by Robert Evans
“Thanks, pal,” eagle-eyed the Irishman.
Pressing down on the intercom once again, “Last scene now, thank you.”
There on the screen was Ava Gardner. This was no TV sitcom, two-day horror film, or hybrid-dubbed piece of celluloid. This was the most alluring star of cinema, she gazing into the eyes of her young matador—yeah me. It got the biggest laugh of all. The lights came up.
“Total candor, your lordship: who of the four would you have picked to end up a star?”
He stood, looking at all his victims.
“Dear boy, who do we all work for?”
Whether it be a restaurant, an industry function, or a party, the word spread so fast of Black Sunday’s explosion on the screen that the phrase “bigger than Jaws” became boring to hear. The advance buzz was so loud that everyone offered to buy my points; finally, three Lebanese met my price. $6.8 million in cash for my 38 points of ownership. With negotiations all but closed, the morning mail arrived with a letter from Bernie Myerson, president of Loew’s Theaters. Though everyone spouted Black Sunday as being the successor to Jaws, Myerson’s written prediction was tantamount to a nod from Don Corleone in The Godfather.
“That Black Sunday will definitely outgross Jaws.” Changing my mind.
I told my secretary to get my lawyer, Ken Ziffrin, on the phone.
“Kenny, I ain’t sellin’. Zanuck and Brown made over twenty big ones from Jaws and I own more points than both of them together. Fuck it, the dice rolls with Black Sunday.”
“It’s too big a gamble, Evans, you can’t afford it. Grab the money and run. You’re a lucky Jew, don’t be a dumb one.”
“Sorry, Kenny, I’m going for it. I want to be a rich one.”
Kenny was right, I was a dumb one. Did Black Sunday do more than Jaws? It didn’t do more than my jaw. Reviews? Better than good! Enough to take a two-page ad in both the New York and Los Angeles Times listing sixty rave reviews from coast to coast.
John Frankenheimer, the helmsman of Black Sunday, possibly more than any other director I’ve worked with, knew how to execute an almost impossible logistic feat. First he got permission from the NFL; then the Orange Bowl in Miami, where the Super Bowl was taking place; then shooting the actual Super Bowl itself (Pittsburgh vs. Dallas). He then coerced Goodyear into allowing us to use their blimp as the “heavy” in the picture; managed a cast of thousands upon thousands; and unraveled a story so extraordinarily realistic that it worked against us, evoking a passion that all but cost us our lives, literally and figuratively.
To this day, it seems hard to believe that the entire canvas cost less than $8 million to put on the screen. Only Frankenheimer could have done it. Its production scope makes Jurassic Park look like a back lot flick. If made today, its cost would tilt the $100 million mark.
Why didn’t I receive Myerson’s letter a week later? The points I didn’t sell weren’t worth enough to cover a coach ticket to Miami. Even worse, forget the money I didn’t make, the controversy of its subject matter caused an uproar that personally cost me a fortune. Why? Telling another terrorist story was not good enough. I had to go a step further, expose the gray area, tell both sides of the complex story, including what had made the film’s leading antagonist, played by Marthe Keller, join the Black September terrorist movement.
Blazing across the front page of the leading Jewish newspaper, The B’nai B’rith Messenger, was the headline “ROBERT EVANS, HITLERITE.” Immediately, notices were put up in Jewish-owned stores throughout the country calling for a boycott of the film. That was a gardenia compared to its flip side. The Red Army of Japan threatened to blow up every theater around the world that exhibited Black Sunday. To them, it was sacrilegious to the plight of the Arab people. I had to hire three shifts of guards, twenty-four hours a day for six months, at a cost of $2,800 a day to protect my home and family from extremist reprisals.
Jaws? A blimp ain’t no fish—just hot air.
It was only a year earlier. Raquel Welch whispered in my ear, “It’s my first Super Bowl game,” as we sat on the fifty-yard line with eleven cameras covering Robert Shaw running across the entire field in pursuit of a deadly terrorist.
“Only you, Evans, could have a cast of fifty thousand.”
“Yeah, and not pay scale.”
The crowd went wild. Terry Bradshaw had just thrown a touchdown pass and Pittsburgh was ahead. The only one who didn’t stand was me. I was worried whether we got the shot of Robert Shaw, because the NFL would only let us do it once. Continually checking the results of our eleven-camera crew, I must have been a pain in the ass climbing over the CBS sportscasting trio of Brent Musburger, Irv Cross, and America’s sweetheart, Phyllis George, while they play-by-played the Pittsburgh Pirates/Dallas Cowboy duel. Unfortunately for them, we shared the same row, only eight seats apart.
When the next Super Bowl rolled around, Brent, Irv, and Phyllis play-by-played it again, the only difference was that Phyllis had a new last name—Evans. Months earlier Ed Hookstratten, Phyllis’s business manager and mentor, had given a bash at his Bel Air home. Warren Beatty and I were Hookstratten’s two choices to be Phyllis’s blind date for the evening. Working harder for the gig, I got the part. Not a kiss good-night, but it didn’t matter. It was me, rather than Warren, whose foot was in the door to America’s sweetheart.
If ever the title fit the person, Miss America fit Phyllis George. She had all the glamour in the world but she was still the wholesome, small-town girl from Denton, Texas. Phyllis had become the first woman sportscaster on a national level. The Texas-size smile on CBS between Brent Musburger and Irv Cross, she was the first Miss America since Bess Myerson to become a household name. Her dimples were so deep that a scoop of rocky road ice cream could fit in each one. She was the real thing—America’s sweetheart.
A month later, we bumped into each other on Rodeo Drive. Chance meeting—lunch for two. From that moment, we never left each other until she became the fourth Mrs. Evans.
There was one problem in our bond of Mr. and Mrs.: she was Miss America and I wasn’t Mr. America. Her first marriage—my fourth. Her marital bliss: a white picket fence, church on Sunday, the Bel Air Country Club. I never belonged to a club; I didn’t want to move; my place of worship is my home, not a church; and I didn’t want more children. Would you say we had much in common? She wanted a church wedding. I wanted to exchange vows on the high cliff overlooking Acapulco watching divers jump into the sea below.
We compromised. A private morning wedding under the old sycamore tree at my home. Then off to Acapulco to watch the divers.
Shortly after our marriage, Los Angeles Magazine did a story on Phyllis. There she was on the cover, her smile aglow, her dimples deep, a football under her arm. The caption read: “What happens when a country girl turned Miss America hits it big in TV sports and hooks up with Hollywood’s most notorious Prince Charming?”
Disaster, that’s what. Everything Phyllis wanted was right. But she couldn’t fight the biggest mismatch of the decade. When being interviewed on national television, smiling Phyllis cooed, “I know I’m not the first Mrs. Evans, but I’m definitely the last.”
Poor Phyllis, she was in for one hell of a surprise. Square? Let’s just say she made Mary Tyler Moore look like Madonna.
I can’t think of a bad thing to say about Phyllis. On every level she was the girl a guy wants to bring home to mother. But my mother was dead and ego was what motivated my perversity in wanting to make Miss America Mrs. Evans. I couldn’t understand what she saw in me. I was everything she was not. She was everything I would have liked to have been. My goal was to clean up my act, and she was the inspiration. But, damn it, it’s true that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, and I was one hell of an old dog. The more I told her I was wrong for her, the more she wanted to prove it would work.
I planned a scenario that would ensure a split, giving her the dignity of her leaving me, not me her. It was the first of my four marriages where the cause of the br
eakup was not infidelity (and that’s only because I never got caught!). Rather, filmmaking was my “mistress.”
My biggest surprise of the entire relationship was her mother calling me, pleading, “What did Phyllis do wrong? I know it’s her fault.”
My persuasive best was needed to convince her that Phyllis’s only fault was in choosing me.
In 1985, Only the Best, a pictorial coffee-table book celebrating the greatest gifts of the twentieth century, was published; one page features, “Phyllis George to Bob Evans.” Its text:
Wedding presents are an age-old custom, but how often does one hear of a divorce present? Among her many talents, anchorperson and former Miss America Phyllis George is an accomplished pianist. She had always wanted an early Steinway, and shortly after marrying Hollywood producer Bob Evans she found the piano of her dreams. The beautiful instrument was made in 1872, its glossy frame carved entirely of rosewood.
The piano was part of an estate, and so it was some time before it arrived in the Evans living room. The Evanses were thrilled to see that it fit into the room as if made for it.
The marriage lasted less than a year, but when the piano’s ardent possessor started to pack up her treasure, she changed her mind. “It is too beautiful here,” she said, “I can’t take it from you; it is yours.”
How can you meet a better dame? Beautiful, earns twice your bread, needs nothing from you but love returned; and not only did I blow it, but I myself set it up for it to happen. Worse even, with no remorse.
Less than a month after Phyllis and I split, the McQueens became MacGraw and McQueen. Less than an hour after that news broke, my old pal Beatty was on the horn.
“Your ole lady, she’s free. Do you mind if I call her?”
I couldn’t believe his words.
“Warren, she ain’t my ole lady, hasn’t been for five years. Why are you asking me? It ain’t my call.”
A rare Beatty stammer, “Well, I just felt I should.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, it just felt like the right thing to do.”
“You do the right thing?”
We both laughed.
“For some reason, she’s still your ole lady.”
“Then don’t call her,” I said. “It ain’t fair to her. If you weren’t living with Keaton, she’d be the best thing that could ever happen to you. She’s too good a dame to hurt for the sake of a notch. You’ve asked me, so I’m telling you—pass.”
Before I could take a piss, the phone rang again. This time it was the wicked smile himself on the horn.
“Whaddaya think, Keed?” Nicholson drawled. “Now that your ole lady’s free, is it worth a dial?”
“She ain’t my ‘ole lady,’ she’s McQueen’s. Why are you calling me?”
“Well, it don’t feel right without your nod. Don’t ask why. I don’t know.”
“Call her if you want, but you’re with Toots [Anjelica Huston], Irish, and Ali’s too vulnerable for you to play it shady. Got it?”
“Got it!” said the Irishman.
The difference was, one called and called, and the other passed. Who do you think called? Who do you think passed? Let’s just say, Nicholson called another lass.
Before Warren got hitched to Annette Bening (who is one sensational lady), for years he had been terribly orthodox when it came to hitting on a pal’s lady: never on Sunday. Ahhh . . . but Monday through Saturday was different. Then it was a religious experience. No wonder he’s called “the pro” by his friends (or those who think they are).
Until his marriage, Warren stood alone as the single most competitive person I’ve ever known. His obsession in life was to be first—first with the new hot girl in town, preferably model or starlet; first to be shown the new hot screenplay, the new hot role, or for that matter the new hot anything—as long as it was new and hot.
The quickest way for a girl to get to Warren’s heart was for him to discover that I was seeing her. For many years, we shared the same doctor, Lee Siegel. The good doctor told me the one way he’d get Warren’s blood pressure on high was to egg him on. “Hate to tell you, Warren. Evans has got the edge. You’re about equal in quantity, but he’s about three points higher in quality!” Did it bother Warren? Poor Lee lost a patient.
During the four decades of friendship we’ve shared, neither of us has broken an unwritten law. That of not discussing whom we’ve been with. Though brothers-in-law many a time, we never questioned who our in-laws were. The only way we’d find out was through the girls themselves. Why is it girls talk more freely than men today?
Though a terrific pianist, Warren considers his fingers far more agile when it comes to the telephone, himself the Horowitz of the dial tone. He candidly admitted in a Rolling Stone cover story that his singular greatest talent was his virtuoso speed-of-the-Touch-Tone.
Can you imagine his outrage when I nonchalantly threw him the curve that my kid Joshua could “out-touch” him? Cracking Warren’s veneer ain’t no easy feat.
“Your kid,” he wailed, “I’ll wipe him off the street.”
“No chance. He’s got the edge, the kid’s in his teens. Nimble doesn’t come with age, pal!”
“Nimble? Fuck you! What about Horowitz? He was in his eighties!”
“Yeah, but could Borg get a set off Becker? No way.”
That did it. Beatty blew his cool. A first. “Where’s the fuckin’ runt?”
“Here.”
“I’m coming right down.”
Warren Beatty rushing down the mountain to take on my kid? He must be putting me on. He wasn’t! Suddenly it was Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Instead of the Old West, it was my projection room. Instead of two hardened gunslingers testing their Smith and Wessons, two Beverly Hills nimble finger-slingers were preparing for their dial-off. On the count of three, it was quick-dial time. Facing each other, each warrior dialed the same number from a different phone. The one who lived was the one who got the voice on the other end.
By Western standards, Warren should be four years dead by now. But it’s Hollywood and he’s still on every A list in town. Did it bother him? It wasn’t his shyness that kept him from talking to my kid for more than a year.
How do you spell fashionable? W-A-R-R-E-N B-E-A-T-T-Y. From his first film till today, Warren remains the quintessential Hollywood movie star. He defies the bottom line, in an industry where the bottom line is the only line. He has remained for more than thirty years, without missing one, front and center on every studio’s A+ list. Now that’s talent!!
Our offices were across the lawn from each other at Paramount. He had completed Heaven Can Wait and it was soon to open. Always seeking opinions, he wanted mine. He asked me if I would drop by his office for a moment. Walking in, I was surprised to see Norton Simon, who was one of America’s primo art connoisseurs. Before I had a chance to say hello, Warren took a life-size board and turned it around. There before us was a picture of him in sweatpants, shirt, and sneakers. Heavenly wings adorned his back.
“Like it? It’s the poster for the film.”
Studiously critiquing it, Norton looked up.
“Striking! No . . . extraordinary. Too good for a film ad,” he laughed.
I didn’t answer. A quick Beatty look.
“Well?”
“It’s okay.” I nodded.
“Okay?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“That’s all—okay!
“Yeah.”
“Fuck you! I know why you don’t like it.” He laughed. “I’m better looking.”
“Uh-uh . . . no cojones.” Pointing to the poster. “Your sweatpants, there ain’t no crease. Looks like you’re sporting a pussy.”
Did it bother him? Within two minutes the entire hierarchy at Paramount knew of his dissatisfaction—no, call it anger. Playing insulted to the hilt, he cared little that all the artwork had been completed and was ready to be shipped. Coolly, he insisted that every ad, every poster be scrapped. Did he get his way? That’s what
Warren Beatty is all about. Poor Paramount, to satisfy Beatty’s manhood they were left with no choice but to redo the film’s entire advertising campaign. The cost? North of a half a million. By far the most expensive crotch retouch in cinema history.
“David Geffen calling Mr. Evans,” said the Carlyle Hotel operator.
“Put him through.”
“Bob, could I join you this morning? I’m dying to meet him.”
“Sure, but we’ve got a lot to get through today. Calvin’s doing Ali’s entire wardrobe for the film.”
It was a Sunday morning in May 1978. Calvin Klein was kind enough to personally outfit Ali’s character for her lead role in my new production, Players. Ali and I picked David up on our way to West Thirty-eighth Street. Introducing David to Calvin Klein made me feel like Streisand’s Hello, Dolly! matchmaker. They must have gotten along—I haven’t heard from either since.
Ali and I had only three days in New York, before taking off to London. Both of us were staying at the Carlyle. Unfortunately for me, in separate rooms. In secrecy, I called my very close friends David and Helen Gurley Brown. I whisked over to see them and begged for Helen’s help. I hoped, since she was Ali’s close friend, that she could persuade Ali to give us a second chance.
“It’ll work. I know it will this time.”
With me present, Helen called Ali, asking her to come over for a visit. She’d be there in an hour. I was as excited as a twelve-year-old boy going out on his first date. David suggested we take a long walk.
“Leave it to Helen—if she can’t make it work, no one can.”
The two of us walked for hours, a stop at O’Neal’s for a beer . . . then through Central Park.
“Bob, if Helen pulls it off, can you be faithful?” asked Professor Brown. It didn’t take long to answer.
“Nope.”
I got the longest triple take of my life. It didn’t matter anyway. Helen didn’t succeed. Ali had minus zero interest in rekindling anything.
