Peter Bart recounts his eight memorable years at Paramount Studios in Hollywood (1967- 1975) in his new memoir, Infamous Players: A Tale of Movies, The Mob (And Sex), released in hard cover earlier this year by Weinstein Books.
His Hollywood "adventure" started, Bart says , when he wrote an article on a hot young independent producer named Robert Evans while covering the California newsbeat for The New York Times.
Gulf and Western chairman Charles Bluhdorn read the article and was suitably impressed.
The conglomerate had recently added Paramount Studios to its holdings and Bluhdorn hired Evans as the studio's chief of production.
Evans then hired Bart to be his "right hand man."
A photo in the book shows Bart conferring with Evans prior to a press conference in 1968. The author has a full head of hair.
Flip over to Bart's current photo on the book's dust jacket and he is noticeably less hirsute.
Judging from recollections of his experiences as an executive at Paramount there was enough going on at the fabled studio during his tenure to make him want to tear his hair out.
Book goes into detail on movie classics and clunkers
With the verve of a seasoned reporter, Bart recounts the chaotic circumstances surrounding the making of landmark motion pictures such as The Godfather, Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown, Love Story and cult film fave Harold and Maude.
And then there are the stories about Paramount pics that landed with a resounding thud at the box office.
The recurring theme in the latter seems to be Blame It on Bluhdorn.
According to the book, Bluhdorn was throwing tons of cash at "old school" musicals while a new breed of young filmmaker was changing the landscape of the business.
That would explain the dismal Rock Hudson-Julie Andrews vehicle Darling Lili and the troubled film adaptation of the Broadway hit Paint Your Wagon. (Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood warbling showtunes? You don't have to be tone deaf to figure that project was doomed to failure.)
Bart also hints at shady financial dealings between Bluhdorn and reputed gangsters. In the prologue to the book, he writes: "The rumblings about The Godfather worried Charles Bluhdorn ... even as his company was producing a movie about the Mafia, he was in negotiation with financiers who had close ties to the mob community - ties that were more obvious, if not to Bluhdorn, to government investigators."
Book depicts Robert Evans and Warren Beatty as notorious womanizers
In the book Bart uses adjectives like " coarse", "devious" and "abrasive" to describe his late boss. (Bluhdorn died in 1983.)
Evans, on the other hand, is depicted as " an attractive, smooth-talking ladies' man."
Bart recalls the sybaritic atmosphere at his mentor's Beverly Hills estate with a mixture of awe and amusement.
In a chapter entitled "The Salon", he recounts that Evans and Beatty, friendly rivals in the romantic wars, "decided to compare their mastery at summoning up phone numbers. '276-8451', Evans would say, to which Beatty would respond 'Janice'. Beatty would then say '472-9867', to which Evans would say, 'Melanie.' The exchange of phone numbers continued for three or four minutes with neither contestant stumbling, until Evans finally drew a blank. 'I made that one up', Beatty confessed with a grin."
Did They or Didn't They?
In the chapter "Modus Sexualis", Bart recalls visiting the Venice (Italy) set of the 1973 thriller Don't Look Now while director Nicolas Roeg was filming a bedroom scene with Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie.
That particular scene has since passed into legend largely because of a long-standing rumour that the lovemaking depicted on camera was, as Bart writes, "very convincing ... too convincing."
His account of the incident has prompted Sutherland to issue a disclaimer. Not only does the actor assert that he and his co-star were simulating sex for the camera. He claims Bart wasn't even on the set.
The dispute reminds me of a quote in Evans' cheeky 1994 autobiography The Kid Stays in the Picture:
"There are three sides to every story. Your side, my side and the truth."
It's a Wrap!
"Paramount was surely the most eccentric studio in the annals of Hollywood," Bart writes in his book," an assessment based on runaway budgets, chaotic distribution, management infighting, an absence of strategy and the recurring presence of criminal influences over company policy."
It is perhaps a testament to his fortitude, intelligence and wit that he lived to tell the tale.
Well, several of them, as it turns out.
Bart, Peter. Infamous Players: A Tale of Movies,The Mob (And Sex) New York, NY: Weinstein Books, 2011
Richard Goertz - Richard Goertz has a Bachelor of Arts degree majoring in English and History acquired light years ago (when his hair was longer) and have ...
