To anyone who didn’t know me (which was everyone), Evans had it all. The only bachelor in Hollywood running a studio. Power, glamour, money. In reality I was in the hot seat seven days a week eighteen hours a day working my ass off not to get the boot. A week never passed without a knock from the press that the axe was about to fall on Evans’s neck.
My social and sex life were next to nil. To protect my reputation as a stud rather than a spud, even midnight rendezvous were put on hold. News travels fast when you fall asleep before dropping your pants.
On a Saturday night in the middle of November 1968, the gates were closed and the phones shut off. It was script-reading time. I was in the middle of reading a real winner by James Poe, a top Hollywood writer, when I noticed the red button on my phone blinking. Fuck it. English accent and all, “The Evans residence.”
“Good thing you gave up acting,” said the voice on the other end. It was Lee Anderson, Hollywood’s top socialite, inviting me to a last-minute get-together.
“Thanks, but I’m in bed for the night with a script.”
“Sure,” she laughed. “Too bad. It’s for Princess Soroya. She’s here for one night. A stopover from Hawaii to Paris.”
Why did I pick up the phone? She must have known this was the one broad I’d crawl over broken glass to meet. Divorced from the Shah of Iran, she was the most sought after woman in the world. Her wealth enormous, her beauty more. Why waste my time? Why not?
“When and where?”
“It’s already started.”
“Thanks for the notice.”
“You never show anyway.”
“Okay, okay. Where?”
“Two hundred yards from your house . . . you can walk it.” She laughed, giving an address on Alpine, the next street over.
“Pajamas okay?”
“Sure, if you want to be left out in the cold.”
“Black tie?”
“Black socks.”
Eighteen minutes later I rang the doorbell. More than a hundred people were already there. Yet there wasn’t a face in the room I knew. A first; still is. Old money filled the room, rather than Hollywood glitz. Making a U-turn out, I caught a royal glimpse. A quick 180 in search of Miss Society Anderson. Found her, kissed her cheek.
“No pajamas,” I said, lifting my left pant, “black socks too—dressed to meet the princess.”
Shaking her head, she took my hand, guiding me to meet the lady of my life.
“Soroya, dear. This is Robert Evans,” then in half a whisper, “boy genius of Hollywood.”
Interrupting her quickly, “I’m no boy and I’m no genius.”
A royal smile.
What the princess didn’t know was that I, and I alone, held the secret key to her royal highness’s weak link.
“Ah, but what I am is a wand, a magic one, who grabs a shooting star and makes it light up the screen. . . .” She looked at me as though I was crazy. “I saw your film in Rome.”
Suddenly, there was no one else in the room.
“You couldn’t have. The film’s never been released. I wouldn’t let it be. No one has seen it.”
I interrupted, “But me. Dino de Laurentiis asked me to, told me of your demand, asked my opinion—I gave it to him. You were right; the picture’s unreleasable”—a purposeful pause—“but you were unforgettable.”
A forty-carat emerald couldn’t have made her face more aglow. Then I completed my one-two punch, throwing in a white lie. “Dino sent me the only print he had; I asked him to. I still have it, show it to all my execs at Paramount, tell them this is what a movie star is all about. Now go out and find me someone like her. And here you are.”
Jim Poe’s script? Never finished it. Paris? Soroya didn’t quite make it. Woodland became her home away from home. From tennis bum to movie star, all my guests were treated royally. After a month, it was time for her to go. She, the world to travel. Me, a ladder to climb. We toasted to St. Moritz at Christmas time, but both of us knew it was a fucking lie, rather our last good-bye.