Beverly Hills Home Where Robert Evans Screened His Movies Sells for $16 Million

The Beverly Hills home of Robert Evans, the colorful film producer behind movies like "The Godfather," "Chinatown" and "Rosemary’s Baby," has sold for $16 million to David M. Zaslav, president and chief executive officer of Discovery Inc., according to people familiar with the deal.

Mr. Evans died last year at age 89; the home was sold by his estate.

Known as Woodland, the French Regency-style home dates back to the 1940s and was designed by John Elgin Woolf, an architect known for designing the homes of Hollywood stars like Judy Garland and Cary Grant, according to the book "Glitter Stucco & Dumpster Diving: Reflections on Building Production in the Vernacular City."

It also served as the hideaway for actress Greta Garbo when she sneaked into town, according to Mr. Evans’s autobiography, "The Kid Stays in the Picture: A Notorious Life."

In his book, Mr. Evans said he first saw the home in the 1950s with actress Norma Shearer and fell in love with its grounds. When he became a power player at Paramount Pictures in the 1960s, he bought the home for $290,000 and installed a wood-paneled screening room that was considered state-of-the-art at the time. The room was long considered a hub for the Hollywood elite; dailies were shown there for Mr. Evans’s movies, and he hosted parties with the likes of Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman. Roman Polanski lived in the guesthouse at one point, Mr. Evans wrote.

"More deals have been conceived and consummated in my projection room than in all of Paramount," he wrote.

In the 1980s, following a conviction for drug trafficking, Mr. Evans sold the house to the French entrepreneur Tony Murray. He regretted it almost immediately—"What had been my Garden of Eden for close to a quarter of a century was mine no more," he wrote—and tried to convince Mr. Murray to sell it back to him. At the time, Mr. Evans was working on the movie "The Two Jakes" with Jack Nicholson, and Mr. Nicholson flew to Monte Carlo and convinced Mr. Murray to make the deal.

"Tony was shocked that Jack would fly halfway around the world to plead on my behalf for what he considered to be just a piece of real estate," Mr. Evans wrote. "Wherever Tony went that summer, he’d tell the story, capping it with ‘these film people... they’re all crazy. Imagine Jack Nicholson on his knees to me.’" Mr. Evans got the home back.

Ref: Property Report