Robert Evans, the legendary producer and studio executive largely credited with resurrecting Paramount Pictures in the 1960s, has reportedly passed away at the age of 89. No details about the cause of death were revealed.
Evans, who was named head of production at Paramount in 1966 when he was just 36 years old, took the company from ninth and last place among major studios to first at the box office, thanks in part to his decisions to greenlight classic films like Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown and The Godfather.
He also continued to produce while he was studio head, and his credits include The Odd Couple, True Grit, The Italian Job, Love Story and Harold and Maude. In the ’80s, he struggled with cocaine addiction and was linked to the high-profile murder case of his business partner Roy Radin during the production of The Cotton Club. (Evans pled the fifth to avoid testifying against the four people convicted of the crime, though no proof of his knowledge of or connection to the murder was ever established.)
In 2002, Evans was the subject of a documentary about his career called The Kid Stays in the Picture.
“Bob forces you to come up with alternatives,” director Frances Ford Coppola told Time magazine in 1974. “He pushes you until you please him. Ultimately, a mysterious kind of taste comes out — he backs away from bad ideas and accepts good ones.”
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