BOGDANOVICH, PETER

BOGDANOVICH, PETER (1939– ), U.S. film director. Bogdanovich was born in Kingston, N.Y., to Jewish immigrants who had fled the Nazis. His father, Borislav Bogdanovich, was a Serbian artist and his mother, Herma (née Robinson), came from a wealthy Austrian family. Herma was pregnant with Peter in Europe, but gave birth to him in America. He attended the Collegiate School and the Stella Adler Theatre Studio, and began his career as a summer stock and television actor in the 1950s. In the 1960s, he worked as editor of Show-bill and film programmer at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and wrote film articles for Esquire magazine. Bogdanovich turned to directing with the Roger Corman-produced Targets (1968). Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show (1971) received eight Academy Award nominations, including best director, and won two for supporting actor and actress. Bogdanovich fell in love with the film's star, 19-year-old Cybill Shepherd, and divorced his wife and collaborator, Polly Platt, whom he had married in 1962 and with whom he had two children. Bogdanovich's next film was the comedy What's Up, Doc? (1972), starring Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal. He was hailed for Paper Moon (1973), a Depression era Oscar-winning comedy. Films starring Shepherd, Daisy Miller (1974), based on the Henry James novella, and the Cole Porter musical At Long Last Love (1975), failed as did Nickelodeon (1976).   Shepherd and Bogdanovich ended their relationship in 1978. Bogdanovich returned with Saint Jack (1979) based on Paul Theroux's novel. During the filming of They All Laughed, Bogdanovich fell in love with 1980 Playboy Playmate and co-star Dorothy Stratten whose attempt to leave her husband, Paul Snider, ended in a murder-suicide (and was the basis for the movie Star 80). Bogdanovich bought the rights to They All Laughed after distributors passed on it due to the Stratten murder, but the limited release left Bogdanovich bankrupt. Bogdanovich wrote a paean to Stratten, The Killing of the Unicorn: Dorothy Stratten, 1960–1980 (1984). Over the next few years, he directed the Cher drama Mask (1985); Illegally Yours (1988); Texasville (1990), the sequel to The Last Picture Show; Noises Off (1992); and The Thing Called Love (1993). In 1992, drawing on taped interviews and his in-depth knowledge of the director, he published This Is Orson Welles. He followed with a book of interviews with directors: Who the Devil Made It: On Directing Pictures (1997) and Peter Bogdanovich's Movie of the Week: 52 Classic Forms for One Full Year (1999). In 2000, Bogdanovich returned to acting in the HBO Mafia drama hit The Sopranos, playing Dr. Elliot Kupferberg. In 2001, Bogdanovich divorced Louise Hoogstraten, Dorothy Stratten's younger sister, whom he had married in 1986. While Bogdanovich had not directed a big-screen film since The Cat's Meow (2001), he continued to direct made-for-television features, including the documentary The Mystery of Natalie Wood (2004) and the Pete Rose biopic Hustle (2004). (Adam Wills (2nd ed.)