Peter Bogdanovich

Peter Bogdanovich (born July 30, 1939, Kingston, New York, U.S.—died January 6, 2022, Los Angeles, California) was an American director, critic, and actor noted for his attempts to revitalize film genres of the 1930s and ’40s.

(Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film preservation.)

Early work

As a teenager, Bogdanovich studied acting with Stella Adler. He later appeared in small theatrical productions, which he sometimes wrote and directed. In the 1950s he performed onstage with the New York Shakespeare Festival, and in 1959 he directed an Off-Broadway production of Clifford Odets’s The Big Knife. During that time Bogdanovich contributed criticism and articles to various periodicals, including Esquire and Cahiers du cinéma. His monographs on Orson Welles (1961), Howard Hawks (1962), and Alfred Hitchcock (1963) for the Museum of Modern Art were published to much acclaim, and volumes on Fritz Lang (1967), John Ford (1968), and Allan Dwan (1971) followed.

Britannica Quiz

Pop Culture Quiz

Films

As befit an unreconstructed auteurist, Bogdanovich began his film career assisting B-film director Roger Corman on The Wild Angels (1966) and then directed new sequences for Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968), a reedited version of a Russian movie. Bogdanovich codirected (1967) a television documentary on Hawks.

With backing from Corman, Bogdanovich directed his first feature film, Targets (1968), a suspenseful thriller that interweaves two stories. One centers on a Vietnam War veteran (played by Tim O’Kelly) who embarks on a killing spree. The other tale follows a horror-movie star—played by Boris Karloff in the last significant role of his career—who contemplates retirement. With Polly Platt, his wife at the time, Bogdanovich also wrote the story, and, although the film was largely ignored by moviegoers when released, it is now regarded as a classic.

Bogdanovich’s next movie, The Last Picture Show (1971), was a box-office hit that won critical acclaim for its portrayal of sexual mores and social change in a drab Texas town in the 1950s. The bleak drama—which starred Jeff Bridges, Timothy Bottoms, and Cybill Shepherd as high schoolers coming of age—was inspired by the works of Hawks and Ford. It is arguably Bogdanovich’s finest movie, and he earned an Academy Award nomination for best director. Oscar nods also went to the film, the screenplay by Bogdanovich and Larry McMurtry (on whose novel it was based), Robert Surtees’s black-and-white cinematography, and a number of cast members, with Cloris Leachman and Ben Johnson both winning. During shooting, Bogdanovich began an affair with Shepherd, which ultimately ended his marriage to Platt, who had handled the film’s evocative production design. Bogdanovich’s Directed by John Ford (1971), a documentary about the American director, was also well received.

What’s Up, Doc? (1972) was less impressive though still a commercial hit. A sometimes strained tribute to Hawks’s Bringing Up Baby (1938), it starred Ryan O’Neal as a musicology professor who lugs around a suitcase full of prehistoric rocks and Barbra Streisand as the madcap woman who falls in love with him. It probably was as close to a re-creation of the classic screwball comedies as anyone had produced to that time. Bogdanovich’s success continued with Paper Moon (1973), a comedy filmed in the black-and-white appropriate to the 1936 setting. O’Neal portrayed a con man temporarily saddled with a nine-year-old (played by his real-life daughter Tatum O’Neal) who may or may not be his actual daughter but who refuses to leave his side. As they travel about the Midwest during the Great Depression—faithfully re-created by production designer Platt—the two bond while bilking widows, clerks, and even bootleggers with a variety of schemes. Tatum won an Oscar for her precocious film debut, but one of the supporting actresses she was selected over—her costar Madeleine Kahn—nearly stole the movie as the exotic dancer Trixie Delight.

Get Unlimited Access

Try Britannica Premium for free and discover more.

Subscribe

Bogdanovich’s string of hits ended, however, with Daisy Miller (1974), an adaptation of the Henry James novel. The film was a disappointment, partly because of the weak performance by Shepherd in the title role. Even less successful was At Long Last Love (1975), a lavish homage to the musical romances of the 1930s, complete with a number of songs by Cole Porter. The film was widely panned, with the acting by Shepherd and Burt Reynolds especially criticized. In 1976 Bogdanovich directed and cowrote Nickelodeon, a more modestly conceived project that was a tribute to the pioneers of the film industry. Although it performed poorly at the box office, its verisimilitude—Bogdanovich incorporated anecdotes he had been given by Ford, Dwan, and Raoul Walsh, among others—and sincerity make it worthwhile. Unable to obtain financial backing from the major studios, Bogdanovich received help from Corman to make the low-budget Saint Jack (1979). A welcome respite from his nostalgic pastiches, the existential drama (based on a novel by Paul Theroux) starred Ben Gazzara as a good-natured pimp stuck in Singapore. Although not popular with moviegoers, it earned some critical praise.

The 1980s and beyond

They All Laughed (1981) was a quirky romantic comedy about three private detectives who fall in love with the women they are hired to follow. It featured an appealing cast that included Gazzara, Audrey Hepburn, Colleen Camp, and John Ritter but was perhaps best remembered for Dorothy Stratten, who was murdered by her estranged husband shortly after filming ended. Stratten had been having an affair with Bogdanovich, and he later wrote The Killing of the Unicorn (1984), a biography about her.

After a four-year break from directing, Bogdanovich made Mask (1985), a drama based on a true story. The film was a critical and commercial hit, with Cher giving a memorable performance as the tough but loving mother of a teenage boy (Eric Stoltz) afflicted with a disease that causes severe facial disfigurement. Bogdanovich then revisited his earlier successes, though with different results. Illegally Yours (1988) was an attempt to make yet another modern Bringing Up Baby, while Texasville (1990), from McMurtry’s novel, was also a disappointment. Critics considered the latter film an aimless, flat sequel to The Last Picture Show, despite the presence of original cast members Bottoms, Shepherd, Leachman, and Bridges. More encouraging, however, was Bogdanovich’s proficient adaptation of Noises Off (1992), Michael Frayn’s acclaimed Broadway play about actors engaged in a sex farce both on and off the stage; it starred Carol Burnett, Michael Caine, Christopher Reeve, and Ritter. The Thing Called Love (1993) was a meditation on the elusiveness of dreams, with River Phoenix and Sandra Bullock as would-be country stars. The film received only a limited theatrical release before moving to video.

In the mid-1990s Bogdanovich began working primarily on the small screen, directing a number of made-for-television movies. However, in 2001 he made The Cat’s Meow, an adaptation of Steven Peros’s play about the mysterious death of filmmaker Thomas H. Ince during his birthday celebration aboard William Randolph Hearst’s yacht in 1924. The drama imagines a romance between Charlie Chaplin (Eddie Izzard) and Marion Davies (Kirsten Dunst). In 2007 Bogdanovich directed the rock music documentary Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Runnin’ Down a Dream. His next effort, She’s Funny That Way (2014), featured an ensemble cast that included Jennifer Aniston, Kathryn Hahn, Imogen Poots, Rhys Ifans, and Owen Wilson. The film centers on the romantic entanglements behind the scenes of a Broadway production. The Great Buster (2018) is a documentary about Buster Keaton.

Throughout his directing career, Bogdanovich continued to act. In addition to appearing in many of his own films, he was cast in such movies as Mr. Jealousy (1997), Infamous (2006), and While We’re Young (2014). His notable roles on television included that of a psychiatrist on the HBO series The Sopranos.