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On March 7, 1969, Life magazine wrote a profile about 39-year-old Robert Evans, the B-movie actor turned head of production at Paramount Pictures. Describing him as a "playboy peacock," the piece included a dozen photographs showing Evans in typical fashion: lying around reading movie scripts, taking breakfast in bed.

"Who the hell does he think he is?" the piece wondered. "If there's anything Hollywood wants out of Robert Evans, it's to see him fail."

Producing the New Hollywood

Yes, Hollywood would see Evans fail, in spectacular fashion, but during his eight-year tenure at Paramount – a movie house that suffered huge commercial decline through the 1960s – he was as responsible as anyone for putting Paramount back in black. His film credits at this time read like a list of "New Hollywood" classics: "The Godfather," "Rosemary's Baby," "Chinatown" and, um, "Love Story."

But as the renegades of the 1970s became the moguls of the 1980s, Evans decided to take full control of "The Cotton Club," a musical epic about the 1920s Harlem hotspot. Having raised $20 million to create what he envisioned would be "The Godfather" with music, Evans planned on making "The Cotton Club" his directorial debut.

Things looked promising at the beginning: In 1980, with New York's union workers suffering 40 percent unemployment, Evans found he could film in the Big Apple on the cheap. Orion Pictures Corporation outbid Paramount for distribution, having structured a lucrative deal that promised Evans total creative freedom."If only I had signed the distribution deal at Paramount, the private financiers would have been covered," Evans wrote in his 1994 autobiography, ''The Kid Stays in the Picture.'' "Instead I was at Orion. No ifs, ands, or buts, it was the beginning of the longest nightmare of my life."

What's My Line?

Unsatisfied with minor details, Evans approached Francis Ford Coppola – with whom he had fought tooth and nail over nearly every scene in "The Godfather" – for advice on the script, three drafts of which had been written by Mario Puzo. A few months later, after having charmed the cast with a sojourn to his Napa estate, Coppola took over as director.

Three years later, with $10 million down the drain and still no finished script (William Kennedy was brought in for a ten day "script polish" that continued through the shooting of the entire movie), Coppola banned Evans from the set.

Evans spent his days at a rented town house, where he was free to worry over entertainment press stories detailing the rampant drug use, gross incompetence and overall confusion that was the set of "The Cotton Club" in 1983. A few months later, with the original $20 million running out, the Hollywood producer was forced to borrow money against his house.

"The shylocks who had forked over $3.5 million to my now distraught partners literally owned my house, lock, stock and barrel," Evans wrote. "How could it get worse? It did … still no script."

After the house money ran out, Orion was called to throw in $15 million to continue shooting. Finally, on December 8, 1984, "The Cotton Club" premiered in New York to middling reviews, many of which complained of a lack of story coherence. The final budget: $47 million.

"What did I learn from this failure, this disaster, this five-year nightmare?" Evans asked in his autobiography. "A fat f---in' nothing!"

Back in the Fold

During the second half of the 1980s, Evans found himself a pariah of Hollywood and a tenant in what was once his house. (Longtime pal Jack Nicholson bought back the Woodland estate in 1989 and allowed Evans to live there until he could buy it from him.)

He returned as a Paramount producer in 1991, and has since seen success with movies like "Sliver," "The Saint" and "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days." And in the 1997 political satire "Wag the Dog," Dustin Hoffman's outlandish Hollywood producer character was based on Evans.

Editor's Note: This is the fifth in our series, "From the Vault: Financial Analysis of the Sometimes Rich and Famous." Last week, we checked in on rock legend Bo Diddley. To check out the 10 defining films of the era, click here.