At the age of 82
Director of “Paper Moon”: Peter Bogdanovich has died
Director Peter Bogdanovich – here at the Venice Film Festival 2014 – had his greatest success in 1971 with “The Last Performance”
© Gabriel Bouys / AFP
“Is # what, Doc?”, “The Last Performance” and “Paper Moon” were his greatest hits. Now director Peter Bogdanovich has died. Not only his colleagues mourn.
The US director Peter Bogdanovich, who became famous with the film “The Last Performance”, is dead. The important representative of the New Hollywood era, who also made headlines with his private life, died at the age of 82, as his agent announced on Thursday . No cause of death was named.
Companions like the legendary director Francis Ford Coppola were shocked by Bogdanovich’s death. “He was a wonderful and great artist,” Coppola told the AFP news agency. “I’ll never forget attending a premiere of ‘The Last Performance’.”
Mourning for Peter Bogdanovich
The Mexican director Guillermo del Toro described Bogdanovich in the short message service Twitter as a “dear friend and master of the cinema”. As a director, Bogdanovich created “masterpieces”.
Bogdanovich was born in Kingston, New York, in 1939. He was an influential film critic before switching behind the camera and making his first feature film in 1968 with “Moving Targets”.
He had his greatest success in 1971 with “The Last Performance”, an ode to America in the 50s. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards and awarded in two categories. It is considered a Hollywood classic and has been compared to the masterpiece “Citizen Kane” by Orson Welles.
Some of his films flopped
Further successes were the comedy “Is’ what, Doc?” with Barbra Streisand and “Paper Moon” with Ryan O’Neal. In the course of his career, Bogdanovich also made a few flops such as “Daisy Miller”.
The director also caused a stir with his private life. He had an affair with the actress Dorothy Stratten, who became known as a Playboy model, with whom he directed the comedy “They All Laughed” (1981) and who was murdered by her husband before the film opened in theaters. Bogdanovich later married Stratten’s younger half-sister.
After a bankruptcy, he moved from Los Angeles to New York and wrote film reviews again. He also appeared again and again as an actor in films and series, including in the mafia series “The Sopranos”.