ROBERT EVANS

(29 June 1930 - 26 October 2019)

The American actor and director Robert Evans, who has died aged 89, first had some modest success as a player but later became a celebrated Hollywood film producer. While Evans was at Paramount Pictures, the studio had such successes as The Detective, Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, Rosemary’s Baby, The Italian Job, True Grit, Plaza Suite, Love Story, The Godfather I & II, Chinatown, Serpico, Save the Tiger, The Great Gatsby and The Conversation, etc. Born Robert J. Shapero to the Harlem dentist Archie Shapera and his wife Florence, Robert Evans started work as a teenager on radio before his first failed attempt to get into movies. However, several years on he was discovered by the actress Norma Shearer looking for someone to play her husband Irving Thalberg in the Lon Chaney biopic Man of a Thousand Faces, starring James Cagney. Then Darryl Zanuck at Fox cast him as a bullfighter in The Son Also Rises. After appearing in The Fiend Who Walked the West with Hugh O’Brian and The Best of Everything with Suzy Parker, jump several years when Evans joined Paramount as a producer of the hit films listed above. More successes from Evans included Marathon Man, Black Sunday and Urban Cowboy. Less profitable were Popeye and The Cotton Club. A sequel to Chinatown, The Two Jakes, took several years to complete, then there was Sliver, Jade, The Phantom, The Saint and a remake of Neil Simon’s The Out-of–Towners with Steve Martin, none of which were particularly good. After 2000, Evans worked on TV projects and also wrote a documentary feature called The Kid Stays in the Picture, based on his own autobiography. His last major film as a producer was How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days in 2003, while his final film as executive producer is The Stranger at the Palazzo d’Oro, from a novel by Paul Theroux, which is yet to be completed. Robert Evans was married seven times, to the actresses Sharon Hugueny, Camilla Sparv, Ali MacGraw (one child, the actor-director Josh Evans), Phyllis George, Catherine Oxenberg (annulled after twelve days) and Leslie Ann Woodward. His last wife was Lady Victoria White. All his marriages ended in divorce.

MICHAEL DARVELL