Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

A tiny man in a blazing white linen tropical suit, half supported by a tall blonde twenty-something, teetered down the aisle of the Embarcadero Theater in San Francisco several weeks ago. Grasping a hand mike and two-stepping his beautiful partner to face the audience, he said, in a breathy rasp: "THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE! I'm Robert Evans, and I'm here to introduce THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE. I'll tell you a few things about myself and the picture. Then you're all going to sit back and have some fun watching it."

He tilted a face burnt as dark as chocolate up toward the *blonde nymph. "But first I want to introduce to you my wife-to-be _____ _______. Not bad for a 73 year-old, eh? A guy who had three strokes in three days, three years ago. You bet your a_s, the Kid stays in The Picture!"

That beginning revealed as much about legendary Producer Robert Evans as could a million flacks, his autobiography or the documentary of the same name: THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE.

He is a consummate survivor and a shameless egomaniac.

Evans was born the son of a dentist on the west side of Manhattan, perhaps sometime in the late 1920's. (It is unclear just when because like much else in his life, the facts -- as he chose to give them at moments in his career -- benefited from some confusion. His official birthday is June 29, 1930.) After acting in radio as a teenager, he became a junior partner of his older brother Charles in what would become a well known clothing firm, Evan-Picon. As he puts it in Brett Morgan and Nanette Bernstein's documentary, "I started in Women's Pants."

We learn what he wants us to know of his background and his life, in a nearly non-stop voice-over narration (drawn from a cult-smash audio-book of his 1994 autobiography and more recent commentary), set in the envelop of a subjective camera tour of his Italianate mansion, Woodland, in LA. The envelop is scored to the lush, sentimental ballads of the late 1960's and 1970's, and packed with a dizzying montage of stills, wall hangings, candid photos, clips, newsreels, short subjects, Network TV interviews, home movies and stock footage. With his distinctive voice, ruined by illness, cigars, good booze, and God knows what, he carries us through a tantalizing, megalomaniacal fairy tale.

If we forget that he appeared in a supporting role (as a soldier) in Jean Negulesco's 1952 LYDIA BAILEY, we can credit the Legend, as Evans did, that he was taking calls poolside on a Hollywood vacation in 1957, when Norma Shearer, former queen bee of MGM, came over to him and asked him if he would like to play her late husband, Irving Thalberg, in a biopic of Lon Chaney at Universal.

"Miss Shearer," he claims to have replied, "It would be an honor."

Shortly, the boyishly handsome Evans was doing Irving in a test scene for THE MAN WITH A THOUSAND FACES opposite Jimmy Cagney's impression of famous, somewhat mysterious horror star, Lon Chaney, Sr. Evans proved good in the picture, catching the creepy, semi-exhausted, glitter-eyed charm of MGM Production Head Thalberg perfectly. [In charge of Universal at 21 and MGM at 25, at the end of ten years of 16 hour days, Thalberg's weak heart failed him at age 37.] The picture, rather admired today, was only a modest success, and, according to Evans, a year later he was back in New York, making shirts.

The Legend indicates that in a New York night spot, the limelight flashed again, and 20th Century Fox Mogul Darryl F. Zanuck walked up to Evans' table and told him that he would be ideal for the bull fighter/latin lover, Pedro Romero, in his production of Ernest Hemingway's THE SUN ALSO RISES. However, when Hemingway and the movie adaptation's cast members Tyrone Power, Ava Gardner, and Eddie Albert saw him act, they sent Zanuck a telegram from their location shoot in Spain, demanding Evans be taken off the picture. (Only Errol Flynn, typecast in one of his last good roles as a souse, demurred. "He just laughed," recounts Evans gratefully, "Said he didn't care.") Zanuck flew over, watched Evans' bullfight scene (for which he had practiced over three months), and turned to the assemblage.

"Suddenly," Evans says, in amused awe, "Zanuck, all 5'3" of him, drew himself up and said: 'The Kid stays in the Picture, and anybody who doesn't like it can quit!'"

Evans had seen a role model, been given a mantra, and on reflection 40 years later, had received the title for his autobiography.

[The Legend, innocently enough perhaps, grinds over the fact that both THE MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES and THE SUN ALSO RISES came out in the same year, 1957]

After playing the title role in the so-bad-it's-good THE FIEND WHO WALKED THE WEST (1958), Evans says he moved away from the Movies again: "I was sure of one thing: I was a half-a_sed actor." He illustrates his judgment with some hilarious test close-ups for the picture, recording his face-contorting conception of a fiend. Only a shade over 5'3" himself, he resolved, rather than remaining a mediocre actor, to become a producer like his hero and savior, Zanuck.

What he did for the next six years other than play parts in a couple of obscure movies, Evans does not have THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE show us, but presumably he went back to work with his brother making women's pants and men's shirts. He was ready though when Peter Bart wrote in 1964 a widely read profile of him in the New York Times. Charles Bluhdorn, irascible new CEO of Gulf & Western, who was beginning the conglomeration of Hollywood, found it called to his attention and impulsively hired Evans to take over the London operation of Paramount Studios which he had just acquired.

Unlikely, as that may seem, even more extraordinarily, Bluhdorn within a year made Evans chief of the entire Paramount subsidiary in Hollywood. Evans' explanation? "At the time, Paramount was #9 out of eight Studios." In other words, if the business was going down the tubes anyway, why not put in charge a 34 year-old, 5'4" shirt manufacturer, who had played a young production genius in a biopic. If Evans failed, he would be a proper and logical scapegoat. His first act was to hire Times staffer Bart as his personal advisor (today Editor-in Chief of Variety).

There is evidence that the coarse Austrian-born, Chicago-raised Bluhdorn was capable of making seemingly snap, crazy decisions like this one. His choice of Evans turned out spectacularly for Paramount.

[However, at this point, if Evans has not already irritated you by his improbable, at least incomplete explanations of his success, he may do it with a series of rather mean remarks and observations. For instance, he begins to imitate Charlie Bluhdorn's Yiddish dialect, with a mixture of affection and wary fear. One must conclude that because he was born Robert J. Shapira, he thinks he can get away with that kind of stuff.]

"Lucky is when Opportunity meets Preparation," sayeth The Kid, but he does not tell us what was the exact nature of that preparation.

While dealing with the routine "product" of Paramount, Evans began to interest himself in personal projects, which were to become his hallmark as a producer. First, he optioned Roderick Thorp's thick police procedural, The Detective, but withdrew from the project when Frank Sinatra began to throw his considerable influence around. It was made into a fairly interesting movie (Gordon Douglas, 1968) with the same title. He did salvage from the project, however, Sinatra's wife, Mia Farrow, whom he saw cast in Writer-Director Roman Polanski's first truly American film, from Ira Levin's satanic novel, Rosemary's Baby. Evans also claims that, among his initial acts, he had Paramount commission Erich Segal to write Love Story and Mario Puzo to write The Godfather.

Here, Evans says that he took particular interest in Polanski, who he calls "The Crazy Polack." There are a number of shots of the two diminutive men, long haired in the style of the time, hugging each other while exchanging smirks. I could not help, looking at those photos, reflect on the theme of ROSEMARY'S BABY, and the fact that Polanski's beautiful pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, was butchered along with a couple of house guests the next year by Charlie Manson's gang of Satanists, in an horrendous act which unclearly involved drug transactions. [Or that Polanski is still in European exile for later using Quaaludes to seduce a minor.]

Only the first of a series of unfortunate coincidences which parallel Evans' life for the next decade and more.

Meanwhile, Sinatra was unhappy and lonely over the amount of time Mia Farrow was spending in additional location shooting on ROSEMARY'S BABY in the East. He gave Farrow an ultimatum: Either Him or the Movie.

Evans proudly boasts over a series of stills, featuring adoring looks from Farrow at him, that he told her that if she stayed with her performance, it was so good, she might be nominated for an Oscar.

Farrow chose the Movie. [She was not nominated.]

The quick, sure editing style of Brett Morgen (ON THE ROPES, 1999) continues to be impressive against the music and The Kid's seductive, macho spiel. And taking in the results, we may come to the conclusion that Evans recorded every triumphant moment of his glory days, either through the use of automatic cameras or personal photographers.

Next, he takes up his business relationship with, the courtship of, marriage to and loss of Ali MacGraw. He evidently allowed her to option Love Story on the success of her performances in A LOVELY WAY TO DIE and GOODBYE COLUMBUS. He growlingly refers to her as "My Hippie" and "Little Miss Snotnose." She must have been a sweetly tough bargainer. "Take my number," he told her. "It's seven digits away." The mushily sentimental LOVE STORY (Hiller, 1970) was a tremendous box office success, and made Ali MacGraw a star in the process. [The tagline for the film, "Being in love means you never have to say you're sorry," always struck me as the opposite of my experience, which was, "Being in love means you ALWAYS have to say you're sorry"!] In any case, the next year, they married (number three for him) and soon had a child.

To a close-up of the happy trio, Evans says archly: "I was one happy motherf***er." In celebration, he launched a famous series of receptions and soirees, which drew the gliteratti of both coasts, including political figures, such as President Richard Nixon's new bachelor Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger.

But there was always his obsession, Evans maintains, his career, and as he tells it, the hard work of planning THE GODFATHER with his advisor Bart. He was keen to make the film, for though he doesn't say so, its story arc follows in a curious way his own rise to power. The young executives philosophized, "All the Italian gangster pictures have been made by Jews, starring Jews." Where could they find an authentic Italian or even Sicilian director in Hollywood?

Eventually, they reached the bottom of the bad apple barrel and lifted up Francis Ford Coppola, who "couldn't get a cartoon made in Hollywood." Evans asserts he changed all that, despite the fact that THE GODFATHER went well over budget, was opposed by almost everyone, particularly Bluhdorn's New York moneymen, and emerged tortuously from a welter of unused footage. He liked, he allows, Coppola's idea of making the Corleones a Marxist American success story. Hence, Evans had Mike Nichols direct him in a promo for the boys in New York, then forced Coppola (whom he derisively refers to as "The Prince") to add more than half an hour to the film.

Evans had a big premiere for THE GODFATHER in New York, smoothly persuaded his good friend, Secretary Kissinger, to suspend his planning for the Bombing of Cambodia, to attend and sit beside him and Ali afterwards. "Can you believe," Evans asks his audience, "that I was once so far gone in Hollywood that I thought my movie was more important than a WAR?"

The question must be rhetorical.

[The Kid does not mention it, but during the location work in New York on THE GODFATHER, ethnic organizations bitterly opposed the production, maintaining that it would put honest Italian-Americans in an unfair light. Just as the film was coming out, the leader of one of the organizations was executed by assassins at a street fair, an incident similar to one incorporated in THE GODFATHER III (1990). It was another example of the violent pattern of coincidence which dogged Evans' favorite personal undertakings.]

The price for his dedication to the picture, of course, was his marriage to Ali, who while Evans was keeping Coppola in line back East, spent far too much quality time with Steve McQueen in Sam Peckinpaw's THE GETAWAY, down in the Southwest. "Being dumped by the biggest Movie Star in the World," Evans laments, in what seems like true remorse, "makes you feel pretty small."

THE GODFATHER was a hit in every department, winning Oscars in 1972 and breaking box office records, to be followed in 1974 by THE GODFATHER II (based on the leftover footage and script ideas from the original). It was thought by many critics to be even better than the original, winning more Oscars. In those years, Paramount was also turning out offbeat gems like HAROLD AND MAUD (Ashby, 1972) and SERPICO (Lumet, 1973).

In 1974, he relinquished charge of Paramount to branch out into independent production, tapping Roman Polanski to shoot Robert Towne's script of CHINATOWN, another of the great Hollywood films of the last part of the Century. Once again, there was a curious accident, not mentioned here, in which Jack Nicholson supposedly hurt his nose. The injury was turned into a knifing, a traditional enforcer's punishment, and worked into the action by Director Polanski, who played the thug, in cameo. Whatever its origin, the scene brilliantly demonstrated one more of the many lefthanded criminal activities suggested by the film.

There follows a dumfounding montage of The Kid with the most beautiful actresses in the Hollywood of that period, from Angie Dickinson to Raquel Welch, with many unknowns in between, including one shot of him, an eye cocked at the lens, in what appears to be preparation to suckle the breast of a well endowed nude blonde.

Over the next ten years, Evans personally produced a series of hits and misses, including THE GREAT GATSBY (Clayton, 1974), MARATHON MAN (Schlesinger, 1976), BLACK SUNDAY (Frankenheimer, 1977), PLAYERS (Harvey, 1979), POPEYE (Altman, 1980, URBAN COWBOY, (Bridges, 1980) and THE COTTON CLUB (Coppola, 1984), many bits of which are incorporated within THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE.

In the midst of his golden period, The Kid tells us that he took the advice of "a Hollywood Princess" to soothe his aching back with cocaine, and began his fall. He confesses that he spoke with a colleague, who had a line on a big score . . . which went bad. Evans managed to stay on the periphery of the case, volunteering to produce a rah-rah anti-drug public service ad, but rumors, as they will, began to circulate. At the end of the period, on the troubled shoot of THE COTTON CLUB, he had a financial altercation with a proposed backer, Roy Radkin. Six weeks later, a bee keeper came upon what was left of Radkin's head protruding from a creek wash in the High Desert. He had been shot in the head and a stick of dynamite placed in his mouth.

Once again, The Kid was not seriously implicated, but along with the failure of COTTON CLUB, and reports of his drug habit, he discovered many people would no longer work with him. An acquaintance, one Karen Jacobs-Greenberger and two male accomplices were arrested and convicted for the murder, but Evans, not officially implicated, as if in explanation, suddenly shows us a candid street photo of a surprised looking man and says something typical of his hubristic personality. He tells us that he had contacted his lawyer, Sidney Korshak. He does nothing with the remark, but he must assume that for those au courant, the invoking of Korshak's name explains nearly everything. It is a very uncanny linking detail to place with the clues I have indicated are scattered throughout the picture.

[Sidney Korshak, a shadow figure for all his vast influence, was a labor attorney who came to Hollywood from Chicago in 1943. He quickly established relationships which eventually linked him and mob figures to a broad lineup of prominent people, including Frank Sinatra, Gulf & Western CEO Charles Bluhdorn, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan, and many others, evidently including Evans himself (who elsewhere refers to Korshak as "my mentor"). "To scores of federal, state, and local law enforcement officials," wrote veteran crime writer Dan Moldea, "Korshak is the most important link between organized crime and legitimate business." He had strong connections to all-powerful MCA-Universal, known in Hollywood as "The Octopus," (whose 50 year-ruler Lew Wasserman, on his recent death at 89, was described by Steven Spielberg as Hollywood's "benevolent godfather"). An equal opportunity fixer for Teamsters, Democrats or Republicans alike, it was Korshak who was instrumental in helping Ronald Reagan make the transition from a Democrat, a second-rate movie lead and a "liberal" President of the Screen Actors Guild into the Republican Governorship of California and on to the Presidency of the United States. More important in Hollywood, it was Korshak who managed to procure Al Pacino's release from his MGM contract so that he could play Michael Corleone in THE GODFATHER. On and on -- too many stories to relate here, but it is hard to discount the notion that Sidney Korshak may have been the model for Tom Hagen, the Corleones' consigliere, in THE GODFATHER. Korshak died at age 86, in 1996.]

Though other sources claim both Henry Kissinger and Sidney Korshak had abandoned him by the time of Roy Radin's murder, The Kid seems to indicate otherwise.

After that scrape, there was a period of time, while married to former Miss America Phillis George, when Evans seemed to believe that he would follow Radin to a shallow grave. Nevertheless, he loyally produced THE TWO JAKES (1990), Jack Nicholson's troubled, disappointing sequel to CHINATOWN. But during that time, too, fearing he would commit suicide, the ageing Kid committed himself a mental institution (and later escaped), lost his "Oasis" estate at Woodland, and got it back through the personal intervention of Jack Nicholson, who presumably owed Evans a couple.

The 1990's saw him return to Paramount, thanks to the kindness of an old friend, Sumner Radner, a lawyer from back East, now high up in the Studio. Evans, from his sinecure, produced SLIVER (Noyce, 1993), THE PHANTOM (Wincer, 1996) and THE SAINT (Noyce) in 1997. Then came the Autobiography, followed by a one week fifth marriage to Catherine Oxenberg, three strokes, and several years of serious rehabilitation. The film finishes strongly with a very funny End Credits impression of Evans by Dustin Hoffman (presumably made during the making of MARATHON MAN), said to be the basis for Hoffman's performance in WAG THE DOG (Levinson, 1997).

And so, what does the Future (that most precious treasure to control, as John Huston told us in CHINATOWN), what does the Future promise for Robert Evans?

Well, in addition to the soon-to-be-released HOW TO LOSE 10 GUYS IN 10 DAYS with Kate Hudson, and possibly marrying that tall blonde, he is publishing the second volume of his autobiography, The Fat Lady Sings, covering 1994 to the present. Early in the summer, he told columnists in Chicago that, using his own recollections and a script by Nick Tosches, he intends to produce a movie based on the life of . . . Sidney Korshak.

[Tosches wrote "The Devil and Sidney Korshak," a prize winning article, which appeared in Vanity Fair a few years ago. The magazine's publisher is Graydon Crawford, who happens to have produced THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE.]

Strangely, but typical of Evans' plans, other teeming movie projects on the life of Korshak, variously identified as THE OUTFIT and POWER, etc., are rumored in preparation by Producer Brian Grazer (A BEAUTIFUL MIND, 2001); by Producer Sherry Lansing (INDECENT PROPOSAL, 1993) for her husband, Director William Friedkin (TO LIVE AND DIE IN LA, 1985); and by the Old Master himself, Robert Altman (GOSFORD PARK, 2001).

[We know the person for the job, don't we?]

And so, is Robert Evans' epigraph for THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE true? "There are three sides to every story. My side, your side, and the truth. And no one is lying. Memories shared serve each one differently."

Yes, but as apparently all things Evans, only in part.

And thus, the little man with the deep tan in the white suit, potentially once the greatest Hollywood producer, toddled up the aisle at the Embarcadero, his eyes gleaming as if he were looking at a gigantic ice cream cone in the distance. [The next morning, he failed to make an appearance in Oakland. A spokesperson explained that he had stayed out partying too late the night before.]

Let me leave you with an epilogue, closer to the truth, the last line of Nick Tosches' "The Devil and Sidney Korshak": "The only true secrets are those that remain hidden, the only true mysteries, those that can never be solved."

Time will tell if "The Keed," as Nicholson likes to call him, will stay in The Picture. Until then, you might want to toddle along yourself to this maddening, dankly amusing, interesting, picture, which you may want to last longer than its 91 minutes.

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*UPDATE -- August 18, 2003: The tall blonde former Versace model, Leslie Ann Woodward, 33, became Evans' wife number six on a Mexican Beach in November 2002. They separated in June of this year; she filed for divorce last week.

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UPDATE -- June 21, 2006 -- Yesterday, Leslie Ann Woodward Evans filed for divorce against her husband, Robert Evans, citing "Irreconcilable Differences." No children.

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Here are URL's for some of the Robert Evans' productions mentioned in this review:

THE GODFATHER --

http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-570B-191D3A8-392EF5B2-prod5

THE GODFATHER II --

http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-701E-296F98E-39319238-prod5

THE GODFATHER III --

http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-18CD-3AC1370-39345796-prod5

CHINATOWN --

http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-7EAA-CF91DAC-388256AE-bd1

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If you wish to explore all of Macresarf1's reviews, indexed by title and category, many with URL's, paste to your browser and go to the following --

http://www.epinions.com/content_2514526340



Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age