Numerous sources are reporting the death of Polly Platt, a prolific Hollywood polymath whose talents were expressed through set and costume design, production for movies like Broadcast News, and most famously, her work with ex-husband Peter Bogdanovich, with whom she worked side by side on many of his early films. Platt had ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease), and died at the age of 72.
In the late 1960s, Platt moved to Hollywood with Bogdanovich and got swept up alongside him as he became involved in Roger Corman’s coterie—according to IMDB, working as an uncredited costume designer on The Wild Angels, and even serving as Nancy Sinatra’s stunt double, also uncredited . Platt’s off-screen marriage to Bogdanovich flourished into a successful on-screen collaboration with the Boris Karloff-starring thriller Targets, which she co-wrote with him (with an uncredited assist from Samuel Fuller). She handled production design on Targets and numerous Bogdanovich films thereafter beginning with The Last Picture Show, with some sources (including Bogdanovich) suggesting that Platt was the one who actually went through Larry McMurtry’s novel and devised a script that could tell the story in a chronological fashion.
Unfortunately, helping Bogdanovich get The Last Picture Show off the ground proved to be the undoing of her marriage, as he left her during filming for his star Cybill Shepherd. (Their marriage and divorce was later loosely dramatized as the 1984 Drew Barrymore-starring comedy Irreconcilable Differences.) Yet despite their separation, Platt and Bogdanovich maintained a working relationship, collaborating on What’s Up, Doc? and again on Paper Moon, which Bogdanovich chose to do on Platt’s recommendation. She was also the one who suggested casting Ryan O’Neal’s actual daughter Tatum, even though she had never acted before. Tatum went on to win an Oscar for her performance.