“When your back’s against the wall,” legendary Paramount studio head Robert Evans liked to say, “the impossible is possible.”
In 1994, Evans published The Kid Stays in the Picture, one of the most entertaining Hollywood memoirs of all time. Writing like the gangsters and gamblers he admired (and resembled), the wily, passionate producer, studio head, and actor tells the story of a life more melodramatic and topsy-turvy than many of his famous films. And Evans was responsible for so many films: The Odd Couple, Rosemary’s Baby, Love Story, Chinatown, The Godfather, Harold and Maude, Paper Moon, The Conversation, Romeo and Juliet, and Marathon Man, just to name a few.
Simultaneously self-aggrandizing and self-deprecating, Evans is great at convincing you he’s telling the truth—or at least, that his version of the truth is the most fun. His material is endless. This is a man who had seven wives, including Ali MacGraw, Phyllis George, and Catherine Oxenberg. His girlfriends include Beverly Johnson, Margaux Hemingway, Princess Soraya, and Liv Ullmann. And he holds grudges against everyone from Ryan O’Neal to Sharon Stone, Otto Preminger, Princess Margaret, Lois Chiles, and Robert Towne.
Although his bitter and often hilarious takedowns of enemies are juicy, Evans’s surprisingly tender recollections of dear friends are even better. He had lots of those, too: Henry Kissinger, Jack Nicholson, Cary Grant, Errol Flynn, Porfirio Rubirosa, Sharon Tate, Warren Beatty, Helen Gurley Brown, Sue Mengers, Alain Delon, Roman Polanski, Lucille Ball, David Niven, Dustin Hoffman, Mickey Rourke.
A true oddball original, Evans’s book will make you want to get out there and LIVE, hopefully with a bit more restraint than he had. “No matter how hard it hurts, you’ve got to trudge ahead,” he writes. “Stand still—you’ll only get older.”
Cock of the Walk
Robert J. Shapera was born June 29, 1930, into a large Jewish family in New York City. His mother, Florence, was a vibrant social butterfly, “quick to laugh, expressive with her feelings,” who had angered her wealthy family when she married her husband, Archie, a hardworking pianist turned dentist who had a thriving integrated practice in Harlem.
From the start, Evans—his father requested he change his last name to honor the maiden name of his own beloved single mother—was a cocky little guy, obsessed with tough stars of the day. Far from being put off by his preening son, Archie encouraged his quirkiness. “My imitations of Cagney, Bogart, Cooper, Gable, and Stewart made him laugh,” Evans recalled. “Putting his forefinger down under my chin, he tilted my head up. Our eyes met. ‘You’re some character, kid!’”
