Robert Towne

Robert Towne, Oscar-winning screenwriter of Chinatown, dies aged 89

Writer, who died in his Los Angeles home, also worked without credit on The Godfather and Bonnie and Clyde

Robert Towne, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Chinatown, considered one of the greatest screenplays of all time, has died at age 89.

Towne, the screenwriter also nominated for his films Shampoo and The Last Detail, died on Monday among family members at his Los Angeles home, said his publicist, who did not disclose a cause of death.

Recognizable around Hollywood for his high forehead and full beard, Towne won an Academy Award for Chinatown and was nominated three other times, for The Last Detail, Shampoo and Greystoke. In 1997, he received a lifetime achievement award from the Writers Guild of America.

His success came after a long stretch of working on television shows, including The Man from UNCLE and The Lloyd Bridges Show, and on low-budget movies for B-movie producer Roger Corman. In a classic show business story, he owed his breakthrough in part to his psychiatrist, through whom he met Warren Beatty, a fellow patient. As Beatty worked on Bonnie and Clyde, he brought in Towne for revisions of the Robert Benton-David Newman script and had him on the set while the movie was filmed in Texas.

Towne’s contributions were uncredited for Bonnie and Clyde, the landmark crime film released in 1967, and for years he was a favorite ghostwriter. He helped out on The Godfather and Heaven Can Wait among others and referred to himself as a “relief pitcher who could come in for an inning, not pitch the whole game”. But Towne was credited by name for Nicholson’s macho The Last Detail and Beatty’s sex comedy Shampoo and was immortalized by Chinatown, the 1974 thriller set during the Great Depression.

Towne’s script has been a staple of film-writing classes ever since, although it also serves as a lesson in how movies often get made and in the risks of crediting any film to a single viewpoint. He would acknowledge working closely with Roman Polanski as they revised and tightened the story and arguing fiercely with the director over the film’s despairing ending – an ending Polanski pushed for and Towne later agreed was the right choice (no one has officially been credited for writing the film’s iconic line: “Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown”).

But the concept began with Towne, who had turned down the chance to adapt The Great Gatsby for the screen so he could work on Chinatown, partly inspired by a book published in 1946, Carey McWilliams’ Southern California: An Island on the Land.

“In it was a chapter called ‘Water, water, water’, which was a revelation to me. And I thought: ‘Why not do a picture about a crime that’s right out in front of everybody,’” he told the Hollywood Reporter in 2009.

The backstory of Chinatown has itself become a kind of detective story, explored in producer Robert Evans’ memoir The Kid Stays in the Picture; in Peter Biskind’s East Riders, Raging Bulls, a history of 1960s-1970s Hollywood; and in Sam Wasson’s The Big Goodbye, dedicated entirely to Chinatown. In The Big Goodbye, published in 2020, Wasson alleged that Towne was helped extensively by 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 on the film because his “friendship with Robert” mattered more.

The studios assumed more power after the mid-1970s and Towne’s standing declined. His own efforts at directing, including Personal Best and Tequila Sunrise, had mixed results. The Two Jakes, the long-awaited sequel to Chinatown, was a commercial and critical disappointment when released in 1990 and led to a temporary estrangement between Towne and Nicholson.

Around the same time, he agreed to work on a movie far removed from the art-house aspirations of the 70s, the Don Simpson-Jerry Bruckheimer production Days of Thunder, starring Tom Cruise as a racecar driver and Robert Duvall as his crew chief. The 1990 movie was famously over-budget and mostly panned, although its admirers include Quentin Tarantino and countless racing fans.

Towne later worked with Cruise on The Firm and the first two Mission: Impossible movies. 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 time to Luisa Gaule, and had two children. His brother, Roger Towne, also wrote screenplays, his credits including The Natural.

Towne was born Robert Bertram Schwartz in Los Angeles and moved to San Pedro after his father’s business, a dress shop, closed down because of the Great Depression. (His father changed the family name to Towne.) He had always loved to write and was inspired to work in movies by the proximity of the Warner Bros Theater and from reading the critic James Agee. For a time, Towne worked on a tuna boat and would speak often of its impact.

“I’ve identified fishing with writing in my mind to the extent that each script is like a trip that you’re taking – and you are fishing,” he told the Writers Guild of America in 2013. “Sometimes they both involve an act of faith ... Sometimes it’s sheer faith alone that sustains you, because you think: ‘God damn it, nothing – not a bite today. Nothing is happening.’”

Associated Press contributed to this report

THE GUARDIAN