Peter Bogdanovich, influential director of ‘The Last Picture Show,’ dies at 82

Peter Bogdanovich, the revered director of touchstone 1970s films such as “The Last Picture Show,” “What’s Up, Doc?” and “Paper Moon,” died Thursday of natural causes at his Los Angeles home. He was 82.

The two-time Oscar nominee’s death was relayed by daughter Antonia Bogdanovich to the Hollywood Reporter. The Times has reached out to her representatives for confirmation.

“Movies used to be something powerful,” Bogdanovich told The Times, in 2015. “It’s been a bit ruined now. I don’t know if we can get it back — I think we can. But it’s lost its innocence. The interesting stuff has moved to TV, and movies have become more like, ‘What can I blow up next?’ There’s a terrible cancer at the heart of that.”

“The Last Picture Show” earned two 1972 Oscar nods for Bogdanovich, for best director and writing of a screenplay based on another medium, which he shared with author Larry McMurtry. It also earned two trophies — lead actor and actress — for Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman, plus another four nominations.

Born in New York on July 30, 1939, Bogdanovich grew up in the 1940s as the son of immigrant parents from Austria and Serbia. Throughout his childhood, he would see up to 400 movies a year, studiously recording his opinions of each one on a note card.

He began his career programming films for the Museum of Modern Art and writing about movies for Esquire before moving to Los Angeles in the late 1960s and breaking into the business.

After rocketing to fame in the ‘70s with “The Last Picture Show,” “What’s Up, Doc?” and “Paper Moon” — all of which were steeped in an adoration for Hollywood’s past — Bogdanovich saw his career plummet later that decade after a string of bruising flops. He was eventually forced to declare bankruptcy and move out of his Bel-Air estate.

He suffered personal tragedy when his then-lover, Playboy playmate-turned-actress Dorothy Stratten, was killed by her estranged husband in 1980, then faced public scandal when he later married her younger sister, Louise.

“It’s been a very up-and-down kind of existence,” Bogdanovich told The Times in 2015.

The director was working in that capacity well into his 70s, releasing “She’s Funny That Way” in 2014 — he started writing the project with Louise Stratten in 2000, when their marriage was winding down — and appearing in several other projects as an actor.

Bogdanovich is survived by two daughters, Sashy and Antonia, from his first marriage to the late production designer and producer Polly Platt.

Times staff writer Josh Rottenberg contributed to this report.