by Robert Evans
Living in Paris, Zanuck got wind of his protégé’s nuptial news. Why not announce his engagement to the world? Take over Maxim’s, make it the party of the year? “Lover Boy and Loder getting hitched!” Not a bad headline for a night to remember.
The party was scheduled for a Saturday night. I planned to arrive in Paris the previous Tuesday, to meet Danielle’s family, see Paris for the first time—then top it off with Zanuck’s engagement blast. Well, that’s not quite the way it worked out.
First of all, Marilyn kept the production waiting on script changes. Days turned into a week, a week into two . . . and still no Monroe. Time was ticking away! It was either save my engagement or wait for the Diva Monroe. I opted for the former, leaving Monroe a note: “I knew you when, Kid!”
Monroe didn’t take kindly to my sarcasm. Within twenty-four hours, I was replaced.
Instead of arriving on Tuesday, I landed in Paris four hours before the bash. The publicity honchos from Twentieth were there en masse. Yeah, but front and center stood the love of my life, looking more beautiful than ever. Not a bad way to step off a plane on your first trip to Paris!
Then, in the backseat of the limo on our way to the Plaza Athénée for a quick change, Danielle cooed, “I’m so in love.”
Throwing my arms around her. “Me too, darling.”
“I met a Greek. His name is Fivos. I’m madly in love with him.” Paris? Suddenly it looked like Pittsburgh.
“Danielle, in three hours, Zanuck’s announcing our engagement to the world.”
“I know.”
“People from all over Europe are flying in for the night.”
“I know.”
“You couldn’t tell me on the phone?”
“I felt that wasn’t fair. I wanted to look at you—tell you eye to eye.”
“Not fair! Danielle—that’s a thirteen-thousand-mile look!”
“I know!”
“I blew off Marilyn Monroe for you!”
“I know!”
“Zanuck’s my boss. He’s the one throwing this engagement party!”
With the coolness of a blackjack dealer, she interrupted me. “Well . . . we’ll play it out.”
Play it out we did. An Academy Award nightmare. Them flashbulbs . . . them paparazzi . . . them congratulations. My first trip to Paris, my first engagement—both of them disasters!
At two in the morning, she dropped me off at the Plaza Athénée. Ah! But with a kiss—not to build a dream on, nor to give me a hard-on, but to say good night and good-bye, forever!
I couldn’t sleep. And I didn’t stay for breakfast. I snuck out the service entrance, hailed a cab, and hopped the first plane back to the States.
Over the Atlantic I got up to use the john. Not to take a piss, but to take a long look at myself in the mirror. First time out, I’m dumped at the altar. Depressed? Yeah—but for the wrong reasons. Not over love lost, but over ego crushed.
What am I supposed to tell people? I blew off Monroe for some Frenchie who was sleeping with a Greek? Uh-uh, don’t tell no one. Those motherfuckers would enjoy it too much. Truth’s truth: The only thing that gets the gossipers jealous is heat. When you hang your hat in the frying pan, it brings out their envy, and when you catch fire, that envy turns to hate. Some town, Hollywood, huh?
Good-bye, Paris, Hello Frying Pan. Feeling stratospheric, I walked out of the john with my ego on high, tapping the shoulder of a striking-looking stewardess.
“How about a double Bloody?”
“A twist of lemon?”
“If you twist it.”
A wicked smile, “I’ll twist it good.”
Reclining in my plush seat, she approached with cocktail in hand. “Hope you like the twist. It’s my specialty.”
I wide-smiled, thinking to myself, Evans, you’re back in action.
22
From my teens to my sixties, three pastimes remained my secret treasures of life. Irony is, the three shared the same first letter: sun . . . sports . . . and sex.
Be it surfing, swimming, sailing, skiing, or just plain lyin’ on a beach, feeling the hot rays of the blessed sun by day, allowed thoughts to emerge from my head—ones that would never have come into play in the merry-go-round called civilization.
And I never appreciated it. I took them all for granted, never giving a pregnant thought to how blessed I was by the Guy Upstairs.
Though the two be diametric to each other, sports and sex crossed the finish line in a dead heat. After I became head honcho at Paramount in 1966, my ultimate fantasy became a reality: buying a home I could call my own. Was I indecisive as to what my fantasy could be? Quite the contrary. With maniacal specificity, I warned all brokers not to bother me unless they could genuinely fulfill my exact needs. Not having the patience nor the time to be a looker, I let it be known clearly that I had two prerequisites:
1. That the home not be ostentatious.
2. That the property have enough land to build the best fuckin’ tennis court in the land.
It took more than a year of searching . . . but falling in love ain’t easy. When it was done, I’d found my life’s partner.
Did I design and construct the best tennis court in all of California? You bet your ass I did!
Many a man’s fantasy is a luxury yacht, or private plane. Why, I don’t know. I’ve never been a great tennis player, but having the finest tennis court in town was my ultimate turn-on. Though my name was low on the list of the talent who graced the court, I spent many of the greatest times of my life playing on it.
Gene Mako, the world’s premier designer of professional tennis courts, maestroed a court that to this day has not been matched. Its special lighting makes night tennis more visible than day. The furor it caused made the City Council of Beverly Hills ban the installation of stadium lights forever.
No matter who the celebrity, they came to Woodland to play day tennis at night. More action took place on that court—from Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, and Bobby Riggs, to every major player, hustler, and movie star—than any other. Magazines wrote more about my court than my films. It got to a point where I needed a special secretary just to book the court for the greatest players in the world, who all wanted to play at Woodland when they passed through Los Angeles.
Legitimate or otherwise, many’s the clandestine encounter closed, sealed, and delivered on Woodland’s tennis court. Money could not buy you entrance: Only the closest were invited. As the years passed, it became the most restricted club in all of Los Angeles. Its celebrity remains mythical even today. If it were anyone else’s court, I would never have been allowed entrance. Wouldn’t have blamed them, either.
But it was my jewel, and mine to choose.
Between swimming, tennis, and a variety of other sports, I never stopped feeling like a teenager. And that’s wealth that money can’t buy, pal!
Now let’s get it on, to the biggest S . . . sex.
At its best, the allure of the chase is like being strapped in the front seat of the most frightening, dangerous roller coaster ever built. Both highs are close to hallucinogenic. The difference is, at the end of the roller-coaster ride, you get off and turn your attention to the other joys of the amusement park. Not so at the end of the biblical high. When you’re done with that, the thrill is gone. The pain stays . . . and stays . . . and stays, never seeming to heal. Like barnacles, they just keep holdin’ . . . givin’ you them headaches, them heartaches . . .
In consolation, everything in life is temporary, including life itself. Fuck it! Never allow an attack of the heart to give you a heart attack. It ain’t worth it!
From the time I was a teenager enjoying my first sexual pleasures, I got drunk on the power that came with it. A connection was forged, almost electrical in its immediacy. I was consumed by this newfound world, adventurous, obsessed. Was I a pioneer in these uncharted waters? You bet your ass! At least I thought I was. It was a pleasure I couldn’t deny myself, or wouldn’t deny myself. It was by far my greatest joy.
Thrilling, exhilarating, scandalous, and yes, destructive.
Upon reflection, did its power serve me harshly or kindly? It’s difficult to answer, as every year I have a different take on its influence on my life’s bumpy road.
From my late teens through my twenties, my sexual liaisons kept me constantly on the radar of the gossip locusts, whose exaggerations earn them their weekly paycheck. After a while it doesn’t matter. There’s nothin’ you can do about it. Once branded, always branded. Infamy became my calling card.
Even after royalty fades, infamy stays. Truth be told, what’s more boring than royalty? And what’s more enticing than the down-and-dirties of infamy?
Fuck it! Take a bit of fatherly advice, from one who’s still branded with the baggage of infamy: ENJOY IT! ACCEPT IT. EMBRACE IT!
Infamy can be the most seductive prop in your bag of tricks.
Let’s pay a little closer attention to those big three S’s. Considering the fact that I was not rigorously practicing for the Olympics, but, rather, stressed to the tens—reporting to junior G-men who knew nothing about the cinema beyond the price of a ticket—my libido was travelin’ north at a surprising rate, while it should have been going south.
Here’s a secret: For a full decade before the fat lady sang, my doctors had been telling me I was a perfect candidate for a stroke. Immortal am I, my ego shouted from within. Being sixty-seven bothered me little. I felt like a kid.
Trouble was, I acted like one, too.
That black bag was unzipped and waiting for me. I must have stepped over it, rather than in it. Never could find anything without my glasses. But you can’t beat the odds on everything.
Let’s take my pleasures three:
I had three strokes, flatlined, saw the white light, and within months there I was, hitting a backhand on the tennis court. Sounds like a fairy tale, huh?
Well, dying and coming back to life isn’t quite as romantic as it may sound. Every morning I had to ingest a minimum of eight pills, changing every week or so in a constant carousel of new and torturous medications. The potential cures often seemed to carry as much pain and bodily insult as the disease. At times, all that pharmacology made me feel as if I were imprisoned in some camp and being experimented on.
After the fat lady sang, all my bodily pleasures took a backseat. The hot rays of the sun were now off-limits, as were the hot breasts of a sunny girl. The reason was simple: Every pill I swallowed, without exception, had some dangerous effect. They thinned my blood, blocked calcium deposits throughout my body, pressured my blood pressure down from the 200s to the low 100s, and relaxed my muscles—and that was before the army of antidepressants. Between morning, noon, and evening, I ingested more than twenty pills a day.
There’s no fuckin’ doctor on earth that can give you a readout of how one of these twenty pills interacts with the nineteen others. But I can unequivocally attest to the one thing they did accomplish. The warning statement on each pill packet, without exception, advises the patient—in very small type—that the medication is likely to dampen sexual desire, potency, and/or sexual performance. Many even go as far as stating that they may nullify your sexual desires.
Meanwhile, blood thinners carry a label that warns of great danger if the patient should be exposed to sunlight.
Wait a minute, I asked my doctor. I can’t play tennis. I can’t sit in the sun, or even in the water when it’s sunny out. And I can’t fuck. Is that true, Doc?
With one look, he put my situation back in perspective. “You’re alive, aren’t you?”
That said it all.
Reality does bite back. Many a time, them pills made my heart all but go through my chest. I felt like my head was goin’ to blow off.
Whenever I stood up from a sitting position and failed to count to ten before I moved, I’d have to grab on to the nearest chair, or risk collapsing onto the ground. Forget tennis, forget the sun, forget sex—when you get up in the middle of the night to take a piss, get dizzy, then slowly bend to the floor and crawl back to bed without making it to the john, you know it’s time to change gears or get out of town.
“Doctor, I’m takin’ twenty-one pills a day. My head’s about to explode. I ain’t gonna be a toilet for any more of these pharmaceutical miracles. I’ve had it!”
With a bedside smile, my dear doctor looked at me and said simply, “We’re keeping you alive, Bob. That’s all I can say.”
“Well, I don’t believe it. When twenty people are in a small room, none of them knows what to do. When you’ve got twenty pills in your intestines, they don’t know what the hell they’re doin’ either.”
“We can cut down the dosage.”
“Not good enough.”
“Well, before we do anything radical I’m sending you to Cedars for an MRI of your brain.”
“Well, at least that’s proactive. Is tomorrow soon enough, Doc?”
Two days later I was lyin’ on a slab, being rolled into a nuclear magnetic resonance imaging tunnel. Later in the day I was in Dr. Kivowitz’s office. I pressed the good doctor to press the head of the Imaging Center to get an immediate result.
“You know, Evans, you really are a pain in the ass.”
“Hope so. Make the call.”
I was feeling cocky, knowing that I had made a resolution: no more twenty-pill days for Evans.
The MRI results came back. Scanning the page, “Well, Evans,” said Dr. Kivowitz, “yes, there is damage from the stroke, which is inevitable and only to be expected. But, yes, it is correctable with a lot of work and training. It’s not going to be easy, Evans, but it is doable and up to you how hard you try.”
I looked at him straight. “Well, doctor, since I was a kid, the flair of the dare has always been my greatest enticement.” I’m a guy who has always pushed the envelope. This time the glue was stronger, but did I stop fighting? Uh-uh. I fought harder—stupidly harder.
It’s easy to say age is only numbers. Bullshit! The numbers catch up to you. They do to everyone. The bigger the ego, the less chance you think they have of catching you. But they do. And the higher the number, the harsher the pain.
Have my daredevil ways gotten me in trouble? Big-time! Has my road made others envious? It ain’t been Yellow Brick, but I’ve seen a world of Oz that few others have ever done. Did I pay the price for it? Front-row center. But I don’t believe in the past, and I don’t believe in the future. I believe in the now. And I’ve paid the two dollars too many times to beat the system called life.
Next time around my MO will be POM—peace of mind.
One thing I’ve learned:
The fuckin’ you get just ain’t worth the fuckin’ you get.
Late that year, my brother, Charles, invited me to join him on his boat in St. Barth’s for the holidays.
I said no. The more I told him about my condition, the more he tried to encourage me. The more he tried to encourage me, the deeper my depression grew. His kind embrace was appreciated, but I knew I would envy his normal life too much to enjoy spending the holidays with him. Instead I spent the week in bed, alone, spending several hours a day working on my memoir, taking in the football games, and doing the excercises I hate.
Thus ended 1998, the worst year of my life.
The next day was New Year’s Day. At two o’clock in the afternoon, I called for my limousine. Instructions: destination unknown. Opening the door, my chauffeur, Stretch, asked politely if I wanted a New Year’s cocktail or the daily paper.
“Thanks but no thanks, Stretch.” Instead I slipped him a Ben Franklin. “Happy New Year, pal.”
“Thank you, Mr. E. Where to?
“Anywhere between Santa Barbara and San Diego,” I said. “Find the most deserted, unknown beach. That’s the destination.”
He offered a comforting smile. “I know the coastline as well as you know how to make a picture. I’ll surprise you with the most beautiful beach on the coast. It’s New Year’s Day and it’s cold. The beach will be all you
rs.”
“You’re my man, Stretch.”
I pressed a button. The divider went up. Slowly my eyes closed, and I fell into the deepest sleep I’d had in years.
A hand shook my arm. It was Stretch. “We’re here, Mr. E.”
“Where?”
“The beach I told you about. It’s even more beautiful than I remembered.”
“Where are we?”
“Ten minutes from La Jolla.”
“I must have slept for more than an hour!”
“You must’ve had one hell of a night last night. You feeling better now?”
I nodded and got out of the car. Slowly my eyes spanned the miles of beachfront before me. “What time is it?”
“Almost four thirty. Could have driven you all the way to San Francisco and you wouldn’t have opened your eyes.”
Eerie, how even the slightest change of air can change your outlook on life. Out here, it hit me with a jolt: Weaknesses don’t disappear, they just hang around waiting for their time at bat. I’d been in the house too long, seeing fewer and fewer people. Could agoraphobia have been setting in? Yeah! And I didn’t like it.
“I’ll be here waiting for you, Mr. E.,” Stretch said.
“Why don’t you go grab something to eat,” I said. “Come back in an hour.”
As he drove away, I slowly took off my shoes and hobbled down the steps, my feet touching the sand. The cold winter wind was going right through me, but I wasn’t cold. I must have been dazed by the outside world.
When I got to the water, the last of the waves washed up and over my ankles. This time, I could feel it: The water was cold. It awakened my half-sleeping brain.
Was I dreaming it? No, I wasn’t. Everything I was feeling was real. And I was part of it.