(7 of 10)
Evans himself seemed not to have been born but to have exited directly from a '30s scenario. A refugee from New York's Seventh Avenue fashion industry, he had been twice married and was a celebrated Hollywood rounder. His entrance into motion pictures was too ridiculous to have been invented.
Norma Shearer had seen him lounging, tan and beautiful, at poolside at the Beverly Hills Hotel. She decided that he was just the chap to play her late husband, MGMogul Irving Thalberg, in the movie Man of a Thousand Faces. As it turned out, Actor Evans had one face: immobile. He also played Ava Gardner's bullfighter in The Sun Also Rises. It was bad enough that Papa Hemingway did not want him in the film. Neither did Tyrone Power. Or Errol Flynn. Even Mel Ferrer turned thumbs down. "They resented the fact," says Evans with acuity, "that a pants manufacturer was playing Pedro Romero."
But for Evans, after the infighting and jealousies of Seventh Avenue, the business side of Hollywood was like a week in the country. He sold his shares in the pants company (Evan-Picone), grossed a few million bucks and began a new life as an independent producer. Conglomerateur Charles Bluhdorn figured that Evans was just the man to run Gulf & Western's new bauble, Paramount, and put him in charge. Evans started well, with successful films, including The Odd Couple, Barefoot in the Park, Rosemary's Baby and Goodbye, Columbus. But he also shepherded some monumental losers, notably Paint Your Wagon and Darling Lili.
Losses mounted; Evans became a Seconal customer. He was not, after all, Irving Thalberg. Still, he was a contemporary version of the studio czar, a two-time loser as a husband, an 18-hour-a-day man at the office, constantly visible at parties, previews, promotions. Was this what a Wellesley girl was meant for? Entries in the Ali MacGraw notebook: 1) "To marry a second time represents the triumph of hope over experience." 2) "Do you want to be in the movies?" he asked. "Yes, I think so . . . Now," she said. "Why?" "Because . . . I guess . . . it will be okay to invent my life for three months every year." 3) [after a particularly good day with Evans] "Today is September 28th, 1969, and I cannot remember that I ever had a more beautiful happy day in my whole life. Maybe I did . . . I can't remember . . . I doubt it. . ."
Star stuff. Disney dust. But all of it absolutely legit. Six weeks after Ali took a derisive look at the Evans mansion she married him, phones and all. The baby she is expecting in February is referred to by its mother as "The Phone." "Bob never wished he was somebody else," says Ali. "It's a good feeling for a woman to be with a man like that." As for the Hollywood life-style that comes with the role: "Hollywood scares me. But we don't live the Hollywood life. Bob goes to the office and works his ass off. I stay home and read. Bob is in touch: I'm in touch with reality less of the time than most other people."
Who in his right head would have believed that Ali MacGraw would be the divining rod for a movie trend? A lady who never watches television, who wrote a whole book when Grounds was killed by a car, who copied out Fitzgerald's Winter Dreams in longhand for Evans? Not even