The Kid Stays in the Picture Hardcover - 1994

From the rear cover

Far more expansive than You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again, The Kid Stays in the Picture by Hollywood giant and legendary "bad boy" Robert Evans is an intimate and fascinating account of his rise, fall, and rise again in show business that makes for a harrowing read. From his early days in radio to popularizing "women in pants" as part of Evan-Picone, to being "discovered" by Norma Shearer and Darryl Zanuck, to, bizarrely enough, becoming the first actor to ever run a motion picture studio, this is a page-turning autobiography more gripping than fiction at its best. Under Evans's aegis, Paramount Pictures went from the cellar to the penthouse, with such movies as The Odd Couple, Rosemary's Baby, Love Story, The Godfather, and Chinatown. An extraordinary raconteur, Evans spares no one, least of all himself. From Errol Flynn, Ava Gardner, and Jimmy Cagney to Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, and Sharon Stone, here is Hollywood, revealed as never before. Gambling with Mike Todd; fighting Francis Coppola; cajoling Mia Farrow and Faye Dunaway; on the hot seat with Charles Bluhdorn and Stanley Jaffe, Robert Evans, the producer's producer, has seen and done it all. Laced throughout this roller-coaster read are his fascinating liaisons with some of the world's most beautiful women, including his marriage and divorce to Ali MacGraw and Phyllis George. The Kid Stays in the Picture not only chronicles Hollywood's last half century, but its second golden age as well. This is a man whose life journey unfolds far more adventurously than any of the films he's produced. His candor is shocking: the lurid dark years of the '80s; his cocaine arrest; his implication in what were dubbed the "Cotton ClubMurders"; his thoughts of suicide; his self-committal and escape from a mental institution. And lastly, the impossible! Being back in the catbird seat of power, once again sending shock waves through Hollywood and the world. Already hailed by Variety as "one of the best Hollywood memoirs ever published", The Kid Stays in the Picture is one life story you'll never forget.

Media reviews

Citations

• Publishers Weekly, 09/05/1994, Page 104