Robert Evans, iconic producer of “Chinatown,” dies at 89

NE WY ORK» Robert Evans, the protean, fast-living Hollywood producer and former Paramount Pictures production chief who backed such seminal 1970s films as “Chinatown,” “The Godfather” and “Harold and Maude,” has died. He was 89.

Evans publicist, Monique Moss, confirmed that Evans died on Saturday. No other details Monday were immediately available.

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 darkhaired 26-year-old to play her late husband, movie mogul Irving Thalberg, in “Man of a Thousand Faces,” a film about horror Robert movie star Evans Lon Chaney.

After acting roles faded, Evans reemerged 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, the ever-tanned, large glasseswearing 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 married and divorced seven times. He was the model for Dustin Hoffman 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.”

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 but his role in the movie itself has sometimes been exaggerated — including by Evans himself. But Coppola recalled Evans fondly on Monday, recollecting the producer’s “charm, good looks, enthusiasm, style and sense of humor.”

“He had strong instincts as evidenced by the long list of great films in his career. When I worked with Bob, some of his helpful ideas included suggesting John Marley as Woltz and Sterling Hayden as the Police Captain, and his ultimate realization that ‘The Godfather’ could be 2 hours and 45 minutes in length,” said Coppola, also noting Evans’ contributions to “The Cotton Club.”