A women’s pants salesman comes to Hollywood and jumps into the pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel, drawing the attention of an A-list actress. With her help, he begins an acting career, which leads lickety-split to the top job at Paramount Pictures. He helps deliver masterworks like “The Godfather” and “Chinatown.” A cocaine blizzard, legal spats and financial ruin come next. In the final reel, a comeback. If a screenwriter had invented Robert Evans, the script would have been tossed on the rejection pile as too tall a tale. But Mr. Evans, who died on Saturday October 26 2019 at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif., was living proof that, at least in Hollywood, truth can still be stranger than fiction. Mr. Evans was 89. Robert Evans was born Robert J. Shapera on June 29, 1930, in Manhattan to Archie and Florence (Krasne) Shapera. His father, who took on the name Evans when Robert was young, according to “The Kid Stays in the Picture,” was a dentist; his mother was a homemaker. Possessing a clear, deep voice as a teenager and demonstrating a knack for foreign accents, he booked, by his estimation, more than 300 radio shows before he turned 18, including a leading part on the popular comedy “The Aldrich Family.” But after graduating from high school in New York he joined Evan-Picone, a successful women’s clothing company co-founded by his older brother, Charles Evans. From there, Mr. Evans climbed relatively unabated in Hollywood, where he was mentored by the likes of Sidney Korshak, a Los Angeles labor lawyer and reputed fixer for the Chicago mob. The music stopped in 1980, when Mr. Evans pleaded guilty to cocaine possession, along with his brother, Charles, and his brother-in-law, Michael Shure. Time, sobriety and the memoir healed his reputation, and Mr. Evans returned to producing, retaining a bit of his colorful style. Mr. Evans was married and divorced seven times. His survivors include a son, Josh, from his brief marriage to the actress Ali MacGraw, who became a star in “Love Story.” He is also survived by a sister, Alice Shure.