Robert Towne, Oscar-winning screenwriter of ‘Chinatown,’ dies at 89

LOS ANGELES – Robert Towne, the Jewish screenwriting icon who won an Academy Award for his original script for Chinatown, died Monday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 89.

His publicist Carri McClure announced the news Tuesday.

In a screenwriting career launched in 1960 as a writer for low-budget producer-director Roger Corman, Towne earned an early reputation in Hollywood as a sought-after “script doctor,” stepping in to do uncredited work on troubled screenplays for movies such as Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and The Godfather (1972).

A critically acclaimed box-office hit,  received 11 Academy Award nominations, including best picture, director, actor, and actress.

Directed by Roman Polanski and starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway, the 1974 film classic is set in 1937 Los Angeles.

Bookending his Academy Award-winning script for Chinatown were Oscar nominations for his screen adaptation of the novel The Last Detail (1973), starring Nicholson as one of two Navy lifers escorting a young prisoner to Portsmouth Naval Prison; and for Shampoo (1975), which he co-wrote with the film’s producer, Warren Beatty, who starred as a womanizing Beverly Hills hairdresser.

Among Towne’s other screenwriting credits are The Yakuza (with Paul Schrader), The Two Jakes (a Chinatown sequel), Days of Thunder, The Firm, (with David Rabe and David Rayfiel), Mission: Impossible (with David Koepp) and Mission Impossible: II.

The tall, bearded and soft-spoken screenwriter who favored slim cigars became a director with the 1982 film Personal Best, from his original screenplay about two female track stars. He later directed and wrote the screenplays for Tequila Sunrise, Without Limits (written with Kenny Moore) and Ask the Dust, set in Depression-era Los Angeles.

A life time of achievements 

Born Robert Burton Schwartz in Los Angeles on November 23, 1934, Towne was two when his family moved to San Pedro, where his father bought a women’s apparel store called the Towne Smart Shop. It wasn’t long before Lou Schwartz was being called Mr. Towne.

“I think he liked that,” Towne said of his father, who later became a successful real estate developer, in the Writers Guild Foundation interview. “By the time my brother (Roger) was born, he had legally changed his name.” (Roger Towne later co-wrote the screenplay for the 1984 film The Natural.)

In 1997, Towne received the Screen Laurel Award, the Writers Guild of America’s highest award for screenwriting, which is given in recognition of a writer’s body of work.

Towne had a daughter, Katharine, with his first wife, Julie Payne (the daughter of actors John Payne and Anne Shirley); the marriage ended in divorce. He also had a daughter, Chiara, with his second wife, Luisa Gaule.

(Los Angeles Times/TNS)