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At a sneak preview of Sun in Riverside, Calif., some 1,200 moviegoers turned in ballots indicating which of the film's stars they liked most. Even though his name was not on the ballots, Robert Evans, 27, Sun's bullfighter, drew a surprising 20% write-in acclaim, was identified in many instances only as "Romero" or "the bullfighter." This reaction, mostly from females in the audience, appeared to confirm the judgment of Producer Zanuck, who had already optioned Bob Evans for a five-year contract (two films annually). Zanuck's blurb for Evans: "The most exciting young man since Valentino."
The story behind Bob Evans' brief movie career sounds like an implausible scenario. As a garmentmaker in Manhattan's Seventh Avenue district, Evans, an executive vice president of Evan-Piccone, Inc., a top women's sportswear firm, is already earning more than Hollywood will pay him—unless he becomes a first-magnitude star. Last year Evans was lounging beside a Beverly Hills swimming pool, minding his own business, when he was seen by oldtime Cinemactress Norma Shearer. He reminded her so strongly of her late husband, Producer Irving Thalberg, onetime boy wonder of Hollywood that Norma arranged for Evans to test for the Thalberg role in Lon Chaney's screen biography, Man of a Thousand Faces (TIME, Aug. 26). Businessman Evans won the part, played it so individualistically that he got violently mixed notices (some cheers and a thunderous boo from the New York Times).
After finishing his Hollywood chores Evans went back to Manhattan, though little about movies until one evening las
March when both he and Darryl Zanuck wandered into the same nightspot. Unaware that Evans had ever been in a movie, Zanuck discovered him again, signed him for the bullfighter role that the producer had tried unsuccessfully to cast for many months. Actor Evans, whose performance as Pedro Romero was hailed by the Times last week ("perfectly personified"), is delighted by prospects of a new career. But he approaches it with businesslike caution. Says Producer Zanuck's nomination for successor to Valentino: "It's nice to have a contract."
The Last Bridge (Cosmopol; Union) is one of the most eloquent and inexorable filmed arguments against war since All Quiet on the Western Front. One proof of its persuasive neutrality: after being made (with Communist sanction) in Yugoslavia, the movie, exquisitely directed by Helmut Kautner, won the International Catholic Film Prize. With eerie detachment, the film takes no sides, defends no ideology, neither condemns nor justifies the actions of its agonized pawns of war. Its clashing foes are Hitler's well-equipped troops and Tito's short-rationed guerrillas, struggling in the Balkans late in World War II. But, as recorded by Kautner's cameras, "suffering is the only enemy."