The combination of Bluhdorn, Jaffe, and me was too perfect. If I were jealous, which I’m not, I would have resented the relationship between my boss and his new twenty-nine-year-old president—that’s how nuts Charlie was about Stanley. Stanley felt the same about Charlie. How could things go wrong? Over a woman, that’s how.
Charlie liked to think of himself as a talent scout, always complaining, “Evans, why don’t you have more beautiful girls under contract like the old days? There’s no glamour anymore in this business!”
One day over lunch, at the Bistro, Charlie met a girl named Joanna Cameron. He thought she could be the next Natalie Wood. No one enjoyed the vicarious thrill of sense of discovery more than Charlie. What better example of that than me, or for that matter, Jaffe?
Stanley and I were casting Star Spangled Girl, one of Doc Simon’s less memorable efforts. No major female star in town wanted to touch it.
“Why not Joanna Cameron?” said Charlie.
“We’re running this company,” Stanley exploded. “Stay out of casting!”
“Hey, Stanley, he’s chairman of the board.”
“You said it, I didn’t, it’s beneath him.”
What Stanley didn’t understand was that nothing was beneath Charlie. His closest friend was Owen, his chauffeur. For him, finding the next Natalie Wood was a bigger turn-on than finding his next company to gobble.
Unlike me, both Stanley and Charlie were confrontational; that Friday, they locked horns. Stanley told Charlie to stay out of our ballpark. We were running Paramount. The last thing we needed was capricious casting ideas. Stanley got so angry, he slammed down the phone before Charlie could even get in his screams.
“Hey, Stanley, this is no way to end the week. Call him back . . . settle the goddamn thing . . . friendly style.”
I was talking to the wrong guy. I’ve never met anyone more intransigent when it comes to principle. Later that night, Charlie called me.
“Please, Bob, speak to Stanley. He’s like a son. But I would never let my son talk to me that way. Call him. I can’t. Tell him to apologize.”
“No problem, Charlie.” Wrong again, Evans. Jaffe was one strange cat.
“The film business to Bluhdorn is an avocation; to us, it’s life,” said the twenty-nine-year-old. “I’m not testing this bimbo.”
“Hey, it’s his store too. Fuck it! Who gives a shit?”
“I do.”
What balls! Not even thirty and he wouldn’t say “I’m sorry” to the chairman of the board. For the next forty-eight hours my shuttle diplomacy bombed. The last thing Charlie wanted was to fire him, but Stanley refused to say two words. Imagine, two fuckin’ words: “I’m sorry.”
Three days passed, Charlie gave me the bad news. He was left no choice, he had to fire Stanley. If he didn’t, he’d lose face to the fifteen thousand people working for him.
“Make Stanley a terrific production deal. I want him here forever.”
I did. From The Bad News Bears alone, Stanley’s first picture as an independent producer, he made more money than he would have made as president of Paramount in five years. Me? I lost the best partner I ever had. Who could we get to replace him? Not me. I didn’t want to move to New York—I didn’t even want to work in an office. All I wanted was to make pictures. It came down to two candidates: Young and Rubicam’s Steve Frankfurt, whose advertising vision catapulted a throwaway flick, Goodbye, Columbus, into a blockbuster hit. A year earlier he had saved our ass on Rosemary’s Baby, a flick on the then taboo subject witchcraft that no one knew how to sell. A minute to post time and Frankfurt saves the day with the slogan “Pray for Rosemary’s Baby”—only one line, but it turned a doubtful entry into Paramount’s largest grossing picture of the year. No mistake he was labeled Madison Avenue’s Creative Godfather.
Second choice was Frank Yablans, the tenacious, tough, no-nonsense lightning rod who was running Paramount’s sales. Within three years, Yablans had worked his way up from assistant sales manager to head of distribution. He was a dynamo who knew the size and shape of every movie house in the country. Frank wore his ambition on his sleeve. As he would later tell Time magazine, “It’s easy to be humble if you were born a prince. I came from a ghetto.” The son of a Brooklyn taxi driver, a guy whose first job was plucking chickens, Frank had more chutzpah by mistake than anyone had on purpose. Balls? Jimmy Hoffa took a backseat.
We had to make a quick decision.
“Do you think Yablans is too crazy?”
“No, Charlie, too hungry! Remember Christmas?”
The previous Christmas Day, Frank and I had been going over the box-office returns on Love Story. The only place it wasn’t breaking records was Washington, D.C. On the spot, Frank called his district sales manager, ordered him to leave his family feast and drive around Washington to check the theaters. An hour later the poor guy called back. He’d found a theater where the exhibitor was charging only a dollar a matinee. Yablans screamed, “Get him on the phone!”
“Frank, I can’t. He just came out of intensive care—cardiac arrest.”
“What hospital is he in?” A minute later Frank had his victim on the horn. “You’re denigrating Love Story! I don’t want to hear excuses. If you don’t take action immediately and rectify the situation, I’m gonna open the picture in two theaters across the street! Merry Christmas.”
By sundown the exhibitor had gone back into intensive care, but the price of a tear, in his theater, had gone up.
“Can you live with him?”
Cocky Evans: “Sure I can.”
“Then put Yablans in as president. . . . I’ll buy Young and Rubicam. We’ll have ’em both.”