The Kid Stays in the Picture

by Robert Evans

  “Could Nancy write it?”

  “Don’t make it harder, Henry. Please . . . please.”

  Up in his apartment he wrote a letter in longhand to Mintoff, saying that any help the prime minister could extend to his friend would be greatly appreciated. He signed it.

  “Do you have to give it to him?”

  “Yes.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Tragedy is part of life: how very few escape its touch. It’s not tragedy itself, but the degree of it that counts. A family destroyed before your very eyes, within a flash—that’s tragedy with a capital T.

  It struck my brother in January 1975. An inferno swept through the home of his ex-wife, Frances, and his daughters, Melissa and Elizabeth, killing them all—sparing only his son, Charles, Jr. My brother was on the phone with Frances when she began screaming. Charles raced to her house to find it in cinders, Frances and his two beautiful daughters, age ten and eleven, burned to a crisp. Crash! A haunted life.

  A captain of industry, a dashing raconteur, a charmer of charmers, a ladies’ man, a man’s man, a lost man.

  Tragedy brought us closer, until another tragedy all but destroyed decades of envied love.

  It was the last week in April of 1980. I picked Charlie up at LAX and we limousined it to Palm Springs. It had been five years since my brother’s horrific trauma and by ritual, every couple of months we’d long-weekend it together alone. Laugh, cry, reminisce, talk about the past, the future—you name it, we shared it.

  Ten days earlier, I had been S.O.S.’d back to the States from Malta by Michael Eisner.

  “Travolta’s been in the editing room every night with Jim Bridges. Don’t like what I hear.”

  “Can’t leave, Michael. If we get one more day of rain, that’s it. Popeye’s Sweethaven is in the sea.”

  “It’s your call, Evans. If we change the name to Urban Cowgirl, don’t blame Paramount.”

  Thirty flying hours later, I was back at the studio, watching Travolta as our Urban Cowboy.

  “Eisner’s right. Where’s the fuckin’ raunch, the sweat, the dancin’? There’s no heat! It’s all been shot. Now I’m lookin’ at a fuckin’ ballet.”

  “We don’t have to be exploitative,” bristled director Bridges. “John’s the biggest star in the world.”

  “Oh really! Get this straight, Mr. Director; the grit, the raunch, the down and dirty go back in. I’m lookin’ for Saturday Night Fever goes West, not The Red Shoes.”

  He got it, but he didn’t get it all in. When director and star lock together, you can win a battle, but the war? Forget it. The editing room floor, not the theaters, ended up with the heat.

  Urban Cowboy’s double-album soundtrack was pure platinum. Urban Cowboy, the film, was sterling silver. A summer hit, but certainly no platinum blockbuster.

  I took a weekend furlough from battle, Charlie flew out from New York. The two of us lazed around Marvin Davis’s pool in Palm Springs . . . played tennis, swam, laughed.

  Successful as Charles had been in his quest for wealth, he was that lost in his quest for happiness. Tragedy haunted his every day. Business kept him alive and his was booming. Whatever Charlie touched, gushed. From clothing tycoon to real estate baron, within a decade, ain’t luck, it’s brilliance.

  On our drive down to the Springs, Charlie told me he was in final negotiations to sell half his real estate holdings to a Dutch bank for close to $100 million. Not bad for a guy whose only previous real estate experience was buying an apartment. Was he excited about it? No, when your life’s in shambles, dollar signs come in a distant third.

  “Take a fling, try something new. Hey! Make a flick, with your brights, you’ll win an Academy Award.”

  Charlie didn’t say no.

  “Read something last week, gave me belly laughs. Buddy Hackett sent it over. It’s been around for years, but funny is funny, the title’s even funny—Would I Lie to You? George Hamilton is dyin’ to do it. He’d be good for it too. It’s about an actor who can’t get a gig, so he dresses in drag, and as a broad he never stops working. I’d make it myself, but if you want it, it’s yours. Take a shot, for twenty-five Gs you can option it.”

  Charlie took the shot, bought the rights. A month later, Dustin Hoffman, who was preparing a film about Renee Richards, the male tennis pro who had a sex change, then played the female tennis circuit, read Would I Lie to You? He canceled the Renee Richards story. Good-bye, George; hello, Dustin. Good-bye, Would I Lie to You?; hello, Tootsie. Was I surprised? Not at all, it was Charlie all the way. A winner is a winner is a winner is a winner.

  Me? I was flying high too. For the first time I had gross points from the first dollar on two of Paramount’s biggest pictures of the year—Urban Cowboy and Popeye.

  “Can’t make your kinda bread, Charlie, but Hollywood rich ain’t bad either. It’s my shot at ‘fuck you’ green. The only way I can fuck up is by gettin’ sick, not protecting my back. Flicks ain’t real estate, Charlie, I’ve got to fight for every frame.”

  Sick? A week from that very day, I didn’t get sick, I got very sick, terminally sick.

  Charlie went back to New York, and I returned to the studio fighting the Bridges-Travolta combine for more grit in the saddle of Urban Cowboy.

  A call from my brother: “Ilana called.”

  “Ilana who?”

  “Ilana Garcia, the shirtmaker. She’s found pure white silk shirts.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “Sealed,” said Charlie. “There’s a catch, we gotta buy five. They’re wholesale—four thousand each.”

  “Wholesale? Cedars pays twenty-four bucks a shirt.”

  “That’s Cedars, Ilana tells me seventy-five hundred is a bargain. It’s ten thousand and up, that’s if you can get it. Get this, she boasts, Mick Jagger would do a concert in Yankee Stadium for zip for this order.”

  Would you say the world of toot was crazy in the 1970s?

  “She’ll hold ’em for only twenty-four hours.”

  Pharmaceutical cocaine was mythical. Manufactured by only one company in America, Merck, it was obtainable to the outside world only by heist. So mythical was its allure that it became the DEA’s most effective bait to entrap schmuck buyers. That was us. I’d met Ilana just twice, while on business in New York, and it wasn’t to take her to the theater. Charlie knew her well, from the social scene around town.

  Twenty-four hours later, Charlie was on the horn.

  “What do I tell her? She’s called twice.”

  “Let’s buy it, we’ll split it three ways, Mike, you, and me.” Mike Shure was our brother-in-law.

  “You’re sure?” Charlie asked.

  “Yeah, why not? We’ll vault it. Just make sure it’s kosher. This ain’t no kibbitz, be real careful.”

  “Careful . . . I’m not like you. Who’s more cautious than me?”

  “Yeah, but this sounds too good, and that’s bad. Charlie, promise me you’re nowhere near when the deal goes down. Get a schmuck delivery guy from the Stage Deli, your chauffeur, or anyone to pick it up, but not you, promise?”

  “Promise.”

  The deal was to go down on Friday. All that day there was no word from my brother. At 7:45 that evening, I was going out the door, on my way to pick up my kid for dinner, when my houseman hailed me.

  “A Miss Garcia on the phone, says it’s urgent.”

  Leaving the motor on, I rushed to the phone.

  “Yeah?”

  Photographic Insert 2

  While guesting at my home in Beverly Hills, the good Doctor Kissinger met my son, Joshua, for the first time.

  His new title didn’t change his old habits. Now Secretary of State, dear Henry Kissinger still resided at my home whenever he visited Los Angeles. Lucky me!

  At the starting gate of a trip to hell and back! Signing Francis Coppola to direct Mario Puzo’s best-selling novel, The Godfather.

  Brothers in life, brother on film. French movie idol Alain Delon during one of his many stays
at my home.

  A bad night! Batted only one for six. Commiserating with sister, Alice, and brother, Charles, at the Governor’s ball following the Academy Awards in 1971. Nominated for six, Love Story copped a lonely one—Francis Lai for Best Original Score.

  Happy 100th Birthday, dear Adolph! Zukor, that is. From around the world they flew to cheer Paramount’s and Hollywood’s founder. From left to right: Alfred Hitchcock, Frank Yablans, Bob Hope, Charlie Bluhdorn, and me. Seated is the birthday boy himself, Adolph Zukor.

  Kirk Douglas winning the Academy Award. In Hebrew, that is. For his brilliant, authentic portrayal of a rabbi reciting the holy prayers at a Passover surprise feast for Roman Polanski. (Left to right) Seated: Walter Matthau with son, Charlie, Rabbi Douglas, Leigh Taylor Young. Standing middle row: Carol Matthau, Anne Douglas, Joanna Cameron, Sue Mengers, and half of Billy Wilder. Standing back row: Warren Beatty, Roman Polanski, myself, and Jean-Claude Tramont.

  Any man who says he can read a woman’s thoughts is a man who knows nothing.

  Receiving my Ph.D. degree on how little I know. My wife Ali and I dancing as one at the post-premiere bash of The Godfather. Was she madly in love? You bet! But not with me. Did I know it? Would you?

  By far the best actress I’ve ever met! Ali hated every moment of the night! Kissinger didn’t.

  Al Pacino and Jimmy Caan both “made their bones” that night, exploding into stardom.

  Is Warren Beatty really Jewish?

  Laughing up a storm with Jack Nicholson over Roman Polanski’s daily frustration with writer Bob Towne during the filming of Chinatown.

  With my favorite lady, Sue Mengers, and my star, Faye Dunaway, greeting the audience after the first showing of Chinatown.

  A clean sweep for Chinatown at the Golden Globes. Catherine Deneuve presenting me with the Globe Award for Chinatown as best picture.

  Not tonight kid. At the Academy Awards it was a clean sweep, but this time under the rug. Chinatown, nominated for eleven awards, copped but one. Best Original Screenplay. Bob Towne, Jack Nicholson, and I arriving at the awards.

  “Damnit! Again, I forgot to thank you,” apologized Prince Francis Coppola after he won the Oscar for Godfather II . . . Sure!!

  If only mom and pop could see me now—their black sheep son—a full-blown Ivy League professor.

  Laughing it up with Charlie Bluhdorn and Frank Yablans the night I was presented with the key to the City of New York.

  To the world he was Lord Laurence Olivier. To all his pals, Larry, who celebrated his eighty-sixth birthday at my home. It was the best bash of the year.

  A scared, stuttering Ilana. “Where’s Charles? I’m worried about him.”

  “I don’t know, haven’t heard from him all day.”

  “He was supposed to be here for the transaction. Does he have the money?”

  “How the hell do I know? I’ll try to find him. Where can I call you?”

  She hung up. I was scared shitless. I called Joshua, said I’d be a little late. Then called my brother’s apartment, his beach house, my sister’s apartment, her country house. An eerie no answer. Instead of picking my kid up for dinner, I opened the door to hell.

  Minutes later, the phone rang, it was Charles.

  “Bob, Mike and I have been arrested, we were set up, just left the DEA office.”

  “Arrested? What are you talking about? Ilana just called me asking for you.”

  “What? She was arrested too. That means she was calling you from the DEA’s office. I was there, saw her on the phone.”

  “She asked me where you were, I told her I didn’t know. What the fuck’s going on, Charlie?”

  “At five-thirty this afternoon, Mike and I were in my office, two guys walked in.”

  “Did you know them?”

  “No, but they said they had what I ordered, so I let ’em in. I locked the door, they took out the bottles, I took out the cash, and they took out the handcuffs.”

  “I don’t believe what I’m hearing. You’re telling me you let two total strangers into your office and you hand them nineteen Gs. Are you fuckin’ nuts!”

  The Charles Evans I knew pre-1975 wouldn’t open his door to a stranger even if he wanted to sell him a winning lottery ticket. Now he’s shaking hands with a stranger holding a potential fifteen-year prison term—this can’t be!

  “Don’t worry, Bob, you aren’t in any trouble. I told them you had nothing to do with it.”

  “You mentioned my name?”

  “This Hall guy, the arresting officer, I talked him out of making us spend the night in jail.”

  “Charles, how did my name get into it?”

  “I suppose Ilana must have said something—”

  “Yeah. But I wasn’t there! Don’t you understand? They want to involve me—to get ink!”

  “What do you mean, ‘ink’?”

  “Publicity!”

  “Bob, you’re not going to be involved, I promise.”

  It was a promise he had already broken. The first call on Saturday was from my brother’s attorney, Charles Ballon.

  “Speak to no one,” he said. “I think I can make this whole thing disappear.”

  “You think! What’s my involvement?”

  “Don’t know, just keep your mouth shut.”

  I did.

  Saturday night, I flew up to San Jose for the first preview of Urban Cowboy. John Travolta was not the biggest star in the world, since—even with a full week of advertising the preview—the theater was only half full. Did anyone think it was Saturday Night Fever? No, but I had a 102 degree fever, sweating out the stacked deck awaiting me three thousand miles away.

  Good-bye, Malta—hello, New York, and the beginning of the end. The end of respectability, the end of being a role model, the end of acceptance, the end of many a dream—one being the recipient of the Academy’s Irving Thalberg Award, which I had been told was to be mine that year. The one award I wanted more than any in my life.

  Far more important, it was the beginning of the end of a family together. The beginning of the end of a forty-year love affair with my brother, and the beginning of a blackening cloud that would haunt me till the day I die; the cloud far blacker because it did not have to happen.

  Seven digits separated the second half of my life from one of pride, to one of disgrace. One call to my mentor Korshak, and my lack of involvement would have disappeared faster than paper burns.

  “You can’t bring in Korshak,” harped Ballon, my brother, and my brother-in-law. “He’s too highly profiled.”

  “Bullshit! He’s been my mentor for twenty years.”

  A firm no was the unholy three’s dictate. Till the day I die, I’ll never forgive myself for allowing my own family to rape me of my constitutional rights. How could I have been so fuckin’ dumb? Ballon was my brother’s attorney, protecting him—not me.

  Until that moment, my record didn’t bear a traffic ticket. Then, within a blink, I went from legend to leper. Worse, it was someone else’s blink.

  “All your brother had to do was keep his fuckin’ trap shut. If Charles didn’t have diarrhea of the mouth tryin’ to talk his way out of spending the night in jail, the name Bob Evans would never have come into play.”

  These venomous words were spewing daily from the lips of dear brother-in-law, Mike. Calling Charlie everything from a rat fink to a coward. Rather than confront my brother with my pent-up anger, I let it fester. This was a cardinal error. Expressed emotions, rather than muted, open the door to dialogue and understanding. Confrontation is a weakness in my persona; it led to a decade of darkness between my brother and myself.

  The incidents that followed exposed a Mike I never knew, confirming my doubts over the veracity of his diatribe against Charles.

  (In 1983, my brother-in-law Mike again censored my rights. He intercepted a six-page handwritten letter that was addressed to my sister, Alice, marked “personal and confidential.” He refused her the right to open its seal and read it.)


  That did it! Censor me once, shame on you, censor me twice, shame on me. I’ve never spoken to him since. Sadly, with it went the decades of love I had shared with my sister.

  Ballon’s distinguished law firm represented my brother; a junior G-man fresh from the prosecuting office was picked to be my mouthpiece. Mind you, Korshak, my lawyer for twenty years, whom I was forbidden to counsel with, could have settled my bustless bust with a two-minute phone call. Ah . . . but for this new legal eagle, it was a big-time case, with big ink to boot.

  I was back in Malta overseeing Popeye. On the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, 1980, I was awakened from a deep sleep by my new counsel. He was in shock. The government had decided to throw the book at me—the whole unabridged one: fifteen felony counts, starting with distribution and on and on.

  “Tell it to me again.”

  He did.

  “The entire charge has no validity,” spouted my choirboy attorney.

  “You schmuck! The validity is ink. Got it?”

  “You’ve lost me.”

  “John Martin, the new D.A., is using my carcass to make a name for himself. Now do you get it?”

  My Kafkaesque entrapment was a secret to all on the rock. I owed it to Bob Altman to fill him in on the horrible dilemma facing me.

  “Keep cool. Keep it under wraps. Stall, stall, stall.” Bob embraced me. “Nothing is gonna happen.”

  I couldn’t share my worst fear with Altman: that if anything did happen, Prime Minister Mintoff, the anti-American cocksucker, with Qaddafi’s backing, could release Kissinger’s laudatory introduction—a letter dear Henry begged and begged not to write—to the world. Not only would it disgrace one of my closest friends and America’s most prestigious statesman, but I’d be America’s new Benedict Arnold.