Evans’ Success Came Early : Career Epitomized Hollywood Dream

In many ways, Robert Evans’ life epitomizes the Hollywood dream. A professional radio performer by the age of 11, he won a featured role in a movie at the age of 20 and was head of production at Paramount Pictures at 36.

As a kid, he read about the young MGM production genius Irving Thalberg. In his first film role, in “The Man of a Thousand Faces,” he portrayed Thalberg. When he was 36, he became Thalberg.

During his 10 years as Paramount’s production chief, Evans helped bring the studio from eighth to first place in the rankings of studio revenues, developing such hit projects as “The Odd Couple,” “Love Story,” “Rosemary’s Baby,” “Serpico,” “The Longest Yard” and “The Godfather.” When he left Paramount in 1974, he independently produced the critical and commercial hit “Chinatown,” then the Dustin Hoffman thriller “Marathon Man” and was at the very top of a very big game.

But there was only one hit in his next five films. And financial and personal setbacks--he was convicted in 1980 of cocaine possession--culminated in court testimony Tuesday that linked him to the contract killing of Long Island impresario Roy Radin in the “Cotton Club” murder case, leaving Evans one of the least envied men in Hollywood, even by those who like him and have worked with him.

“To those of us who knew him (at Paramount) and knew what a good-spirited person he was, it’s a terrible sadness,” Peter Bart, a film executive under Evans at the studio, said after Tuesday’s court hearing.

Discussing the arc of the 58-year-old Evans’ career, Bart said: “Bob always had a premonition that his career would peak before he was 50 and fade down hill. He lived by it. He was haunted by it.”

“Cotton Club” was to have been the crowning jewel of Evans’ career and a comeback of sorts. Three of his previous four films (“Players,” “Popeye” and “Black Sunday”) had been big disappointments and a remake of “Chinatown”--which he planned to direct, as well as star in--had stalled.

But “Cotton Club” quickly toppled into an abyss, becoming a runaway production that exhausted most of Evans’ own fortune, forcing him to look for white knight investors to cover the growing budget.

There is some break in the clouds for Evans. “Two Jakes,” the long-awaited sequel to “Chinatown,” is in production, with Jack Nicholson starring and directing. The film will be released at Christmas for Academy Award consideration and will go into national release early next year.

But recently, Evans sold his 16-room French Regency home on North Beverly Drive, just above the Beverly Hills Hotel, to property investor and neighbor Tony Murray. Sources said Evans sold the house to Murray on the condition that he be allowed to continue living there as a renter. Evans did not return several phone calls Tuesday from The Times.

According to real estate records, Evans bought the house in 1965 for about $500,000; he reportedly sold it to Murray for more than $5 million.

Although Evans got off to a fast start as an actor--he made his film debut playing a sailor in “Mildred Pierce”--it was his development of “Love Story” that friends say became his personal and career turning point. The adaptation of Erich Segal’s novel was a huge box office success and Evans ended up marrying its star, Ali McGraw.

But Evans was arrested in New York in 1980, along with two others, on charges of possession of five ounces of cocaine that they had bought from a federal undercover agent. The charges were reduced to a misdemeanor after plea bargaining and Evans was convicted.

Four years later, Evans was in court trying to maintain control over “The Cotton Club.” Edward Doumani, one of the investors trying to wrest control of the production from Evans, testified that the producer was unable to perform his day-to-day duties because of “drug addiction.”

The court ruled in Evans’ favor in that civil case.