godfather Part II (1974), Sliver (1993) and Jade (1995).

A Dream Becomes a Nightmare

In 1980, things began to go downhill for Evans. First, at age 50, Evans was convicted of cocaine possession.

Then, a personal dream, The Cotton Club, became a never-ending nightmare, taking up several years of Evans’ life and almost $50 million. The hybrid of music and gangsters found Evans begging Francis Ford Coppola to take over the reins.

The production was tied to underworld money and, in an attempt to raise more funds for the film, Evans became involved with Ray Radin, a 33-year-old financier who would be murdered during production. He became a material witness in the execution-style slaying, though no proof of Evans’ knowledge of or connection to the murder was ever established.

This overshadowed The Cotton Club, released by Orion Pictures in 1984, and it went down in flames.

Drug dependency and the studios’ changing corporate culture plagued Evans’ later career. As Hollywood became more of a corporate town, Evans did manage to land back at Paramount in the ’90s. The films under Evans were mostly meh – The Saint, Sliver.

The legend would eventually parody himself in the film Burn, Hollywood, Burn (1998), and Dustin Hoffman, a longtime friend, borrowed liberally from Evans in creating the character of an outrageous producer in the 1997 satire Wag the Dog, earning an Oscar nom.

Evans was married and divorced seven times, first to actress Sharon Hugueny, then to actress Camilla Sparv and, after his divorce from MacGraw, to former Miss America Phyllis George. His brief 1998 marriage to actress Catherine Oxenberg was annulled. Thereafter he was married to Leslie Ann Woodward and Victoria White.

He and MacGraw had a son, Josh, an actor and director. Survivors also include a grandson.

Twitter Reacts

As is the case with many deaths of icons, social media reacted. Here are a few:

Evans final tweet pretty much summed everything up:

Thank you Mr. Evans, for making Black Sunday. You are one of the reasons, my life’s goal became clearer as a child.

You bet your ass you did.

SOURCES: Variety, MSN, Hollywood Reporter, Twitter

Contact Colin Costello at colin@reel360.com.