The big honchos, Harry Cohn, Louis B. Mayer, Jack Warner, were all gone now. They had been owners, not employees. Now the new game to play in Hollywood was musical chairs. No longer moguls for decades, rather kings for a day. Power was not ours to dictate, but rather be dictated to us. Film was no longer an art to be nurtured, but a commodity to be sold. The Zanucks were gone—the boards of directors were in. Making announcements to save jobs came before the passion to create.
I was a throwback, but, unfortunately, not an owner. Lew Wasserman said it all on the phone one evening.
“Where are you, Bob? You’re late.”
“Godfather’s in deep shit, Lew. I’m in the editing room.”
“You’re head of a company, not an editor. Get your priorities straight!”
Was Wasserman right? Today he’s a millionaire 500 times over, while I’m breaking my ass finishing the book to pay back taxes.
From 1967 to 1970, my instinct said no but my survival said yes. I star-fucked with the best. At one time, I had seven of the top ten box-office stars making pictures at Paramount. I batted one for seven—Duke Wayne came through with True Grit. Even with a grand slammer, one for seven ain’t a good average.
How could we miss with Alan Jay Lerner and Fritz Loewe? With Gigi, My Fair Lady, and Camelot (all for other studios), they’d batted a thousand on the big screen. We got Lerner and Loewe’s Paint Your Wagon, which cost megabucks, and struck out—Paint Your Wagon painted Paramount’s wagon bright red. After its disastrous premiere, the clouds never opened for On a Clear Day. And neither did they for Darling Lili, The Adventurers, or Catch-22.
In film as in life, I’ve always believed that, when forced into a crisis, do the unexpected. I went back to basics. Instinct, stories—where the written word was the star, such as Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. “Strictly for television,” they said. Thirty years earlier my mentor, Norma Shearer, starred as Juliet opposite Leslie Howard. Both were more than twice the age of the characters they played. But their unrequited love brought unrequited lines to the theater. As a kid, I had seen various versions on the stage of Romeo. Never once, though, were the actors the actual age of the characters they played.
How brilliant director Franco Zeffirelli was, finally a Romeo and Juliet, played by actual teenagers. Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting, who were sixteen and seventeen, respectively, during filming, were certainly not stars, but they were perfect for the roles. The picture went through the roof.
From British to Yiddish with Goodbye, Columbus was next. This time Juliet was a Jewish American Princess and Romeo, her librarian love; both critically and commercially, it was a four-star hit for Paramount. Downhill Racer was Redford’s labor of love. No studio wanted a ski picture. But Redford did. For $1.4 million, my money was on him. To this day Redford considers it one of his best, which it is.
A real cuckoo was The Sterile Cuckoo. Alan J. Pakula, a fine producer, now wanted to direct. There was one problem—no one wanted to take a chance with him. Especially when he insisted Liza Minnelli play the misfit college girl. If ever there was a case of two negatives making a positive, it was Cuckoo, which launched Alan as a major maestro and Liza as a major movie star.
And me, I was still a minor nut. Especially when I announced a film written by a pool attendant and directed by an editor whose first picture had yet to be released. That was bad enough. But try to tell your distribution honchos that you’re making a love story where an eighteen-year-old boy falls for an eighty-year-old woman! When Bart first brought me the script, written by the pool boy of producer Eddie Lewis, a kid named Colin Higgins, I began having second thoughts about Bart.
“Peter, I ain’t readin’ it. Don’t tell me how brilliant it is. I don’t want to hear. If it was dug out of Shakespeare’s vault and no one had seen it yet, I still wouldn’t read it.”
“Bob, you’re wrong.”
“Pull the car over, will you, Peter. I want to walk to the studio. An eighteen-year-old kid making love to an eighty-year-old woman? I can just see me telling Bluhdorn the story. He’ll take his glasses off, squint, and state eloquently: ‘I want to vomit!’ ”
“Take an hour—read it. Please.”
“Fuck you. I’m not!”
“Stanley Jaffe’s brother, Howard, gave it to me.”
“You sure know how to push my buttons, you prick.”
Two hours later, I walked into his office. “It’s gonna get me fired, you know—an unknown director, a pool boy writer, two impossible-to-cast parts. It’s gonna give Marty Davis the shot he’s been waiting for—straightjacket time.”
Bart laughed. “If it doesn’t work, we’ll blame it on Ashby, say he went crazy.”
I looked at Bart. “Is Ashby crazy? He must be, wanting to take this on. Peter, I gotta ask you something. How come a conservative guy like you has more weird ideas than Timothy Leary?”
He thought for a moment, took off his glasses, eyed me. “Good cover, huh?”
Harold and Maude was the pool boy’s script. Hal Ashby was a then untested director. Bud Cort was a teenager, and hardly a recognized actor. To play the eighty-year-old eccentric, who better than Ruth Gordon, who had just won the brass ring, the Academy Award, for Rosemary’s Baby. The connective tissue was Cat Stevens’s extraordinary music from Tea for the Tillerman.
It was an impossible dream. The dream became the longest-playing cult picture in cinema history. It opened at Christmas time more than twenty-three years ago. Today, in cities all over the world from Minneapolis to Paris, the picture has never been off the screen.
Two pictures I insisted on making almost got me barred for life from the Gulf + Western building. One was Medium Cool, directed by cinematographer Haskell Wexler, using actual footage of the riots during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. Controversial? The Republicans thought it was democratic demagoguery. The Democrats thought it was radically Republican. Gulf + Western thought it should never have been made. It had a wide release . . . one theater.
Walking the edge is one thing, but jumping rope on the edge is another. Henry Miller was a personal friend of mine. Someone with whom I’d played Ping-Pong most every weekend. He was in his eighties. Not even twenty years before, his books weren’t allowed in stores because of their lustful subject matter. I would beat him at Ping-Pong nine out of ten games. He was setting me up. One Saturday afternoon, after losing 21-10, 21-12, he threw me a dare.
“You say you’re a gambler, huh?”
“No, I’m a handicapper.”
“Handicap this one, kid. I beat you the next two games and you don’t reach ten either game.”
“That’s not handicapping, Henry, that’s stealing. Come on.”
“Bet?”
“What?”
“I win—you get Tropic of Cancer onto the screen.”
“I can’t make the fuckin’ film and you know it, you prick.”
“I can’t beat you 20 to 9 either, and you’re a prick too.”
“When I win, what do I get, writer?”
“Twelve handwritten raunchy letters to twelve pussies, or twelve raunchy letters to one pussy—your choice. Each pussero who gets a letter will yearn for your balls. If a dozen letters go to one, she’ll walk the streets to please you.”
“You’re a hustler, Henry, but you’re old. You don’t stand a shot. You’re on.”
He beat me 21-6, 21-7. The old motherfucker should have spent his years in Vegas, not in Paris. He would have come out a helluva lot richer.
“Okay, junior, start thinking how to get it on the screen. No weather reports, nitty-gritty, hand-picked crabs, right from the lady’s crotch. That’s the book, that better be the film, junior.”
“Henry, you’re one sick fuck.”
“Uh-uh, kid, just a fuck.”
Tropic of Cancer got to the screen. Joe Strick directed and produced it—brilliantly. Raunchy? Ellen Burstyn, who later won an Academy Award, lay in a Paris bed, bare-ass naked, her legs spread, pulling crabs from her crotch. The scene went over very big in the Gulf + Western boardroom.
“Fire him,” they said. “Burn the negative.”
They didn’t burn the negative. It played in one theater and disappeared for good. Because of Henry Miller, I traveled a back elevator for the next two months. Henry, you got the last laugh, wherever you are, and I’m sure it ain’t heaven.
An executive I was not. That’s why Bluhdorn hired me. But now that “the mountain” was beginning to see light, it needed a chief executive in New York, Gulf + Western’s main office. It sure as hell wasn’t me, nor did it bother me that the corporate title of the person Charlie and I chose be over mine.
“Who better to fill it,” I said, “than Stanley Jaffe?”
“He’s hardly old enough to shave.” Bluhdorn started to laugh.
“That’s the reason.”
That evening Charlie and I met to discuss it further at Frankie & Johnnie’s Steakhouse. By cheesecake time, Jaffe was the guy. By the end of the week Stanley was Paramount’s president—the youngest president in the oldest place, New York; for a moment, the New Hollywood.
If ever one plus one equaled eleven, it was with Stanley and myself. We were opposites on every level, except for handshake honor and loyalty to each other—an emotion we share to this day. He wasn’t looking to be me, nor was I looking to be him. Whatever capabilities I lacked in being corporate, Jaffe had in youthful spades.
He was pragmatic—tough and straight—while I was romantic, a pushover, and not so straight. Our bond in film was instinctively sharing a priority to the power of the written word—though unheralded to most, to us it was sacred.
Stanley, Peter Bart, and I spent time together strategizing the future of Paramount.
“Every half-assed guy in the business is making films about where it’s at,” said Stanley. “Let’s take a different road, Bob . . . give the audiences something they haven’t had for a while—stories about how it feels.”
Paramount’s strategy of telling stories about how it feels was the secret flag we were going to carry in the years to come.
Peter was still the devil’s advocate.
“I’m not disagreeing with your philosophy, Stanley. Let’s get down to facts—like agents, managers, lawyers, money. Writing about where it’s at is easy pocket money; about how it feels, that’s different. Not only does it take talent, which most of these penholders don’t have, but writing about feelings takes a helluva lot more time. Stanley, you know it better than me—we’re in the business of deals, not excellence. The ten percenters know their clients can write three concept scripts a year. To write texture takes time; time is money and money is what pays their light bills.”
“You’re right, Peter. That’s why we’re all overpaid. If we can’t accomplish what we think is right, let someone else be overpaid. We don’t deserve it.”
“What the hell’s wrong with this dame, Larry? Is she jerking me off? Does she ever want to work again? I give her the biggest break a dame can get, a lead in her first flick. Don’t I deserve a break? I’ve got a five-picture deal with her and it’s worth shit. She turns down everything.”
Larry Peerce lit up his pipe. “That’s her,” he grinned. “Want it straight?”
“You’re damn right, got a big investment in this broad. I offer her the lead in The Adventurers, tells me she doesn’t like the script. It’s only the biggest picture we’re making this year.”
Peerce couldn’t hold back his laughter.
“Hate to tell you. You’ve got one bad investment. She hates Hollywood and couldn’t care less if she ever works again.”
“That’s bullshit!”
“That’s true,” Peerce said. “She’s the real thing, a total meshuggeneh. She was working for one hundred and twenty-five bucks a week as a stylist when she could have been making thousands as a model. Told you she’s a meshuggeneh. I think she enjoys being poor. You want her for a picture? You got her.” Larry smiled.
“Damn right I do. Bluhdorn enjoys givin’ me heat. ‘What kind of business is this? You invest and own something cheap, but you can’t use it. We own her for twenty thou a film. She’s already turned down three.’ ”
“I got a script she’ll pay to do.” Larry laughed.
“Is it in Hebrew?”
“Might as well be.”
“That bad?”
“Worse.”
“She likes it, huh?”
“Doesn’t like it—thinks it’s great!”
“Can I read it?”
“You’ll hate it.”
It was a rainy Saturday afternoon. Larry Peerce and I were having lunch at my home. Both of us were looking for a project for him to helm. After Goodbye, Columbus, Larry was one of the new hot kids in town, with at best a half-assed allegiance to me since I broke his big screen directorial virginity with Goodbye, Columbus. Walking back into my sitting room with a rumpled script, the top page half torn off, he handed it to me, laughing.
“When you call her, don’t be too tough on her—she’s a good kid. Now can we get down to business. The Sporting Club: let me get my teeth into it, will ya, Bob?”
“Let me give it to you straight, Larry. I read The Sporting Club and I didn’t understand it. Because it came from you, I read it again and I still didn’t understand it. I’m not Mr. Intellectual, but when I read something twice and still don’t understand it, let someone else make it a hit.”
“It’s brilliantly written.”
“That’s why I don’t understand it.”
Less than forty-eight hours later, Larry Peerce was on the horn.
“You weren’t too tough with her, were you, Evans?”
Silence.
I finally said, “I want to make it.”
“You want to ruin her career. That’s it, huh?”
“You got it. And I want to ruin yours too. I want you to direct it.”
“I’m losin’ my fuckin’ mind with you, Evans. You won’t make Sporting Club, but you’ll make this piece of dreck.”
“I read The Sporting Club again. Still didn’t understand a fuckin’ word. This piece of dreck made me laugh. Get this, Larry—it made me cry too. Not a bad parley, huh, Mr. Director?”
“Don’t do it to me, Evans, please. I direct this and I’m back on the tube again.”
“Who owns it?”
“An agent from William Morris. His name is Minsky. He’s schlepped it all over town. I don’t think it’s gotten past one reader.”
“How come Paramount didn’t get a crack at it?”
“They did. It was turned down. No one had the guts to give it to you.”
It was the easiest deal I’d ever made. Howard Minsky believed in this supposed piece of dreck with such conviction that he resigned his position at the Morris office to go for it and get Love Story onto the screen.
Poor guy. By the time it got to me, he was a beaten man. I think, in all of filmland, mine were the last eyes to see it. His dance card still totally on empty, Minsky was quick to his knees to close the deal. I give the guy great credit, giving up a cushy job to wildcat. Howard did and hit a gusher. A gusher so big that he never had to work again for the rest of his life.
The starlet-turned-star, whose undying belief in the potential of this one-on-one story of two young kids falling in love, was Ali MacGraw. Erich Segal, the author, was at that time a Harvard professor. His pulpy, somewhat autobiographical, love story was already packed in his summer luggage. No one wanted it. The heroine of the piece was a J.A.P., as she had been in his life. While Ali, the quintessential WASP, had gotten away with playing a J.A.P. in Goodbye, Columbus, I didn’t want to press my luck. Our heroine’s moniker suddenly changed from Cohen to Cavileri—this time an Italian American princess. Did it bother Erich Segal? She could have been an Arab princess. From the trash can, it now had a chance to end up in a film can.
Larry Peerce, having a tough time putting Sporting Club together, desperately needed a gig. Between alimony and child support, he was running on empty. Closing his eyes, he reluctantly agreed to helm this “piece of shit.” After a month of collaborating, there he was across my desk, shaking his head.
“I can’t be a hooker, Evans. I wake up in the morning, look at myself in the mirror, and I don’t like what I see. No matter how you put it in the mixer it comes out shit. I’m passing. I’d rather do daytime soaps; at least no one will know I’m doing it.” Hunching over the desk, his face almost touching mine, he said, “You wanna fuck her, right? That’s why you’re makin’ it.”
“It never entered my mind, but maybe he’s right,” I said to myself.
That night I sent the script to Jaffe, Davis, and Bluhdorn, telling them that Larry Peerce just quit. Davis had little interest in reading it. Jaffe had a big interest. After all, he was mentor to both Larry and Ali.
Within forty-eight hours, Charlie and Stanley reluctantly admitted that it not only got to them, but got a tear from them as well—not an easy feat.
Separately, I said to each of them, “If I can get a tear from you, that’s the picture I want to see on the screen.”
Enter Tony Harvey. The previous year he’d won everything for The Lion in Winter, from the New York Film Critics Circle Award to the Directors Guild Award; at the time he was the only director in the history of the Academy who didn’t cop the Oscar after winning the nod from the Directors Guild. Hooked by MacGraw, Love Story was his to helm. After weeks of collaboration with Erich Segal revising the screenplay, he too walked off. Suddenly Love Story was no love story at Paramount.
The dictate from the forty-third floor in New York was simple and direct: “Go forward” with a big asterisk. If you go over the budget even with one telephone call over $2 million, no love.
Though he was not yet thirty, Jaffe’s eye was as keyed to the top sheet of a budget as a Vegas pit boss’s was to a blackjack table.
“Over $2 million, Evans—it’s from your pocket.”
Damn it, I should have taken him up on it. For a $2 million put, I could have cornered at least 10 points on the back end of the picture. The picture came in 1 percent under budget and the 10 points would have given me “fuck you” money for the rest of my life.
In the spring of 1969, holding Love Story sure as hell wasn’t holding aces. I went to New York to find Mr. Right to helm my flawed jewel. I batted a thousand—turned down by all.
I set up a lunch date with Love Story’s mentor and star, MacGraw, at La Grenouille. By the time dessert was served, I would have made the phone book with her. Would you say she got to me? I sure in hell knew I didn’t get to her. With all my props, my position, my “boy wonder” rep, she was as turned off to me as I was turned on to her. My competition was a model/actor she had been living with for three years, sharing the bills in a 3½-room apartment on West Eighty-seventh Street. Almost purposefully, she kept on interjecting how in love she was. Leaving the restaurant, I hailed a cab. As it pulled up she gave me her last zinger.
“Hope we shoot in the summer. Robin and I are getting married in the fall. We plan to spend October in Venice. Ever been there?”
“Nope.”
“Then wait. Only go there when you’re madly in love.”
That’s it. I grabbed her arm, whispering, “Never plan, kid. Planning’s for the poor.”
She tried to snap back. “No way—”
“Let me finish, Miss Charm. An hour ago, Love Story was even money to end up in the shredder. You win, I lose. Got it? Stop being Miss Inverse Snob, will ya? It doesn’t wear well. Don’t turn your nose down to success. If anything goes wrong with you and Blondie between now and post time, I’m seven digits away.”
Before she had a chance to say anything, I closed the door behind her and took off.
Four-story walk-up MacGraw must have forgotten the seven digits. She never called. Did I read the script over and over again? You’re damned right. And it still got a tear. If Elaine May were starring in it, forget the tears, it would have already been shelved. Here I am, head of a studio, certainly one of the biggest buyers in a town filled only with sellers. I’m Diamond Jim Brady offering gross percentages to people who don’t deserve them, and I still can’t get a nibble.
Bluhdorn was right. What kind of crazy business is this? I’ll tell you. All eight actors whose ass I kissed to play the male lead in Love Story turned it down. Each went on to make his next film. Though I batted zero for eight, they did as well—each film was a disaster. Like Larry Peerce, half of the eight Barrymores made pictures that were barely released. Conversely, any one of the brilliant eight would have become “fuck you” rich making this “piece of shit.” Oh, by the way, it was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including best actor and best actress.
On Paramount’s official agenda, Love Story was one of fifteen pictures in pre-production. On Robert Evans’s secret agenda, Love Story, a picture no one wanted to be connected with, was the one I knew would make it to the screen. I had an idea; I’ll get some young, hot star, pay him gross from the first dollar, something he’s never gotten. Greed will rule, put him up there with the big boys, a gross player. Even if they think the script stinks, their ten percenters will talk ’em into it.
Michael Douglas, Michael York, Michael Sarrazin, Jon Voight, the Bridges brothers—Beau and Jeff—Peter Fonda, Keith Carradine; all were offered a ten on the dollar. Eight batters—not a hit. They all turned it down.
A minor miracle! Arthur Hiller reluctantly acquiesced to direct my Angel with a Very Dirty Face. His agent, Phil Gersh, persuaded him to take Love Story as a filler. He would squeeze it in between The Out-of-Towners and Plaza Suite, two other Paramount flicks.
My first bite and there was no way I’d let him off the hook. “Arthur, we’ll push back Plaza Suite to accommodate your schedule.”
There’s no director in town more prolific than Hiller. If he ain’t on the set, he ain’t satisfied. Unfairly, Arthur has never been given his proper homage. Never been considered fashionable, though his batting average certainly makes him a slugger in any league. If it’s the bottom line that counts, Hiller’s record should make him a contender for the Hall of Fame. The filler, Love Story, made him a millionaire many, many times over. To me, hooking Hiller was akin to signing John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Bob Redford, and Paul Newman to do a western for scale. My euphoria was short-lived.
Suddenly, one Wednesday, Ali remembered my seven digits. Not the charming lady who mesmerized me months ago at Grenouille in New York, but the angry with a capital A actress.
“The audacity—to sign a director I’ve never heard of without consulting me! It’s my property. I’m doing the picture for slave wages. I’m living up to my option agreement. Have you forgotten the word ‘courtesy’?”
“Listen here, Miss Grateful!”
Down went the phone.
Hyperventilating, I screamed through the door at my secretary to get Ben Benjamin, Ali’s agent, on the phone. “Now! And if they don’t know where he is, find him.”
Ben, a gentleman of gentlemen, calmed my anger. His client, MacGraw, had no idea of the leprosy attached to her sudsy manuscript. By midnight, New York time, it was resolved that Ali would fly out Friday morning, arriving Friday afternoon, to look at Hiller’s first cut of The Out-of-Towners. To me, this was a bellylaugh flick, from start to finish.
“He’s good enough for Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis,” I screamed at Ben. “He’s good enough for Walter Matthau.”
“Calm down, Bob, calm down.”
“How the fuck can I calm down, Ben? What’s this business coming to when I gotta audition a guy whose made a dozen hits for some fuckin’ starlet?”
I called him back in an hour, but he was already in bed. “Cancel the whole fuckin’ thing, will ya, Ben? I feel like Willy Loman trying to put this piece of shit together.”
“Forget Ali, Bob, for me. Let her come out, show her Hiller’s picture. Do it at your house. She won’t be arriving till six and she’s booked out the next morning at eight. If it doesn’t work, cancel. I wouldn’t blame you. She’s really a good lady, Bob.”
“Good. I don’t know, Ben, but she’s lucky. You’re one of the few guys who could have pulled this chit.”
The next morning I called Hiller’s agent and Paramount Production. Naturally, I didn’t tell Phil Gersh that I was auditioning Arthur Hiller’s The Out-of-Towners for the starlet. Having all but made up my mind to cancel and wanting to protect myself, I told Phil that I might have to move up Plaza Suite to start production in November. I wanted to keep my word to Arthur, telling him I would accommodate his schedule to film Plaza Suite. Doing this protected me with a legal commitment on Love Story with Hiller. Then I called David Golden, Love Story’s production manager.
“Don’t spend another dime. Not a telephone call on Love Story.”
“We’re prepped to go in eight weeks!”
“We may not be going for eight months. I’ll know Monday. No more questions and, Dave, no more dollars. Got it?”
Picking Ali up in the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel, I drove her to my home and theater. Did it bug me? You bet . . . needing this starlet’s nod of approval. Inwardly, I was hoping she’d not like Hiller so I could tell her she was on a one-way ticket east, her flick canceled. At least I’d finally get my nuts off with her.
“Miss Charming ain’t gonna charm me tonight,” I said to myself as I walked her through my front doors, out and around my pool to my projection room. Well, it didn’t quite work out that way!
“I feel like I’m walking through my own private park in Paris,” said Miss Crooked Tooth.
Prepared for her bullshit charm, it hardly made a ripple. Nor did I want to give her the satisfaction of the plat de jour house tour, which was my M.O. for almost any girl I’d ever met. My little gem of a palace was the greatest prop any guy could have, whether he be a billionaire or movie star. A true Garden of Eden—a “closer” to any lady who entered its gates. It had to be—a .333 hitter doesn’t bat .900 by mistake.
“Fuck her and her snobbery,” I said to myself, opening a bottle of champagne. “Let her look at the flick and get the fuck out,” as heavenly Beluga caviar was served with baby potatoes and crème fraîche.
Arthur Hiller’s audition was ready to roll. Well the screen never came down. Ah, but Miss Flower Child soon got wet, very wet, jumping into the egg-shaped pool, totally clothed, from shoes to headband. For a bohemian she sure as hell became comfortable very quickly living behind closed gates with two thousand rosebushes, surrounded by gardenias, daisies, and you name it. She was a flower child, all right, but now they were hers.
On day three of her “overnight” trip, Ali said, “If you think he’s right, Evans, I don’t have to look at the film. Who’s going to play Oliver?”
Then I dropped it on her.
“Whoever you like has already turned it down. Whoever you half like has already turned it down. Whoever you hardly like has already turned it down.”
Instead of being apologetic for her snot-nosed attitude, she giggled. “I knew it. Why do you think I jumped in the pool with my clothes on?”
That day, Phil Gersh got the nod that Plaza Suite was pushed back and Love Story was a go. Dave Golden, Love Story’s production manager, got a thumbs-up that he was back with the employed: “Get on to Boston, tie up the Harvard campus.”
Back in L.A., though, we couldn’t find Mr. Harvard. With no actor with any semblance of respectability wanting the gig, like it or not, we were left with only one choice—to test. Christopher Walken, David Birney, Ken Howard—you name him, we put him on the screen. Hoping that one plus one would equal eleven, Ali tested with all of them.
Tommy Tannenbaum, an agent pal of mine, even persuaded me to test Ryan O’Neal. I told him it was a waste of time. He told me he didn’t want to lose a client.
“A favor, Evans, please.”
“Don’t forget the chit, Tommy,” I let him know.
Who made the best test? Ryan O’Neal. Who did Arthur Hiller refuse to use? Ryan O’Neal.
“Evans, let’s call a script a script. I’m doing it as a filler, I admit it. I don’t have to move off the Paramount lot. I’m starting Plaza Suite at the end of the year and Ali made a great Brenda. Thought it would be fun working with her. If we use O’Neal, it’s suicide. He just finished a five-year gig on ‘Peyton Place’—a soap. We’re not making the Bible here. Call it Love Story if you want, but it’s still a soap. With Segal’s dialogue, it will be ‘Peyton Place’ goes to Boston.”
“Arthur, the kid made the best test.”
“So what, it’s perception. You can’t afford it and I can’t afford it. Let’s use Chris Walken. He’s a legitimate actor.”
“That’s the problem—he’s an actor. O’Neal, like him or not, he’s a reactor.”
“O’Neal,” said Arthur, “like him or not, I won’t use him.”
“Like it or not, Arthur, O’Neal’s in the film.”
The ball was now in Arthur’s court. If I didn’t fire him, he’d have to quit, which would mean he’d breached his contract and I wouldn’t have to pay him. Knowing Phil Gersh, I took the gamble. Gersh would have had Hiller do the flick blindfolded not to lose the gig.
It was Friday morning, October 24, 1969. Ali and I climbed into our Mercedes two-seater and headed for the town hall in Riverside. Following in a limousine were our witnesses—my housekeeper, Tollie Mae; my butler, David Gilruth; my brother, Charles; and Peggy Morrison, a friend of Ali’s from New York.
Wanting total secrecy, I’d instructed Bob Goodfreid, Paramount’s publicity honcho, to be sure there was no press or associates, and no friends were to know. Bob arranged for us to get our marriage license in Riverside, then tie the knot in Palm Springs. It wasn’t a good omen when, a few miles east of Riverside, the bottom of my Mercedes fell out. Everyone wanted to wait for AAA.
Grabbing Ali, I whispered in her ear, “Fuck the car! Let’s get the show on the road.”
Leaving the Mercedes right where it was, both of us snuck into the backseat of the limo and off we went.
There is nothing more personal than getting hitched. There’s nothing less personal than getting hitched before hundreds of people, each one thinking it’s not going to work anyway. The best would have been just me and Ali signing the license and sending it in. We did the next best: a two-dollar judge in Palm Springs and three witnesses. Afterward we uncorked Dom Pérignon on the courthouse lawn, finishing off bottle after bottle, laughing and laughing.
A two-day honeymoon at Tony Owen and Donna Reed’s home in Palm Springs and off we flew, ending what was to be the last of that ever-lovin’ luxury—privacy. That night we flew with the Love Story group on the red-eye to New York. They continued on to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to begin principal photography in and around Harvard. I flew off to London, Paris, and Rome, not to look for my new fall wardrobe, but to put “the mountain’s” fires out throughout the continent.
Tears streamed down her face.
“Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”
The camera held the close-up for a few seconds. “Cut!” yelled Arthur Hiller. “Ali,” he said, “don’t rush it. Be a little more halting. Take two!”
She did it again, then again. Take after take. Every time the tears were real. Every time she was more convincing.
“Cut!” said Hiller. “That’s it. We’ve got it! Wonderful, Ali. You had me in tears.”
She smothered me with kisses. “Evans, did you like it? The tears were for you!” My eyes swelled, knowing I was the luckiest man in the world.
The heat in Ali’s second-rate hotel didn’t work. The Celtics played their only bad game of the season in the Boston Garden. The bar where we shared an Irish coffee belonged in the slums of Dublin, yet that Thanksgiving weekend in Boston with Ali is what magic is all about. Letters upon letters followed. Every morning I would awaken, have breakfast and there waiting for me would be a handwritten letter of love from Miss Love Story.
“Erich, everyone thinks it’s fluff. Write a novel. I’ll get it published. It shouldn’t take you longer than a week.”
It took Erich Segal only a little more than a month to write Love Story the book. What took longer was to persuade a legitimate publisher to print it. Finally Gene Young, an editor at Harper and Row, offered to do it as a Valentine’s Day throwaway, with a first printing of 6,000. That was like throwing it away before it had the chance to be a throwaway. I countered with an offer of $25,000 in promotion money if Harper would come out with 25,000 copies.
The throwaway became a runaway. Not only in America but all over the world, Love Story the book went to the top of the best-seller lists and stayed there all through 1970. When the film opened at Christmas, Erich Segal’s 131-page novella was still number one on both the hardcover and paperback lists—something that’s never happened before or since in motion picture history.
When Love Story the film moved locations from Cambridge to New York late in 1969, I flew to be with Ali. We spent our first Christmas and New Year’s Eve at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel, ordering in the most romantic food in the world—chilled vodka with miniature baked potato shells stuffed with Beluga caviar, topped with crème fraîche. Though not realizing it at the time, it was by far the most romantic holiday of my life. Camelot was ours; at least I thought it was.
The only seeming friction was her prize possession, Grounds, a Scottish terrier, her closest confidant and her Hope diamond. Her diamond, however, had a flaw—a crack in his bowels.
Loving animals, but never believing in indoor pets, it was tough to smile after opening the door to a suite that smelled more like a kennel than a boudoir. Army maneuvers were easier than getting from the bed to the door without needing a new pair of shoes. A small price to pay for the luxury of being with the most extraordinary woman of my life, who seemed to love me, by far, more than any other woman I had ever met. Her lethal embrace, her extraordinary affection, love, affirmation, fetching femininity, caress to family and friends, gave me an adrenaline I never thought I had, to break barriers I never thought could be broken. Few people ever touch Camelot in their lives. Was it a dream?
When Love Story wrapped in the middle of January, Ali moved back to Woodland, this time as Mrs. Evans. I was nice enough to give her one half of one closet. Her entire wardrobe consisted of scarves to use as turbans, embroidered tablecloths used for wraparound skirts, etc.—naturally, all second-, third-, and fourthhand. Yet, for years to come, her singular style fascinated the world; each year she was on the best dressed list. Style, unlike fashion, cannot be bought nor taught. You either have it or you don’t.
Butler, chauffeur, personal maid, tennis pro, masseuse, cascading pool, and two thousand rosebushes surrounded my lady fair.
“This is all much too much for me, Evans.”
Having lived through this line before, I laughed. “You’ll get used to it.”
We’d been home a week when her agent called. An offer, $100,000 net after taxes and agents’ commissions, to lend her name to a thirty-second commercial for Love Beauty Cosmetics that would play only outside of America. She turned them down flat.
“Prostitute myself? No way.”
“You’re wrong, Ali. Think of your parents. Put the money away for them.”
Adamant as her initial instincts were, I was equally adamant for her to bank the first big green that was ever offered to her. Finally acquiescing, for thirty seconds she was the Love Cosmetic Girl. The moment the 100 Gs arrived, both of us drove to City National Bank and deposited it, then went to the Bistro for lunch. We toasted the breaking of her virginity into the six-figure world. The interest each month would go to her parents. For laughs, our private phrase was “a dowry in reverse.”
A Gulf + Western directors meeting was called to take place in my office—real Gunfight at the O.K. Corral time. Before it convened, I told my secretaries, “If Nixon calls, no interruptions. Clear?”
Then I opened the door to my room of gloom. The agenda was not what films to make, but what date the studio was to close. Everyone was suffering; all the majors were in the red. “Bluhdorn’s Folly” was getting too much attention. Paramount was less than 5 percent of Gulf + Western’s revenue, but was responsible for 95 percent of its publicity—all bad.
“We’re in the oil and gas business and nobody knows it,” said one of G+W’s redneck directors. “It’s girls, parties, premieres, movies; that’s the business they think we’re in. Even that would be okay, but not only have I not met a girl, I haven’t been invited to one party, nor seen one movie. The only thing I get is flak.”
“If we’re gonna gamble, I’d rather go to Vegas,” said another board member. “You only have the dice to deal with there.”
Their held-back steam? Directed at only one person—me! The door opened; my secretary walked in, interrupting everyone. Is she out of her fuckin’ mind? Before I could explode, a note was in my hand: “Grounds killed. Run over. Ali’s out. Doesn’t know yet.”
While they’re telling me they’re rubbing out the studio, my wife’s dog gets rubbed out. The little mutt was far more important to the survival of our marriage than the studio. I staggered over to Bluhdorn, showed him the note. Quickly, he thumbed me out. Driven back to my house in a trance, I was greeted by Tollie Mae.
“She ain’t home, Mr. E. She’s takin’ some pictures with some long-haired weirdos. That dog of hers been dead over an hour.”
I knew Tollie was getting her nuts off telling me. She “don’t like no agin’ hippie around, invadin’ her territory,” said Tollie.
A voice rang out. “Grounds . . . Grounds . . .”
Christ, Ali’s home.
“Evans. What are you doing here? Did they fire you?”
“Grounds is dead.”
She started to tremble, threw herself on the bed. I lay down next to her, cradling her in my arms.
An hour or two must have passed when the doorbell rang. There stood Charlie Bluhdorn. He was holding what looked like a little gray powder puff. It was a puppy. A brand-new Scottish terrier.
“This is for Ali.”
“The starched collars?”
“They’ll wait. Where’s Ali?”
Like a delivery boy, there stood Mr. Tough Tycoon holding a little powder-puff puppy. Not waiting for me, he walked directly into the room where Ali was crying. The vision of seeing Charlie embrace Ali, handing this little puppy over to her, will stick in my memory till Alzheimer’s takes over. The studio crumbling, on the brink of bankruptcy, but who the fuck cared? There we sat watching our Love Story girl, tickling her new little powder-puff terrier.
“Where did you get the little mutt?” I asked him.
“From a kennel near Oxnard.”
“Who’d you send?”
“Me. Who else could I trust?”
That’s a man, no movie star, a real leading man.
Charlie, Stanley, and I talked the directors into a stay of execution on the condition that we run the production business from small offices wherever we could find them. The lot would become a rental facility for anyone who would pay the two bucks. A few weeks later, we found a suite of offices on Cañon Drive in Beverly Hills. It was barely big enough to accommodate a half dozen executives. From that little hole in the wall, not only did we become number one in the business, but the most historic successes in Paramount’s history were conceived there, in a cubicle not fit for a barbershop.
Now the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral was taking place at Woodland. The stars weren’t Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster, but the new Mrs. Evans and Mammy Tollie Mae.
“Sorry, Mr. E., but I’m not allowin’ no agin’ hippie cookin’ in my kitchen.”
Is she crazy, telling my new wife she can’t come into the kitchen? She was, she meant it. It was either Tollie Mae or Ali. Till this day, I think Tollie Mae thought she’d win out.
A sad good-bye. Tollie Mae was a bachelor’s lady no more.
“Bottom line—it’s unreleasable.”
Dinner was ready, our guests were there, I’d just arrived back from the studio having seen the first cut of our baby—a failure. I promised myself I wouldn’t, but I couldn’t hold it back; I begged off on dinner, closed the door to my bedroom, and buried my face in a pillow.
Rushing in behind me, Ali put her hands through my hair. “Evans, you always exaggerate.”
My face still in the pillow, I just shook my head, “Just two pretty faces, Ali. No plot, holes as big as the Boulder Dam.” I turned over facing her. “It never fails, damn it. The fuckin’ dailies always fool you. I’m sorry, baby.”
“You’ll fix it, you always do.” She smiled, kissed me. “That’s why you’re my Evans. You haven’t slept more than ten hours all week. Get under the covers. I’ll take care of your guests.”
If I had one-tenth the brains she thought I had, I’d have owned Paramount, not be working for it.
I jolted out of a deep sleep at three in the morning.
“Ali, I’ve got it. I’ve got it! I know how to fix it, but I don’t have the bread, can’t get another dime from G+W. I think they’d like me to fall on my ass. Fuck! How do I get some quick green?”