American film director who became Hollywood’s resident young genius with his breakthrough film, “The Last Picture Show,” in 1971. He left his wife of 10 years and two kids to live with the blonde model whom he discovered and starred in the film, Cybill Shepherd.
He was the second son of an immigrant Yugoslavian dad and an Austrian mom, whose older brother died before he was born. He has one younger sister. To escape the Nazis, his Jewish family fled to the U.S. in the late ’30s shortly before he was born. A post impressionistic painter, his dad had just become recognized in America before he died in 1970. Young Peter grew up in New York City, spending summer vacations in New England. Not a very good student, he had a flair for public relations while dabbling in drama club. At 12, he began keeping track of every movie he saw, with notes of his opinions, a number that had grown to some 6,000 by the time of his Saturn return. He never graduated from prep school but studied acting in New York, appearing in several Shakespeare festivals after his 1955 stage debut.
From 1960 on, he directed plays off-Broadway. He wrote film criticism and feature articles for Esquire, the NY Times, the Village Voice and other periodicals. He watched films steadily, some over and over. Moving from New York to California as a writer, he met legendary director John Ford when doing a feature piece on him. In 1966, he entered film as an assistant director with Roger Corman, writing scripts and scouting locations. In October 1971 Columbia released his film, “The Last Picture,” shot in black and white. It was hailed as a masterpiece and was nominated for Oscars in eight categories, including Best Motion Picture.
His third feature film, “What’s Up Pussycat?” was released in March 1972. Bogdanovich continued to write monographs and is the author of “John Ford,” 1968, “Fritz Lang in America,” 1969 and “The Last Pioneer,” 1971.
In January 1971 he separated from his wife, Polly Platt. That same month, his dad died. He had fallen in love with his “Last Picture Show” star, the gorgeous 21-year-old Cybill Shepherd, with whom he moved in for eight years. After reaching the top of his profession, the next few years were downhill to a low in 1976. Two years later Shepherd went home to Memphis and marriage with a salesman and Bogdanovich went on to a new and tragic liaison.
An unabashed sentimentalist, he fell in love with another of his actresses, 18-year-old Playboy model Dorothy Stratten, whom he cast in the romantic comedy, “They All Laughed.” Her jealous pimp-husband blew her away with a shotgun blast and killed himself on 14 August 1980. Bogdanovich was destroyed as well, his life in shambles. He performed the cathartic act of writing about the violent trauma in “The Killing of The Unicorn: Dorothy Stratten, 1960-1980.”
Part of his healing was moving Stratten’s kid sister Louise Beatrice, known as L.B. into his mansion in 1981. In late 1988, at 49, he married the 20-year-old. Climbing back from his 1985 bankruptcy, Bogdanovich persevered in his production of films that grew to some 20 in the next dozen years.
On 30 May 1997, he once more declared bankruptcy, failing to make payments on his $1.9 million Beverly Hills home. In a community where image is everything, he was living in luxury while amassing a mountain of personal debt. Sporting a top-class wardrobe, he had $250 haircuts and $50,000 vacations. He threw himself a $15,000 birthday party. He and his wife both drove top-of-the-line Mercedes-Benz. He had failed to recoup his negative cash-flow when his last feature film, “A Thing Called Love,” was a flop, a film released after the death of its star, River Phoenix.
In March 2001, his wife of 12 years, Louise, sued for divorce. Bogdanovich died from complications of Parkinson’s disease at his home in Los Angeles on 6 January 2022 at the age of 82.
Link to Wikipedia biography