by Robert Evans
Persistence, and being a good dancer, got me several dates. Being older and much sought after, she had little interest in an aging teenager. Though she did enjoy sharing a few hours with me every so often, dancing up a Latin storm at the Plaza Hotel’s Rendezvous Room.
What the looker didn’t know was that she had a hundred-dollar bounty on her head. Months before, Dickie and I did everything imaginable to meet her, stalking the Barbizon Hotel for Women trying to bribe the doorman, Oscar. No luck, no chance meeting, zero on all counts. “A hundred dollars to the one who has her on their arm first,” blurted a frustrated Dickie. Now, here she was dancing in my arms to the beat of the samba.
Dick, at the time, was costarring in Broadway’s new smash hit, Mr. Roberts. One Friday night I caught the show with Miss Hundred-Dollar Bounty. Later we paid my pal Dick a visit backstage. Makeup and all, his face paled seeing Miss Hundred-Dollar Bounty on my arm. The three of us left backstage together. Congratulating him on his performance, the Bounty and I climbed into a horse and buggy and trotted down West Forty-fifth Street, leaving Dickie behind, knocked on his ass, way past the count of ten. The Bounty? Oh, some wannabe actress . . . Grace Kelly.
From the mid-1940s, television was the new medium. “The ticket to fame,” echoed an enthusiastic Abrahamson, who still believed in me. I was front and center for every audition.
I couldn’t wait to finish school. That summer I took extra courses so I could graduate six months early. By December 1947 I was free—skipping graduation, never saying good-bye, for there was no one to say good-bye to.
No star yet, but my credits, both on TV and radio, made me a legitimate contender. Except for Broadway, which was off-limits as long as Chamberlain Brown was breathing.
The jackpot! I got my first part in a movie, a gang flick at Universal. Hollywood, here I come. Come April 1, I was to report to wardrobe. Between acting, actresses, models, showgirls, poker, and the racetrack, I wasted little time on sleep.
“Bobby,” my mother hastened, “I’m not letting you go out to California until you get a good rest. You’re coming to Florida with your father and me. Get some sun, put on some weight. Look like a movie star.”
A week later, we broke in my pop’s new Pontiac and headed for Palm Beach. In Wilmington, North Carolina, stopping for gas, I hopped out for a Coke. My left side went numb. A local doctor examined me, diagnosed indigestion, and gave me an enema. The farther south we traveled, the more the pain. Pulling up to the hotel in Palm Beach, I could hardly get out of the car and was rushed to a hospital, where X rays showed that my left lung had collapsed. The doctors were surprised I was still alive. Suddenly, Hollywood was very far away.
There was one cure—rest. My parents rented a house on an isolated island off Palm Beach. There, for the next six weeks, I did nothing but lie in bed and feel sorry for myself. Now it was God talking to me, not Mike Todd. What he was saying was “Slow down, or you’ll be dead.”
For the first time in my life I was a watcher, not a doer. It felt good. After six weeks, my lung was again healthy. The doctor strongly suggested caution. Also for the first time, I liked the word. When my parents left for home, I told them I’d like to try something new: be a beach bum for a while. Not that I’d found God, but at least I’d heard him. They thought it was a terrific idea.
It took but two weeks, and I was on local radio doing news, sports, and weather. You can’t get into any trouble doing that! Really?
A guy from Miami showed up one day. He’d heard my voice and liked it. Doubling my salary, a week later I was in Miami Beach, the youngest disc jockey in America. “The Robert Evans Show,” brought to you from the glamorous lounge of the Caribbean Hotel. Everyone was on, from Rosemary Clooney, Tony Martin, Frankie Laine, Phil Silvers, Dick Shawn, to the local big spenders.
“Put the Diamond Jims on the air,” my boss prodded. “Make ’em feel like celebrities.”
I wasn’t yet eighteen, but I thought I knew it all. I didn’t. Miami Beach was a town where there was nothing to do but play, play, play. It was crawling with women looking for trouble. And me—I couldn’t stay out of it. Being the beach’s new celebrity, I never said no more times, yet never had so much action.
I’d been at the Caribbean six weeks when Havana called. One of the owners of the Copacabana Club had caught my act at the Caribbean. Again, an offer doubling my salary, but that wasn’t the attraction. Havana was the gambling capital of the world. Need I say more?
In Havana, women faded into the background. I only had eyes for guys, the guys who ran the action, that is—the mob. Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello, you name the nose, he was there.
My gig was celebrated but very short. Accidentally one night I witnessed something I shouldn’t have. A guy you don’t say no to grabbed and blindfolded me, then took me for a ride. Taken out of the car, a pack of green was handed me.
“Forget you were ever here.” I did.
Suddenly, I’m in another seat. It was to either oblivion or a small plane. Luckily, they must have liked my smile—like luggage, I was dropped off by seaplane on a beach north of Key West. My head still bleeding, but with five thousand of good-bye green in my pocket. It was time to go home.
Absence does not make the heart grow fonder. Gone less than a year, I was no longer a juvenile, yet too young for romantic leads, and suddenly tough to cast. But it mattered little since, for the first time, I fell in love. Her name: Elaine Stewart. Beautiful in looks, heart, and giving, her face graced every fashion magazine imaginable. Get this—a virgin to boot. Me, I wanted her to stay one. For morality? Uh-uh. For immorality. That way I could still play and not feel guilty cheating.
Elaine’s career soon overshadowed mine. One night, we joined Benny Medford, a top Hollywood agent, at Danny’s Hideaway. Elaine’s golden future in films was all he could talk about. She held my hand tight, knowing how much I wished it were me he was talking about. Benny had spotted Elaine on a magazine cover and showed her picture to producer Hal Wallis, who offered to fly her west for a screen test. Within a week, she was signed to a seven-year contract. When she called to say she’d be coming back east to get her things before taking off to La-la Land, the good news I was eagerly waiting to tell her suddenly shrunk into the background. I had just gotten the plum role of my career, playing young Lord Essex in NBC’s live TV special Elizabeth and Essex.
She spent her last night in New York backstage, watching my performance as the romantic young Lord Essex, a dashing young nobleman on stage, while in life I was a wannabe left behind by my own virgin princess.
For months, I courted her long distance. By now Elaine had become filmland’s female find of the year, making the cover of Life. I couldn’t get her out of my head. Buying a three-carat diamond ring, I flew west to surprise her. From the airport, I went straight to her address, rushing up the steps and ringing her bell. The door opened. It was not Elaine, but one handsome motherfucker. An actor named Scott Brady, who at the time was the screen’s hot new tough guy.
Up an octave. “Is Elaine here?”
Coming to the door in a bathrobe, with her hair dripping wet, was my virgin princess, giving me a look as if I were an Auschwitz refugee.
“Bob, what are you doing here?”
“I thought I’d surprise you. . . .”
“Never pull a surprise on a lady,” she smiled. “Ever!”
My college education.
Chapter Three
“Change into the three-piece single-breasted pinstripe.”
Off came the Harris tweed jacket, the cavalry twill trousers, and into the pinstripe, rushing back into the showroom, where the buyer and merchandise manager from Saks were sitting. I unbuttoned the jacket to show the vest, turned slowly around, putting my hands in the pockets.
“Great look,” said the buyer from Saks. “We’ll take it in brown, navy, and gray from 38 to 46. Double up on the 40s and 42s. Let’s look at the sport coats.”
I was now a model for L. Greif, one of the more prestigious
men’s clothiers in America, earning sixty-five bucks a week. My acting career had come to a standstill, leaving L. Greif’s showroom my only stage. In three months, not only did my salary triple, but I was made a house salesman with a dozen small accounts of my own. Still it was less than half the green I had been making just two years earlier as an actor. It was a new beginning, yet being an actor still haunted my every thought. How could I be over the hill at nineteen?
One morning in the elevator, a man tapped me on the shoulder. “Nat Moskow—Cardinal Clothes. Hear you’re one helluva salesman.” Before I got a word out, he blabbered, “How’d you like to rep my line on the West Coast?”
Opening up California for a clothing company was not the route to stardom I had dreamed about, but it was a route. Arriving in Tinseltown, the first person I called was not the buyer at Bullock’s, but Benny Medford.
“Have I got a shot?”
“No. With broads you can always make a deal. With guys it’s different. You’ve gotta have talent. But I’ll try.”
Hollywood was another planet. Everything looked different, smelled different, tasted different. Movies were booming—television trying to catch up. Benny and I became good pals. Out of friendship, he busted his ass trying to get me in front of the camera. I was interviewed, auditioned, and screen-tested for everything from hoods to cripples. It always came down to me and another guy. The other guy always got the part.
Meanwhile I was busting my ass for Moskow trying to get Cardinal Clothes in any store I could. Every other week, Willy Loman would get into his secondhand Buick and hit the road. I was getting orders, but my commissions barely kept my Buick in gas.
William Michaeljohn was the head honcho of talent at Paramount, the man responsible for building the studio’s stable of stars. His eye for a new face was reputedly the sharpest in the business. A nod from him could get you into “the fishbowl,” the circular arena at Paramount where all screen tests and auditions were held. This room was lined with two-way mirrors behind which sat the studio chief, the producers, the directors, the writers.
Getting Michaeljohn’s nod could take years. Getting in to see him could take months. Benny somehow arranged an audience with “his holiness” in a matter of weeks.
Michaeljohn had the looks and manner of a British banker as he cryptically eyed me while I filled him in on my New York experience.
“Benny, I’ll send the script of This Gun for Hire over to your office this afternoon. Scenes 86 and 128.” Looking at his calendar, “Susan Morrow will test with him. Wednesday, a week, ten A.M.”
What a break, what a trap. How could I possibly look good in a role that made Alan Ladd an overnight star?
“Get out of my life, and stay out!” smacking Susan Morrow across the face.
“Cut,” the director blurted.
“Terrific, kid,” Benny interjected.
This time he was right. By afternoon’s end, I was the newest member of Paramount’s “golden circle.”
For the next months, I went to college, “Paramount style,” studying everything from fencing to riding bareback. There were twenty other male actors under contract, each of whom had bluer eyes, whiter teeth, and a better physique. None of whom, however, had to play Willy Loman on the side, schleping his new spring line from San Diego to Sacramento. Six months later, instead of graduating, I was left back.
Benny gave me the bad news over lunch at the Brown Derby. “They dropped your option, kid. Michaeljohn’s still hot on you, but there’s some new dame running the show. You ain’t her type. Henry Willson’s guys are—the Troys, the Rocks, the Tabs.” Shaking his head, “You know the type.”
“That’s it then?”
“At Paramount, yeah. But fuck it, we’ve got some great test footage on you. In a month, we’ll be in action.”
The test was seen at every projection room in town. The only interest came from Eagle-Lion, where a B film was big budget. A long way from the majors, but better than being on the road selling Moskow’s new fall line.
I was about to sign with them to do a gangster film when my parents arrived on the scene. Mom and Pop treated me to my first dinner at Chasen’s. It wasn’t me they wanted to talk about, it was my brother. Two years earlier Charles and a tailor named Joseph Picone had started Evan-Picone. With very little capital, they began manufacturing women’s skirts. Now they were selling to the best stores in the country and their sales were touching the million mark. Charles wanted to expand into something new. Both Mom and Pop thought it was a great opportunity.
“Who could launch it better than you?”
“But I’m an actor, I’m only twenty. I’m not washed up yet.”
I was in my sixties, wearing a rumpled suit, frayed shirt, shoes five years too old, hungry for work, hungry for food, desperately needing a gig. I waited, waited, waited to read for a two-scene part in a minor movie. I didn’t get it. Jumping up in a cold sweat from the recurring nightmare that I had witnessed time and time again through the eyes of a teenaged wannabe actor. It never ceased to haunt me. I vowed to myself then, I would never let it happen to me.
New York here I come.
Chapter Four
“Charlie, we’ve made it! We’re on Fifth Avenue!”
What a high. Frances Loeb, the buyer at Lord and Taylor (now Frances Lear, who later became the editor of Lear’s magazine), was putting our slacks in the window.
“How’d you do it?” Charlie laughed.
“I made her try them on herself. She looked great.”
It was the end of a year’s journey of preaching the gospel: “Women in Pants.”
It was easy to do—I believed it. I never pretended macho. A ladies’ man, not a man’s man, was my future to be.
Insightful always to a “void” most women share, that of a male embracer—not sex, affirmation. Being a positive influence to their needs, their goals.
Conversely, in the crunch, women have always been there for me. Men? Sometimes.
What better proof? Women were responsible for making me a millionaire before my mid-twenties. From east to west, from department to specialty store, 60 percent of the buyers in our showroom were women. However, 90 percent of our volume came from them. That says it all.
From Filene’s in Boston to Rich’s in Atlanta, Halle Brothers in Cleveland, J. L. Hudson in Detroit, Marshall Field in Chicago, Neiman-Marcus in Dallas, Frederick and Nelson in Seattle, I. Magnin in San Francisco, Bullock’s and Robinson’s in L.A., it was “Women in Pants.” Really? Without exception, it was taboo with a capital T. Selling bibles to the Hell’s Angels would have been an easier sell.
Needing a hook, I came up with the unexpected. Every major city in the country had at least one or two local breakfast shows on TV. Each desperately needed to fill time without spending money. That’s it! Fuck it! I’m an actor—use it.
Systematically, I contacted the person at the top TV station in every major city who did local morning programming. Without exception, each had a breakfast show. Acting as my own manager, using a different name, I offered the station the opportunity of having Bob Evans, a radio and television personality, present a breakfast fashion show to the women of their city, free of any production cost.
“Mr. Evans would use hometown models, supply the music, and emcee the fashion show himself.” Saving the last for best, “It’s not a fashion show you’ll be offering your audiences, it’s a fashion explosion, news—‘Why shouldn’t women be wearing the pants in the family?’ ”
Did it work? Within two months I was a fashion celebrity. I would arrive in Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis, you name it, a day ahead to interview local models. Height and long legs were a necessity. A flat chest was okay; a flat ass wasn’t.
I rehearsed the girls for two hours before the show, which was usually nine in the morning. From toreador pants to gray flannels to silk lounging trousers, the models moved to the music. My commentary followed their every turn, ending with “If Dietrich and Hepburn can look glamorous in pan
ts, why not you? Don’t let men be the only ones wearing the pants in the family.”
Did it work? Gusher time. Suddenly every top store wanted me to put my fashion segment on their prime TV breakfast show. As my act got better, my orders got bigger. Within a year, pants became a fashion contender. What was once taboo now was in. Today, Evan-Picone is among the most important signatures in the fashion world—its imprint certainly outlasting the movies I’ve produced.
For the first time, heavy green began making a heavy dent in my bank account. Charles and I were inseparable. We laughed together, cried together, gambled together. I would have stopped a bullet for him, and he for me. When a mutual friend stole his girl, I not only vowed never to speak to the prick again, but made sure he lost the girl, and any other girl he made a play for. Call it brother’s revenge.
Double-dating was a catastrophe. Charles and I were so turned on by each other’s company that our dates felt like ornaments. One night, some smart-assed broad slammed the door in my face. “Why don’t ya just go home and fuck your brother?”
Evan-Picone was a trendsetter. Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, Mademoiselle, Glamour, all agreed. Before long we had expanded to a plant specially built for us in North Bergen, New Jersey. Employing more than four hundred Sicilians, it was Joe Picone’s kingdom.
Joe was more than my brother’s equal partner in the overall company. He was the maestro. (My partnership and equity was limited to the pants division.) No work was contracted out. Everything that bore Evan-Picone’s label was made under Joe’s demanding eye. He ruled with an iron hand, but such was the loyalty he commanded that our factory remained the only one in New Jersey the unions couldn’t organize. Of course, it helped that no one spoke English, only Sicilian.
