Information on Dear Departed Beloved
Mary Marr "Polly" Platt
was an American film producer, production designer and screenwriter.
Platt was born Mary Marr Platt in
Fort Sheridan, Illinois on January 29, 1939, later using the name Polly. Her
father John was a colonel in the army while her mother Vivian worked in
advertising; she has a brother, John. She moved to Germany at the age of six as
her father presided over the Dachau Trials. Platt later returned to the US and
attended the Carnegie Institute of Technology. Platt worked in summer stock
theatre as a costume designer in New York and there met Peter Bogdanovich, whom
she would later marry. She helped Bogdanovich write his first movie Targets
(1968), conceiving the plot outline of a "Vietnam
veteran-turned-sniper" and served as the production designer on the film.
She was also production designer on his film The Last Picture Show (1971) and
despite the breakdown of their marriage, had the same role on What's Up Doc?
(1972) and Paper Moon (1973). Platt had suggested Bogdanovich make Larry
McMurtry's novel The Last Picture Show into a film. Bogdanovich commented that:
"She worked on important pictures and made major contributions. She was
unique. There weren't many women doing that kind of work at that time,
particularly not one as well versed as she was. She knew all the departments,
on a workmanlike basis, as opposed to most producers who just know things in
theory." Platt was the first female member of the Art Directors Guild. She
was also production designer on A Star Is Born (1976). She wrote the
screenplays for Pretty Baby (1978), on which she was also an associate
producer, as well as Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff (1979), and A Map of the World
(1999). Platt worked extensively with James L. Brooks throughout her career.
She was the executive vice president of his production company Gracie Films from
1985 to 1995. Platt was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Art Direction
for Brooks' film Terms of Endearment (1983). She also co-produced many of the
films he worked on, which Gracie made, including Broadcast News (1987), The War
of the Roses (1989) and Bottle Rocket (1996), as well as producing Say
Anything... (1989). Platt gave Brooks the nine-panel Life in Hell cartoon
"The Los Angeles Way of Death" by cartoonist Matt Groening. She
suggested that the two meet and that Brooks produce an animated TV version of
Groening's characters; the meeting spawned a series of short cartoons about the
Simpson family, which aired as part of The Tracy Ullman Show and later became
The Simpsons. In 1994, she was awarded the Women in Film Crystal Award. Brooks
said that Platt "couldn't walk into a gas station and get gas without
mentoring somebody. Movies are a team sport, and she made teams function. She
would assume a maternal role in terms of really being there. The film was
everything, and ego just didn't exist." Platt was working on a documentary
about the filmmaker Roger Corman at the time of her death. Platt was married to
Philip Klein until his death in a car accident in the 1960s, eight months after
they married. Platt was married to director Peter Bogdanovich from 1962 to
1971. They divorced after Bogdanovich left her during the filming of The Last
Picture Show for its lead actress Cybill Shepherd. Platt and Bogdanovich had
two children: Antonia and Sashy. Platt later married prop maker Tony Wade; they
remained married until his death in 1985. She was step mother to his children
Kelly and Jon. The 1984 film Irreconcilable Differences, starring Ryan O'Neal,
Shelley Long and Drew Barrymore, was reportedly loosely based on her marriage
to Bogdanovich, and their divorce. Platt died aged 72 on July 27, 2011 in New
York, from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
source:
http://www.thfire.com/entertainment/polly-platt-dies-at-72-12363, wikipedia.