The Kid Stays in the Picture

by Robert Evans

  Was I having sunstroke? Looking up, I saw a ruggedly handsome man, at least six foot three, walking past me, not in tennis shorts, but wearing a black silk shantung suit, with a starched white shirt and tie. Wiping my eyes, I took a second look as he took a seat nearby. He wasn’t even perspiring. Who was this guy? In all the years I’d gone to Palm Springs, never had I seen anybody dressed this way.

  The set now over, the heat so intense, all four players decided to continue the match once the sun went down. It was eerie—all four walked over to the big man as if they were looking for approval. He barely smiled. Then all five walked into the air-conditioned clubhouse. Me, I walked to the reception desk.

  “Who’s the big guy, the one in the black suit who just walked in?” I asked the desk clerk.

  He stuttered, “S-S-S-S . . . Sidney K-K-K-K . . . Korshak.”

  “Who is he? What does he do?”

  He turned and rushed into the back room. Obviously, it wasn’t any of my business. Obviously, I wanted to find out. It didn’t take long.

  He was known as the Myth, from the Racquet Club to the “21” Club in New York. Many said they knew him; few actually did. One thing was for sure, he was one powerful motherfucker.

  Incident brought the Myth and me together; from the moment we met in the early fifties until 1980 we were as close as two friends could be. What did he do? He was a lawyer living in California, without an office. Who were his clients? Well, let’s just say a nod from Korshak, and the Teamsters change management. A nod from Korshak, and Santa Anita closes. A nod from Korshak, and Madison Square Garden stays open. A nod from Korshak, and Vegas shuts down. A nod from Korshak, and the Dodgers suddenly can play night baseball. Am I exaggerating? Quite the contrary. In the spirit of confidentiality, it’s an underplay.

  Born in Chicago, Korshak, by the age of twenty-one, was one of Al Capone’s top consiglieres. By the early fifties, he represented more than twenty companies on the New York Stock Exchange. Was he a mobster? No, he was a lawyer. Was he crooked? Not only was he not, I doubt whether he has ever been charged with a misdemeanor. Was he a myth? Yes, with a capital M.

  In his midthirties, Sidney married a beautiful blonde from the Ice Capades named Bernice. Arriving back from their honeymoon, many a message was awaiting the big man. His new bride began reading them off.

  “George Washington called, everything is status quo. Thomas Jefferson called, urgent, please call ASAP. Abraham Lincoln, must speak with you, important. Theodore Roosevelt called three times, must connect with you before Monday.”

  She began laughing. “Your friends sure have a strange sense of humor. Who are they?”

  “Exactly who they said they were. Any other questions?”

  Fifty years later, Bernice has never asked another question. Nor, for that matter, has she ever asked him where he’s been—even when he goes out for a shave and comes back three weeks later.

  Being one of the fortunate ones invited to celebrate their fiftieth anniversary together, I suggested Bernice should bottle her secret potion. After all, how many couples have been married for fifty years and look forward to their fifty-first?

  Till 1980, when a specific incident cooled our relationship, not a day passed without Sidney and I spending at least an hour alone together. When separated by geography, our time alone was spent by phone. His affection unconditional. His legal wisdom and time unbilled. Was there reciprocity? Yes, but the scale tipped way to his side. What memories we shared.

  For openers, it was 1958. The Sun Also Rises had opened and me, I was the next Valentino. Sidney invited me to join he and Bernice for dinner at Le Pavillon in New York, which at the time was the finest and most elite French restaurant in the city. (The restaurant’s proprietor, Henry Soulé, had barred Jackie Kennedy from entering for lunch. Why? She was wearing pants.) Naturally, I accepted.

  Korshak was a different story. Soulé was like a buck private standing before his drill sergeant. Quickly I was ushered to his table. Sitting beside Sidney and Bernice was a couple I had never met. The guy made John Gotti look like a fruit. The girl was a different story. A knockout. Blond hair, blue eyes, great smile, and fetching with a capital F. I’m seated between Miss Fetching and the big man. During the first course and into the second, Miss Fetching couldn’t take her eyes off me—giggling, questioning me about The Sun Also Rise, being a bullfighter, a Latin lover.

  Suddenly, a shot to the shins almost took my leg off.

  “Bobby, you’re late.” Looking at his watch, Sidney said, “The script—you were supposed to pick it up twenty minutes ago.”

  “What script?”

  With that, my other leg gets it—a kick that made the first feel like a kiss. If I wanted to get up, I couldn’t. Then I got the look, the Korshak look. Did I leave? Hardly able to walk, Houdini couldn’t have disappeared quicker. The morning after, the big man called.

  “Schmuck, if you’d stayed one more minute, you’d have gotten it to the stomach. Not a punch—lead.”

  “Who’s the guy?”

  “It’s none of your fuckin’ business. His broad’s got one tough road ahead. Been married a week and the doorman don’t even say hello to her—that’s how tough the guy is. And you, schmuck, you’re coming on to her. Tony was gettin’ hot—I could see it. You’re lucky your eyes are open.”

  Was Korshak right? Ms. Fetching and Mr. Nice stayed married for a few years. He divorced her, married someone else, had two children. She continued to live in her hometown, Chicago. There was one problem. Not even a vagrant would take her out. Frustrating? It’s just the beginning. Being colder than the weather, she decided Chicago was not for her. She moved to Los Angeles. Strange, but not one guy in L.A. would take her out either. Mind you, this is a great-looking chick. Hawaii. Ah, that’s the place to live. It’s a different world, different people. Who would know her there? Nobody! Till this day, Miss Fetching is still dateless.

  But me, I was coming on to her when she was still on her honeymoon.

  Chapter Ten

  I never had a press agent, but I was always in the press. Contrary to the popular belief that being publicized is an asset, in reality it is a handicap, both personally and professionally. Professionally you are plummeted into being a celebrity before you’ve made your bones as an artist. Personally undressing your life for the world to see is the quickest way to mayhem, unhappiness, and ending up an 8-x-10 glossy. Conversely, it is mystery that sustains your career and affords you some peace of mind. Unfortunately, both my career and life fell into the former not the latter. Except for Elvis Presley, I was getting more fan mail than anyone at Twentieth Century–Fox. Troy Donahue was getting more fan mail at Warners than Paul Newman. Today, it’s Troy who? Heralded as the next Tyrone Power, the next Valentino, I was in reality becoming the next Troy Donahue.

  I was set to star in the remake of Blood and Sand—first made with Valentino and then Tyrone Power. My co-star was Sophia Loren. It was a natural, so the fan magazines said. It didn’t matter. They canceled it.

  Across the headlines of almost every newspaper’s entertainment page: “EVANS STARRING IN ZANUCK’S NEW PRODUCTION, ‘COMPULSION.’ ” A hit Broadway play about the murder case of Leopold and Loeb, the thrill-killers whose trial shook the country in the twenties, I was to play the Nathan Leopold character. A Zanuck production, yes, but it was the wrong Zanuck. Not Darryl, but his son, Richard, freshly discharged from the army. Darryl, my mentor, was now living in Paris, leaving his son to protect his interest at the studio. As much as Zanuck Senior wanted to see me become the next Valentino, Zanuck Junior wanted to see me back at Evan-Picone.

  I first met Dickie in the luxurious bungalow Zanuck Productions occupied on the Fox lot. He was the spitting image of his old man, but thirty-two years younger and no cigar.

  “I’m not sure you’re right for it,” said young Zanuck.

  (Is the kid head-fucking me?) “I’m already announced for it. I’m under personal contract to you.”

  “I know, bu
t something bothers me.” Then he looked at me, smiled; a sick sense of enjoyment came across his face. “Don’t know what it is.”

  “Don’t worry,” George Chasen, my agent, said later. “It’s yours.”

  A week later, Brad Dillman was announced for the part. It was the beginning of young Mr. Z getting his nuts off on young Mr. E.

  Back in New York, an excited George Chasen had me on the phone.

  “Bob, it’s been worth the wait. Fox is remaking Kiss of Death into a western. We’ve got you up for the Widmark part—it made him an overnight star. The crazo, ex-con who pushes the old lady in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs.”

  “It ain’t no romantic lead, George.”

  “You’re damn right it ain’t. Let me give it to you straight, Bob. We need legitimacy.”

  His words were a tough reminder, but the truth. I was an overpublicized, overglamorized pretty boy, a fashion tycoon turned actor. Outside of my family, no one took me seriously, not even at Evan-Picone, where everyone thought my head was in Hollywood. In Hollywood, everyone thought my talent was on Seventh Avenue. What others envied as having the best of both worlds, was in reality my downfall. To paraphrase the great philosopher Rodney Dangerfield, “I didn’t get no respect.”

  At the screen test the director, Gordon Douglas, suspiciously looked me over. “It’s a helluva stretch—you playing Tommy Udo in spurs.”

  Again, I didn’t know I was only one of five being tested, along with Tony Perkins, Eli Wallach, Sal Mineo, and my pal Ray Danton. The part was originally intended as a star vehicle for Elvis Presley, then Steve McQueen; both of them jumped at it at first, but then turned it down upon reflection, not wanting to be compared to Widmark. They were right. You’re never compared favorably, even if you’re better, when you fuck around with a classic.

  “I don’t want you to even look at the script,” said Douglas. “First let’s see what I can get from you—inside you.” Little by little, he got inside me, to talk with my eyes. “That’s it! Don’t lose it. Now look at the script.”

  Again, cutting to the chase, I got the part.

  Without realizing it, I soon became the biggest fraud in town. Starring in: The Hell-Bent Kid, Rope Law, Enough Rope, Quick Draw, its sequel, Quick Draw at Red Rock, and The Hell-Bent Kid II. There was one problem, they were all one flick. The studio kept changing its title every other week, but no one in town knew it.

  “Is this guy Evans hot.” Wherever I’d go, every actor asked me who was my agent.

  Instead of pushing the old lady down the stairs, I put an arrow through her heart.

  Gordy Douglas told me to live the part and I did. I was the guy. Away from the cameras I still couldn’t stop my lisp. At the time, I was going with Kathryn Grayson, the MGM musical star, who, as the weeks went by, began having second thoughts about our relationship because I was becoming as peculiar in life as I was in film.

  Edward R. Murrow, the dean of television journalism, saw the final cut with his staff and pressed Twentieth Century–Fox to have me, of all people, as an interview subject for “Person to Person.” This program was not only the first network interview show, but number one in ratings as well. Rarely did his prestigious format embrace the world of entertainment; when it did, it was on the level of Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Elvis Presley, or Frank Sinatra, not someone as low down the totem pole as me. When the chain-smoking Murrow predicted on network television in his famous voice of doom that The Hell-Bent Kid would make Robert Evans the next major star in Hollywood, all hell broke loose.

  The film was to open in two months. The morning after “Person to Person” aired, next to Paul Newman, more scripts were sent to me than any actor in town.

  George Chasen called. “Bob, Lew and I are working out a production company for you. The next picture you make will be under your own banner.”

  Barrington Productions was formed. Three weeks before the picture was to open, the film’s producer, Herbert Bayard Swope, called me with the news.

  “I don’t know how to tell you this, Bob. It’s hard for me to get it out of my mouth, but they’ve changed the title again. You’re not The Hell-Bent Kid anymore. You’re The Fiend Who Walked the West.”

  Charlie Einfeld, the Neanderthal marketing and distribution genius at Fox, brilliantly concluded that with westerns and horror flicks both being hot at the box office, why not change the title again to fit the mood of the movie-going public? It was not by mistake he was the second highest paid executive at Twentieth Century–Fox. Who else but a genius could come up with The Fiend Who Walked the West?

  “You can’t do this, Mr. Einfeld. I’d rather sell ladies’ underwear than go out as The Fiend Who Walked the West.”

  “Hold it, kid, you act in ’em. I sell ’em. The title, it’s brilliant. We’ll get both audiences—the rednecks who go for oaters and the horror freaks.”

  “Yeah, and I’ll become Fatty Arbuckle.”

  He didn’t even hear me.

  “Tomorrow I want you in wardrobe and makeup. We’re gonna shoot a new trailer.”

  Excitedly he held up the new ad campaign. It was a huge picture of me looking like Freddy from A Nightmare on Elm Street. The letters hit me boldly in the eye: “Don’t turn your back on the kooky killer with the baby face—The Fiend Who Walked the West.”

  “We’re gonna shoot a new trailer with you like this, as the Fiend. It’s gonna scare the shit out of everyone.”

  Knowing my career was as good as over now, I lashed back. “You know where your brains are, fuckface? In your ass! Go sit on ’em!”

  Walking out, I slammed the door in his crimson face.

  Two days later, the new title was officially announced to industry and press. The scripts stopped coming. Barrington Productions was now a name without a company. Changing the title changed my life, even though my reviews were an actor’s dream. Time predicted that my “exceptional performance will be long remembered.” It wasn’t. The Fiend died a fast death. Charlie Einfeld got promoted to an even higher echelon—that of executive vice president. And me? Well, I suppose it was meant to be. The role that made Richard Widmark a star overnight made me all but an unknown.

  “Forget it, Rona, he’s a homosexual. It’ll show up on the screen.”

  Listening in on the extension, I wanted to crack up. Jean Negulesco, the director, was talking about me. Rona Jaffe was the author of the year’s hottest novel, The Best of Everything. A few hours earlier over lunch at the Harwyn, the hottest new face in literature had told me that one of the novel’s main characters, Dexter Key, was fashioned after me. Had I read it? No. But every chick in town I knew had.

  “Thanks for the compliment, Miss Jaffe, but I don’t understand it, you’ve never even met me.”

  “But I’ve done my homework,” she blushed. “I know more about you than you’d like me to.”

  No compliment. Dexter Key was every girl’s nightmare, a playboy bastard. I had a good reputation, huh?

  Still on the phone with Negulesco, Rona was pitching me for the part.

  “He’s a homosexual, Rona,” laughed Negulesco. “Everyone knows it. They’ll never believe him as a cocksman.”

  Her hand over the mouthpiece, she looked at me, surprised. “Is it true?”

  Deadpan, I nodded yes.

  “Jean, I have to call you back.” Now in total shock.

  “You’re a homosexual?”

  I couldn’t hold it back. I broke out laughing.

  “Is Joe DiMaggio? If you’re not everything to everybody, you’re nobody in Hollywood. Monty Clift stole me away from Rock Hudson and that’s from top sources, Rona. But I’m also being kept by Ginger Rogers. There’s one problem—I never met any of ’em.”

  “Then why did you nod yes?”

  “It was too good. I had to. I wish I had a picture of your reaction.”

  “Evans, you are Dexter Key; you’re a real bastard.”

  After days of prodding from Rona, Negulesco was willing to reconsider my sexuali
ty, but again I’d have to test for the part. Again, paraphrasing philosopher Dangerfield, I was still getting no respect.

  I read the novel. This part I wanted! Unlike The Fiend, The Best of Everything was an A-picture all the way. Not only was it the top-selling novel of the year, but it was being produced by Twentieth’s best, Jerry Wald, with an all-star cast from Joan Crawford to Stephen Boyd, to Suzy Parker to Louis Jourdan to, hopefully, Robert Evans.

  It wasn’t that I was hungry for a gig. Just three weeks earlier, I turned down the title part in The George Raft Story. A month before, I turned down the title part in Legs Diamond.

  Not that I was in demand, but I didn’t like the road I was on. It’s called “goin’ south.” When you start out in the majors, it ain’t a fun ride ending up in the minors. My instinct must have been right. My pal Ray Danton took both parts. Poor Ray, he never became Redford.

  Wicked was my smile after reading Rona’s book. “This dame’s got me down pat.” A matador I ain’t; Dexter Key I am. This part I could call in, but I sure in hell don’t want to lose it. It meant getting back into the big leagues again. Protecting myself, I called Stella Adler, a great pal, and a greater teacher. She agreed to coach me for the test. Since I had to leave for the coast in three days, time was of the essence.

  “Come to our apartment.” She was married at the time to Harold Clurman, the great Broadway producer. “We’ll work from there tonight—eight P.M. sharp.”

  In the living room of their luxurious Fifth Avenue apartment, we rehearsed my test scene. It was one where I walked into the apartment only to be shocked.

  “Do it again; do it again. It’s not coming from inside you. It’s not real.”

  For the eleventh time I opened her living room door. Instead of walking in, I all but jumped out of my skin. Humongous breasts and all, there was Stella, nude from the waist up.

  “That’s it—that’s what I want—shock—real shock!”