Robert Towne, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of “Shampoo,” “The Last Detail” and other acclaimed films whose work on “Chinatown” became a model for the art form and helped define the jaded appeal of his native Los Angeles, has died. . He was 89 years old.
Towne “passed away peacefully surrounded by his loving family” on Monday at his home in Los Angeles, his publicist Carri McClure told CBS News in a statement. He did not give a cause of death.
In an industry that gave rise to sad jokes about the status of the writer, Towne for a time maintained a prestige comparable to the actors and directors with whom he worked. Through his friendships with two of the biggest stars of the 60s and 70s, Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson, he wrote or co-wrote some of the films of an era when artists had an unusual level of creative control . The rare “auteur” among screenwriters, Towne managed to bring a very personal and influential vision of Los Angeles to the screen.
Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for AFI
“It's such an illusory town,” Towne told The Associated Press in a 2006 interview. “It's the westernmost west in America. It's kind of a place of last resort. It's a place where, in in a word, people are going to make their dreams come true. And they are forever disappointed.”
Recognizable in Hollywood for his high forehead and full beard, Towne won an Academy Award for “Chinatown” and was nominated three more times, for “The Last Detail,” “Shampoo” and “Greystoke.” In 1997, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Writers Guild of America.
“His life, like the characters he created, was incisive, iconoclastic and totally (original),” “Shampoo” actor Lee Grant told X.
Towne was born Robert Bertram Schwartz in Los Angeles and moved to San Pedro after his father's business, a suit store, closed due to the Great Depression. His father changed the family name to Towne.
Towne's success came after a long stint working in television, including “The Man from UNCLE” and “The Lloyd Bridges Show,” and in low-budget movies for “B” producer Roger Corman . In a classic story from the show, she owed her breakthrough in part to her psychiatrist, through whom she met Beatty, a fellow patient. While Beatty was working on “Bonnie and Clyde,” he brought Towne in for revisions of the Robert Benton-David Newman script and had him on set while the movie was being shot in Texas.
Towne's contributions went uncredited for “Bonnie and Clyde,” the landmark crime film released in 1967, and he was a favorite ghostwriter for years. He helped out on “The Godfather,” “The Parallax View” and “Heaven Can Wait” among others and referred to himself as a “relief pitcher who could go in one inning, not pitch the whole game.” But Towne was credited by name for Nicholson's sexist “The Last Detail” and Beatty's sex comedy “Shampoo” and was immortalized by “Chinatown,” the 1974 thriller set during the Great Depression.
“Chinatown” was directed by Roman Polanski and starred Nicholson as JJ “Jake” Gittes, a private detective asked to follow the husband of Evelyn Mulwray (played by Faye Dunaway). The husband is the chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and Gittes is caught in a chaotic spiral of corruption and violence, embodied by Evelyn's ruthless father, Noah Cross (John Huston).
Influenced by the fiction of Raymond Chandler, Towne resurrected the menace and mood of a classic Los Angeles film noir, but launched Gittes' labyrinthine odyssey through a grander portrayal and more insidious of Southern California. The clues pile up in a timeless detective story and helplessly lead to tragedy, summed up by one of the most repeated lines in film history, words of sad fatalism that Gittes receives from his partner Lawrence Walsh (Joe Mantell): “Forget it, Jake. , it's Chinatown.”
The backstory of “Chinatown” has become something of a detective story, explored in producer Robert Evans' memoir, “The Kid Stays in the Picture”; to “East Riders, Raging Bulls” by Peter Biskind, a history of Hollywood in the 1960s and 1970s, and “The Big Goodbye” by Sam Wasson, devoted entirely to “Chinatown.” In “The Big Goodbye,” published in 2020, Wasson alleged that Towne received a lot of help from a ghostwriter: former college roommate Edward Taylor. According to “The Big Goodbye,” for which Towne declined to be interviewed, Taylor did not ask for credit in the film because her “friendship with Robert” mattered more.
The studios assumed more power after the mid-1970s and Towne's position declined. His own directing efforts, including “Personal Best” and “Tequila Sunrise,” met with mixed results. “The Two Jakes,” the long-awaited sequel to “Chinatown,” was a commercial and critical disappointment when it was released in 1990 and led to a temporary estrangement between Towne and Nicholson.
At the same time, he agreed to work on a film far removed from the art-house aspirations of the 1970s, the Don Simpson-Jerry Bruckheimer production “Days of Thunder,” starring Tom Cruise as a race car driver and Robert Duvall as his crew chief. The 1990 film was famously over-budget and mostly panned, though its admirers include Quentin Tarantino and countless racing fans. And Towne's script popularized an expression used by Duvall after Cruise complained about another car hitting him: “He didn't hit you, he didn't hit you, he didn't give you a hand. He rubbed you
“And rubbin, son, is racin.”
Towne later worked with Cruise on “The Firm” and the first two “Mission: Impossible” films. His most recent film was “Ask the Dust,” a Los Angeles story he wrote and directed that came out in 2006. Towne was married twice, the second to Luisa Gaule, and had two children . His brother, Roger Towne, also wrote screenplays, his credits include “The Natural.”
