Peter Bogdanovich, the Oscar-nominated director of ‘The Last Picture Show,’ dead at 82
By Brian Lowry, CNN
Peter Bogdanovich, the Oscar-nominated director of movies like “The Last Picture Show” and “Paper Moon,” whose off-screen life was as colorful as his films, has died, according to multiple reports, citing his daughter Antonia Bogdanovich.
He was 82.
Bogdanovich died of natural causes at his home in Los Angeles, his daughter told The Hollywood Reporter, which his agent later confirmed to CNN.
A renowned film historian, Bogdanovich was writing about movies when he made the leap into directing, moving to Los Angeles in the 1960s and receiving his break from producer Roger Corman.
His career took off, however, with his black-and-white adaptation of author Larry McMurtry’s “The Last Picture Show,” set in a Texas town, which was released in 1971. Movies like “What’s Up, Doc?,” a comedy pairing Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal, and “Paper Moon” (also with O’Neal, and his young daughter Tatum, who won the supporting actress Oscar at age 10) followed.
Bogdanovich also made headlines off screen with his various relationships, including one with “Last Picture Show” co-star Cybill Shepherd, who went on to star in his film “Daisy Miller.”
The director also dated Playboy model turned actress Dorothy Stratten, who appeared in his 1981 movie “They All Laughed,” before she was murdered by her husband, Paul Snider. He later wrote a book about Stratten’s death.
Bogdanovich’s admiration of great movie talent led to him befriending figures like Orson Welles, and one of his most recent projects involved collaborating on editing and releasing the “Citizen Kane” director’s uncompleted film “The Other Side of the Wind,” which Welles had worked on intermittently from 1970 until his death in 1985.
Bogdanovich had a small role in the film, and also acted in other projects, perhaps most memorably playing a therapist in “The Sopranos.”
Director Guillermo del Toro lauded Bogdanovich on Twitter, calling him “a champion of cinema” who had “single-handedly interviewed and enshrined the lives and work of more classic filmmakers than almost anyone else in his generation.”
Born in New York, Bogdanovich’s interest in chronicling the works of great filmmakers included the book “Who the Devil Made It: Conversations With Legendary Directors,” and more recently “The Plot Thickens,” a podcast devoted to movies “and the people who make them” for Turner Classic Movies, CNN’s sister network.
TCM noted that Bogdanovich’s passion for the medium “inspired generations of filmmakers.”
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