Hollywood producer of ‘Godfather,’ ‘Chinatown’
NEW YORK — Robert Evans, 89, the protean, fastliving Hollywood producer and former Paramount Pictures production chief who backed such seminal 1970s films as “Chinatown,” “The Godfather” and “Harold and Maude,” has died.
Evans’ publicist, Monique Moss, confirmed that Evans died Saturday. No other details were immediately available.
His career was a story of comebacks and reinventions. Evans had launched a successful women’s clothing line with his brother, Charles, and was visiting Los Angeles on business when actress Norma Shearer saw him sunbathing by the pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel. She persuaded producers to hire the handsome, darkhaired 26-year-old to play her late husband, movie mogul Irving Thalberg, in “Man of a Thousand Faces,” a film about horror movie star Lon Chaney.
After acting roles faded, Evans reemerged as head of production at Paramount and quickly converted the studio from a maker of mediocre films to the biggest hit machine in Hollywood, home to “The Godfather” and “Love Story” among others.
For decades, and with many flops in between, Evans was one of Hollywood’s most outsized and flamboyant personalities, encapsulating the romance of a now bygone movie era where films were greenlit more on instinct than market research. He was widely believed to be the model for Dustin Hoffman’s pettyminded Hollywood producer in the 1997 satire “Wag the Dog.”
“The higher you get, the lower you can fall,” Evans mused in a 2003 interview. “You pick yourself up at the count of nine, you come back and win and be done with it. I believe in being a survivor.”
The title of his 1994 memoir, “The Kid Stays in the Picture” (later turned into a 2002 documentary), came from an early story of his improbable success.
After he appeared in “Man of a Thousand Faces” Darryl Zanuck signed Evans to a contract at Twentieth Century Fox and cast him as a bullfighter in “The Sun Also Rises.” The filmmakers insisted the young actor wasn’t right for the role, so Zanuck went to Mexico City, where the film was being made, to see for himself. His verdict: “The kid stays in the picture.”
It was Evans who optioned “The Godfather” while Mario Puzo was writing it. As Paramount chief, Evans presided over Francis Ford Coppola’s production. Coppola recalled Evans fondly Monday, recollecting the producer’s “charm, good looks, enthusiasm, style and sense of humor.”
From 1966 to 1974, Evans presided over such hits as “The Odd Couple,” “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Goodbye,
Columbus.”
His string of marriages and divorces drained away much of the money he made. After brief marriages to actresses Sharon Hugueny and Camilla Sparv, he married Ali MacGraw, who became a star with her performance in “Goodbye, Columbus.” She gave birth to Evans’ only child, Joshua.
She and Evans divorced in 1972, and he married former Miss America Phyllis George in 1977. They split a year later.
He had a near-fatal setback in 1998 when he suffered a stroke in a Hollywood screening room. Evans underwent a grueling rehab, but still found time for his fifth wedding, this time to actress Catherine Oxenberg. The marriage barely lasted longer than the couple’s five-day courtship.
Wedding No. 6 occurred in 2002. The bride was Leslie Ann Woodward, a model and actress. Divorce No. 6 followed a little more than a year later. In 2005, Evans married Lady Victoria White, a socialite 33 years his junior.
He and White divorced in 2006.