At The Movies

Movie Mogul

the Jewish movie mogul Irving
Thalberg, and would Evans like to
play him in the James Cagney flick

Man of a Thousand Faces?
Evans did, and some months later —
in a totally unrelated incident — he
was "discovered" by mega-producer
Darryl Zanuck while dancing the tango
with
a countess at a posh supper club.
Morgen, who attended Jewish stud-
NAOMI PFEFFERMAN
Zanuck
decided to cast him as Ava
ies classes at Amherst, adds that the
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles
Gardner's
Latin lover in the film ver-
producer "in a way reminds me of
sion of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun
King
David.
Just
as
David
had
his
very day during the sum-
Also Rises. But the macho author (and
love for Bathsheva, which was his big
mer of 1942, 12-year-old
Evans' co-stars) had another opinion.
transgression, Bob had his addiction
Robert Evans set out with a
"Everyone on the set knew
to excess and to cocaine."
copy of Radio Registry
[Hemingway's]
thoughts about how this
Even the way the producer (born
under his arm to hit every audition
Jewboy
would
ruin
the film," Evans says.
Shapera) became Robert Evans sounds
room in New York.
"But
he
couldn't
convince
Zanuck."
like a scene from a Hollywood melo-
"I [made] up one story after another
Instead,
Zanuck
observed
Evan's
drama.
about my brilliant career," the leg-
bullfighter shtick, put a bullhorn to his
Evans
says
it
happened
late
one
endary producer recalls in The Kid
lips and proclaimed, "The kid stays in
night when his dentist father, Archie,
Stays in the Picture, a juicy new docu-
the picture.
tearfully asked young Bob and his
mentary based on his 1994 tell-all
'And anybody who doesn't like it
brother, Charles, to adopt his dying
memoir.
can
quit."
mother's maiden name.
After months of rejection, he tells
Recalls
Evans, "It was then that I
"It was a means of exacting revenge
how he capitalized on his uncanny
realized I didn't want to be some
knack for accents and landed a gig
actor sh---ing in his pants to get a
that appalled some of his Jewish
role, but the guy who gets to say,
relatives: playing a Nazi concen-
`The kid stays in the picture.'"
tration camp colonel on Radio
After brokering a three-picture deal
Mystery Theater.
at Fox, Evans was named head of
"[There] I was, a 12-year-old
production at Paramount in 1966.
Jewish kid, labeled the top Nazi in
During his tenure there in the
town," he says with a laugh.
late 1960s and early 1970s, Evans
It's the kind of outrageous,
• hired the Polish-born Holocaust
chutzpah hijinks one would
survivor Roman Polanski to direct
expect of Evans, whose roller
the classic films Rosemary's Baby
coaster of a life is chronicled like a
(1968) and Chinatown (1974).
Hollywood epic in Kid.
He resorted to a typically Evans-
The doc recounts his discovery as
esque stunt when Polanski wanted
an actor by silent movie star Norma
to leave the Chinatown set to
Shearer, his ascension to Paramount
attend a seder in Poland.
production chief in his 30s, his pen-
"Bob said, 'Roman, I'll throw
chant for bedding actresses such as
you the best Passover you ever
Ava Gardner and Raquel Welch and
had,'" Morgen says with a laugh.
green-lighting such hits as Love
"He ended up with Kirk Douglas
Story and The Godfather.
leading the seder with Polanski and
It also describes how Evans was
Walter Matthau in attendance."
busted for cocaine and linked to
Robert Evans: "I've been from royalty to infamy and
Evans went on to bring the quin-
the notorious Cotton Club murder back again." Evans is currently producing "How to
tessential 1960s Jewish-American
case in the 1980s, for which he
Lose a Guy in 10 Days," starring Kate Hudson.
film to Paramount, though not
was never indicted. And how his
without his share of tsuris.
very public fall from grace bank-
He wanted a Jewish actress to star in
against [Archie's] father, a gambler
rupted him and made him a pariah,
Goodbye
Columbus, based on Philip
who would step out for a newspaper
though he's since reclaimed the spot-
Roth's
biting
novella, and was appalled
and return home, broke, three weeks
light with his memoir and this docu-
when
the
filmmakers
instead cast Ali
later," the producer says.
mentary, directed by Oscar nominees
MacGraw.
Brett Morgen and Nanette Burstein.
"Ali MacGraw, an 18-year-old
"I've been from royalty to infamy
spoiled
Jewish American Princess?" he
In Hollywood
and back again," the 72-year-old said
incredulously
shouted at producer
Cut to 1956, when the strikingly
in his famous purr-growl while reclin-
Stanley
Jaffe.
"She's
a 28-year-old over-
handsome Evans — then a millionaire
ing on his fur-covered bed at his man-
shiksa."
the-hill
partner in his brother's clothing firm,
sion on L.A.'s Woodland Drive.
MacGraw's luminous screen test
Evan-Picone — caught Shearer's eye
"Bob's life is like a movie," says
convinced
him otherwise, however,
while sunning himself by the pool of a
director Morgen, 32.
and,
says
Evans,
"I fell in love with her
Beverly Hills hotel.
"He's also a tragic figure in the sense
while
watching
the
dailies."
Shearer told him his confident man-
that he almost lost everything because
In
October1969,
they were married.
ner reminded her of her late husband,
of his transgressions."

Spicy documentary "The Kid Stays in the Picture"
recounts the life of producer Robert Evans — so far.

Is

;TN

8/23
2002

94

Evans with actress Ali MacGraw,
whom he married.

Tinsel-Town Bio

But the producer didn't want to talk
about MacGraw — who left him for
Steve McQueen three years later —
or the Cotton Club case when
Morgen and Burstein arrived to film
him in early 2000.
It didn't matter that Morgen had
studied Evans' . movies as a cinema-
obsessed kid (the poster to Evans' Popeye
hung over his bed) or that he had
attended Crossroads School in Santa
Monica with the producer's son, Josh.
Explains Evans, who narrates the
film, "It's difficult to make a picture
that shows your life, warts and all, and
we had very big fights about it."
Not that Evans didn't try to put on
the charm, instructing his butler to
prepare caviar omelettes for Morgen
and Burstein and regaling them with
stories beside his vast swimming pool.
"We knew that Bob was trying to
seduce us," says director Burstein, who
grew up in a Reform Jewish home but
attended an Orthodox grade school. 'And
we, in turn, were trying to seduce him."
Evans is glad they did. During a
Kid screening at the 2002 Sundance
Film Festival, he received a 12-minute
standing ovation and he's now back on
the Paramount lot making movies.
"I hope the film inspires people to
know that when you're down, it ain't
over," Evans says, sounding like the
chutzpah kid who reinvented himself
as the "Jewish Nazi" in 1942.
"Sometimes it hurts, but you've
gotta stay in the picture."

❑

The Kid Stays in the Picture, rated
R, opens Friday, Aug. 23, in area
theaters.

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