One day, in a move straight out of classic Hollywood, he was spotted next to the pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel by none other than actress Norma Shearer, who was impressed enough by him to successfully push him, despite his lack of acting experience, into the role of her late husband, legendary studio head Irving Thalberg, in “Man of a Thousand Faces” (1957), a biopic on the life of actor Lon Chaney. Shapera in New York City on June 29, 1930, Evans spent his early years doing promotional work for Evan-Picone, a fashion company that was founded by his brother Charles, and doing some voice work for a variety of radio shows, making early use of the dulcet tones that would one day become one of his signatures. Strap in, because this is going to be a wild ride.īorn Robert J. With his passing today in Beverly Hills-where else?-at the age of 89, an era has truly ended and the film industry has lost one of its giants.
After all, this is a guy who was plucked from obscurity and groomed for Hollywood stardom that didn’t quite take, plucked once again for a behind-the-scenes role that led to his participation of a slew of popular and critically acclaimed films that helped fuel what it generally considered to be the last great sustained period of American filmmaking, lost nearly everything during a subsequent decade or so of personal and professional disasters and then managed to pull off an unexpected third act resurrection through the publication of a memoir that would become one of the most infamous and undeniably entertaining books on contemporary Hollywood. It is no exaggeration to say that if the wild life and times of producer Robert Evans had been the invention of a particularly creative screenwriter, most studios probably would have taken a pass on it on the grounds that it was simply too crazy and unlikely to be believed.