Director Peter Bogdanovich, who directed the film “The Last Picture Show,” has died at the age of 82. Bogdanovich died of natural causes at his Los Angeles home, according to his daughter, who informed The Hollywood Reporter, which was subsequently verified by his agency to CNN.
After years of writing about movies, Peter Bogdanovich made the transition to directing in the 1960s after relocating to Los Angeles and gaining a break from director Roger Corman. He is now a well-known film historian.
With the publication of his black-and-white version of novelist Larry McMurtry’s novel “The Last Picture Show,” which was set in a small Texas town and published in 1971, his professional career took off. Following that, films such as “What’s Up, Doc?” (a comedy starring Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal) and “Paper Moon” (also starring O’Neal and his young daughter Tatum, who won the supporting actress Oscar at the age of 10) were released.
On and off the screen, Bogdanovich has made news for his multiple romances, including one with his “Last Picture Show” co-star Cybill Shepherd, who went on to act in his picture “Daisy Miller.”
The filmmaker was also romantically involved with former Playboy model turned actress Dorothy Stratten, who featured in his 1981 film “They All Laughed” before being killed by her husband, Paul Snider. He went on to write a book about Stratten’s passing.
With his admiration for great film talent, Peter Bogdanovich became acquainted with figures such as Orson Welles, and one of his most recent projects involved collaborating on the editing and release of the “Citizen Kane” director’s unfinished film “The Other Side of the Wind,” which Welles had worked on intermittently from 1970 until his death in 1985.
Peter Bogdanovich had a modest role in the film and has appeared in a number of other productions, probably most notably as a psychiatrist in the television series “The Sopranos.”
Guillermo del Toro has hailed Gillian Bogdanovich as “a champion of cinema” and has described him as having “single-handedly interviewed and immortalized the lives and work of more legendary directors than practically anybody else in his time.”
Since his birth in New York, Bogdanovich has pursued his passion for documenting great films and filmmakers. His work includes 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 in the United States.
“Generations of filmmakers have been inspired by Bogdanovich’s devotion for the medium,” according to TCM.
