The Fat Lady Sang

by Robert Evans

  “Charles Evans, you are a ferry sick man.”

  With that, he stood—I could swear I heard his heels click—and started rattling off a litany of problems. “Charles Evans, you vill not be able to leef the clinic. I am assigning you to Rice House Nineteen. You vill follow my order. You vill not deviate from my instructions. You are a sick man.” Kempner began to pace. “A ferry sick man. With your diet and style of liffing, you vill not make fifty. You are lucky to have gotten here in time. With proper care, vee vill bring you back to health. Safe your life. [Cue mirthless Germanic chuckle.] Charles Evans, vithout the Kempner Clinic, I doubt whether you vould have made Christmas.” By the time Herr Kempner was done with his little monologue, my brother’s face had turned ashen.

  Herr Kempner then turned to me and rattled off a list of internal problems that were disrupting my entire organic system.

  “Robert Evans, you are also ferry lucky. Your internal problems are treatable without being ensconced at the Kempner Clinic. You vill be given the Kempner diet, vich must become your vay of life. If it is not treated vith the proper discipline you vill be in eefen worse shape than your brother. You vill be visiting our clinic on a semimonthly basis for testing. Vee cannot take a chance on any further arterial clotting. You are excused.”

  “Doctor Kempner, can I have a few minutes with my brother before he takes off?”

  “Absolutely, take a full hour if you vish. But you must report punctually at Rice House Nineteen at two P.M.”

  “No problem, Doc,” Charles replied.

  The door closed behind us. Grabbing my arm, my brother laughed.

  “If that guy thinks I’m gonna be a prisoner in his rice paddy, he’s nuts. We’re both getting the fuck out of here. Now!”

  A plane was leaving for LaGuardia in forty-five minutes. “Come on,” he said. “We can be back in New York by one o’clock.” We grabbed the first cab we saw and slipped the driver a sawbuck. We hadn’t even bothered to go back to our rooms to get our things. “Get us to the airport in twenty minutes. Got it?” We climbed in and he pressed the accelerator to the floor. Charlie couldn’t stop laughing. “We’re outta here and we ain’t never coming back. Fuck our clothes, fuck Howard Johnson, fuck Duke University, and fuck Durham, North Carolina.”

  Two hours later, we landed at LaGuardia in New York and hailed a cab. A half hour later, our carriage pulled over to the curb on Fifty-Fifth Street and Seventh Avenue. Walking into the Stage Delicatessen at that moment was one of the great highs of our lives. We took a deep breath and breathed the breath of Heaven. It wasn’t Heaven. It was pastrami, but at that moment in time it sure felt like Heaven. Grabbing the first waiter we could, we slipped him a twenty and gave him our order: Two double hot pastrami sandwiches splashed with mustard and sauerkraut, surrounded by pickles, a Dr. Brown’s cream soda on the side, and a slice of cheesecake waiting in the wings.

  To this day, those pastrami sandwiches at the Stage were the best lunch of our lives.

  Strange, ain’t it? In 1997 it was the eminent Dr. Kempner who died of a heart attack. My brother, Charles, outlived him by a decade. And your author is still putting pen to paper.

  10

  Four huge hands holding both my arms awakened me from my sleeping hell. In actuality, it was the first step of my new life. Two of the hands belonged to the physical therapist, a guy who made the Rock look like Rob Schneider. The other two belonged to a nurse who could have been in the road company of Cuckoo’s Nest as Nurse Ratched.

  Four hands weren’t enough, however, to keep my body from falling to the floor.

  In reality, I wanted to fall through the floor and straight to the basement. As the days progressed, I began with the use of braces and therefore hands. I could make twenty feet walking somewhat like King Kong. As they wheeled me back to my cot, that wheelchair never looked so good.

  How indelible the moment! I could move my leg, but not stand. I could move my arm, but not hold. Even worse, not a toe or a finger had any movement or feeling. My mouth resembled a roller-coaster track, slurring out a word here, a half a word there, but two words together? Uh-uh.

  When you’re an inmate of the intensive care unit, you’re not allowed any visitors—and properly so. My particular area was very well guarded to ensure both myself and the ICU total privacy. There were two guards at each entrance.

  Many hours later, a knock on the door awakened me. It was 10 P.M. I looked up from my cot, and there in the doorway, hair standing straight up, arms outstretched, smiling door to door, was the Irishman himself, Jack Nicholson.

  He shook his head, his smile on high from ear to ear. “Hey, you ain’t dead, Keed. There’s still a lot of pussy out there waitin’ for you.”

  “How did you get in?” I slurred. “They guard this place like the fuckin’ mint.”

  He walked over and lay next to me on the bed. “There ain’t nothin’ impossible. You know that, Keed. You’ll be home before you know it. No more tears, huh? I wanna see ya back chasin’.”

  Nicholson’s uninvited bust-in was a clear violation of the strict rules of the ICU—at eleven o’clock at night, no less—and news of it spread throughout the hospital like brushfire. Within minutes, he was confronted by a nurse and an orderly who politely asked him to leave. Nicholson glanced at the orderly with his Irish smile, gave me a wink, and whispered, “See ya sooner than you think.”

  It wasn’t more than twenty minutes before Smilin’ Jack was back at the door again. Not accepting the impossible, he left the hospital, got into his car, and walked back in like Santa Claus with a dozen king-sized pizzas, one box on top of the other, inviting all the nurses and orderlies in the ICU administrative area to share pizza with him.

  Then he snuck back into my room, closed the door, and lay back down on the bed with me for more than an hour.

  He had no idea how critical this time was. We laughed, cried, and spoke of the wonderments of life: its pains, pleasures, surprises, and survival.

  A little while past midnight, getting up from the bed to leave, he kissed me on the forehead.

  “Keed, show ’em. Do it for me. Don’t let me down.”

  He left. I lay on my cot like a living corpse. What was left of my brain felt like exploding. The vision of his half-cocked eyebrow and devilish smile, filled with life and joy, made my heart pound through my chest. “I will not be a victim,” I repeated in my head. “I will not be a victim, I will not be a victim.”

  The nurse came in, took a wet cloth, cleaned my face, and took my blood pressure. “Your pressure’s still very high, Mr. Evans.” Giving me two pills, she suggested that I watch some television. “It will relax your mind,” she cooed. She flipped on the remote, switching from station to station until I nodded my head “yes.” It was the American Movie Classics channel. The film Three Coins in the Fountain was just ending. She left the room. I stared at the set.

  The host of the show was now announcing their next feature.

  “Now, American Movie Classics is proud to present the 1957 Academy Award–nominated Man of a Thousand Faces, starring James Cagney, who, as well, was nominated for an Academy Award for playing the late great actor Lon Chaney. Surprisingly, the movie introduces Robert Evans in his first role as an actor, playing Irving Thalberg, famed boy genius of Hollywood. Evans later went on to become a famous producer himself, running Paramount for ten years. Now, Man of a Thousand Faces.”

  A chill went through my body. My paranoia kicked in: Were they all part of a conspiracy to torture me?

  The screen went dark and the film began. It was the opening scene of the first film I’d ever been in, and here I was, telling the great Jimmy Cagney how to act.

  They were all dead now: Jimmy and every other actor in the cast. My fucked-up head told me I must be dead, too. You got it. I was hallucinating. Call it Chinese torture, call it what you want, but my head was in total chaos. I passed out until a nurse’s needle jabbed me the next morning.

  Am I dreaming? My first instinct was that I
was dead, and in Hell. Wrong. I was in Hell, but I was alive.

  Half awake, half alive, and totally dazed I uttered my first words. What came out was the nonsyllabic slur of a drunken parrot.

  “Mr. Evans, you were that close to being a basket case,” Nurse Ratched said, with all the sympathy of an IRS investigator. “But together we’re going to fix the basket.”

  Surprise. A smile crossed her face. She went on.

  “First, let’s hope we can get that tongue wagging again. That’s my job.”

  Closing my eyes, I thought: I’m dreaming it. I’m dreaming it. This can’t be happening to me. This was my introduction to being a freak of nature. Call me Quasimodo. Can’t I close my eyes and not awaken? Go back to playing with Jimmy Cagney, wherever he may be?

  This was the first step in what is kindly called the world of rehabilitation. Three hours daily learning to regain the mobility of my two right limbs, five fingers, five toes, my right eye, the right side of my mouth and tongue, and continually testing the function of the left side of my brain.

  Then it was on to speech therapy. It ain’t easy doing Shakespeare when the right side of your mouth droops like a ski slope, and the left side of your tongue has a perpetual hard-on.

  “It’s a slow process, Mr. Evans. But it’s my guess that, if we work hard together, within six months your speech will be sufficiently audible to lead a normal life.”

  Easy for her to say. Normal ain’t what I was used to. Breaking barriers was.

  Guantánamo Bay was a walk in the park compared to the torture I was put through for the next ten days. Was it working? Enough for me to allow my son, Joshua, to visit me for the first time.

  Two days later, I invited him back to watch the last episode of Seinfeld with me. I thought we could watch it together without it being morbid, that we could have a laugh or two watching Jerry’s highly anticipated final bow. Before he arrived, I made sure my hospital room was lit like a set. The lights were dim, the television set was on. I wanted to save him the embarrassment of looking at my asymmetrical face. He arrived five minutes before airtime, kissed me. We both had tears in our eyes but didn’t say anything. He sat on the bed as Seinfeld went on the air. I put my hands on his, but didn’t look at him directly. Didn’t want to.

  Was the show funny? I don’t remember. Frankly, I was too nervous, too concerned about my kid. Did I laugh? Yeah, if you count a half smile. It was better than slurring.

  Then, abruptly, the screen went black for an emergency announcement. Frank Sinatra had just died.

  At the same hospital where I was still living.

  Onscreen they showed the cameras poised outside the hospital, waiting for the gurney to be wheeled out. I immediately buzzed for the nurse and asked her which suite he had been in. She said, “I’m not supposed to tell you, but I will. He died in suite eight-oh-five.”

  My suite was 815.

  I immediately flipped through the various news stations. We missed the end of Seinfeld, but my son understood. Each station had a camera at the exit of Cedars, where the Chairman himself was being wheeled out. I was totally silent. My son knew of my long, bumpy relationship with Frank, and here we were a hundred feet away from each other. Him being wheeled out, me being strapped in.

  Frank played a very important part in my traveling north in the business. It was among the most bizarre relationships I had in my entire career. What an extraordinary guy! Like no other I’ve ever met. Being on his good side was Heaven; on his bad, Hell.

  Me? I went from Heaven to Hell and back during those years.

  11

  Kid, you remind me of me. Been watching you close. They tell me you’re comin’ off great. Been around long enough to have a nose who’s going to make it and who ain’t. You got a shot at going all the way. Take some advice from a guy who’s never learned. When it comes to those hangers-on, though, take my advice: Have your radar on high.”

  The words were coming straight from the mouth of the King—Frank Sinatra, by name—having a mano a mano powwow at Chasen’s, his favorite restaurant in town.

  It was spring of ’59. He was a megastar playing the lead role in the filmization of the Broadway musical Can-Can. Me? A punk starlet, playing my first starring role in The Hell-Bent Kid, a western remake of Kiss of Death. Screen-tested and plucked it away from many. Can-Can and The Kid—hell-bent, that is—were shooting on adjoining soundstages at Twentieth Century Fox.

  The laugh being that it was he who sought me out, and with purpose, not by mistake.

  Curiosity killed the cat? Well, curiosity all but killed the King. Not that he was losing any sleep wonderin’ whether Evans the actor would be the next Laurence Olivier. He was wondering, though—and not smilin’—how does a punk kid not yet hitting the quarter-century mark end up in the biblical sense with the two great loves of his life? Adding insult to injury, the Chairman’s spies told him I’d been seeing both of them at the same time. Their names? Ava Gardner and Lana Turner.

  Was I impressed that Frank Sinatra was seeking my company? Big-time! Over Chasen’s chili and a cold draft beer, it was evident why the crooner would later become known as the Chairman. In his effort to extract information, he opened up his vaulted thoughts, caressing the new kid in town with glimpses into Frank’s World.

  “Those hangers-on I told you about? Don’t be fooled by ’em. There’s not one who’s not going to hit you when you start makin’ it. Your ego tells you them dames are dying to fuck you. They are, yeah—but you’re the one who ends up gettin’ fucked. Hit up for every penny you’ve got. Need wheels, rent—you name it, they’ll ask you for it. If it ain’t a dame, it’s a guy, a relative, an old pal. They come out of the woodwork, need a temporary fix: fifty, a hundred, five hundred, a thou . . . Pay you back in a day, a week, a month? Don’t matter. Don’t loan ’em. Give. Give ’em half. That’s only if you wanna. If you don’t, then be tough about it, not like me. Tell ’em one, tell ’em all, you don’t believe in loanin’. With loanin’ comes losin’—losin’ a friend, that is. If they don’t like the answer, fuck ’em. They ain’t worth knowin’.”

  Gulping down a straight shot of scotch with his beer, he shook his head. “Never fails. Every time I lend a buck, I lose a pal. No one’s fault. That’s not true. It’s the fault of the guy who loans. He knows better. You ask when you’re on empty. Most of them have intentions to pay ya back. They don’t want to lose your friendship. But few of them actually come up with the money. Where are they gonna get it? Close friend, close relative—don’t matter. When you can’t pay back the marker, embarrassment causes estrangement.

  “You know what happens from estrangement? Disdain. Not from the guy who loans—from the guy who owes. Take it from a guy who’s loaned big. Lost big, too. Whenever I don’t stick to my preaching, I’m the loser. A year don’t go by without me erasin’ names from my invite list. Never fails. It’s the loaners ten-to-one over the field that the eraser hits.

  “Giving half, that’s different. It don’t stay on the record, stops ’em cold from comin’ back for more, and everyone’s conscience is clean. And don’t forget, it’s the first half that’s always the toughest to get. Once they get it and don’t owe it back, the second half’s easy to borrow. They can put the first half up as collateral.

  “Don’t be like me, Kid, spreadin’ your legs for everyone. Even when you give, it ain’t appreciated, it’s envied. If you wanna play Santa Claus, it’s your call. Give ’em half if you want. But don’t loan. Got it?”

  Got it I did. The Crooner’s wisdom was welcome, and I sucked it up like quicksand. Didn’t fall prey to it, though. What he didn’t know was, before graduating from his teens, street smarts taught me, the Comer, that continued silence carries with it continued breathing. Whatever Frank’s innuendo regarding Ava Gardner or Lana Turner, it was handled with polite evasiveness. So seductive the power of pussy, that unbeknownst to us both, it started a friendship that was both life- and career-changing, not only to the Comer, but to the Crooner as w
ell.

  Years passed. It was 1965. Von Ryan’s Express, starring Frank Sinatra, exploded onto the cinematic scene, express-trainin’ it to Blockbusterville, making it Twentieth Century Fox’s number-one film of the year and sending Sinatra’s cinema appeal to stratospheric heights. Whatever Frank wanted, Frank got.

  At that same moment in time, with my cinema career at a standstill, I opted for a shot on the other side of the screen. I wanted to be the next Zanuck, not the next Troy Donahue. I knew one thing: I had to own something to get my foot in the door.

  Five thousand buckaroos got me an option on a first-time author’s novel, The Detective. Call it luck, call it a freak mistake, call it what you want. The novel took off. Became a number-one bestseller. Everyone wanted the rights to the property. No one wanted me. And whose foot got me in the door? Frank’s. Imagine being offered north of half a million to take a walk. Not bad. A hundred times my investment! Not good, either. I wanted in, and The Detective was my calling card. An expensive one, too: In them days, a half a million was heavy. John Wayne, cinema’s top macho star, wasn’t pulling a half a million to star in a flick. It wasn’t generosity that bountied them half-a-million-dollar offers, but rather a fervent desire to get rid of me.

  Was it tempting? You bet your ass it was. But I’m a gambler. With Frank’s foot in the door, I had a shot at blockbuster time. The gamble may’ve been heavy, but making it into that exclusive club on your first shot ain’t a bad payoff if you win. And you don’t win by playing it safe.

  Prevailing friendship dictated that I should send my newfound bestseller to Chairman Sinatra, giving him and his capos first look. You see this in movies, but in real life?

  Within seventy-two hours, there I stood, a virgin, with the King on his knees proposing. Desperately digging The Detective, Sinatra made it loud and clear to all that the title character, Detective Joe Leland, was his and his alone to play. Immediately, he express-trained it to director Mark Robson, who maestro’d Von Ryan’s. Before sun turned to darkness, Robson committed, shaking hands with Sinatra that The Detective would be their next filmic endeavor together at Twentieth Century Fox, their home studio.