The Kid Stays in the Picture, Amusingly Inscribed by Robert Evans
[Amusing Inscription] Evans, Robert. The Kid Stays in the Picture. First Edition. 1994. Book and dust jacket are both in very good condition. The book is amusingly inscribed on the half title page, “To you my extraordinary Jenny, Let's make 1+1 = 11, not 2, that's magic, Mucho amore, Robert Evans.”
Robert Evans never did anything by halves—not filmmaking, not storytelling, and certainly not inscriptions. His playful message to “my extraordinary Jenny” (“Let’s make 1+1 = 11, not 2, that’s magic”) captures the same larger-than-life personality that made him one of Hollywood’s most memorable personalities. As this memoir makes clear, Evans viewed life less as a sequence of events than as a succession of improbable scenes. It served him well. His truth-is-stranger-than-fiction tale begins poolside at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where he was spotted by Norma Shearer and improbably cast to play her late husband, Irving Thalberg. From there, Evans reinvented himself as the executive who helped transform Paramount into Hollywood’s hottest studio with films such as Love Story and The Godfather. Told in Evans’s unmistakable voice—part confession, part self-mythology, and wholly entertaining—the memoir recounts a remarkable ascent to the top of the movie business and the equally remarkable personality that made it possible.
“There are three sides to every story: yours … mine … and the truth. No one is lying. Memories shared serve each one differently.”
--Robert Evans