Film producer and writer Polly Platt passed away a few weeks ago. She was also well known as being the ex-wife of director Peter Bogdanovich, and for being at the center of what those in the rag biz would call a ‘Hollywood Love Triangle.’ NYC Mob Tour director Carla Stockton was very close to Polly, has many years of memories, and has unique insight into the life of this extraordinary person.
Author: Carla Stockton
Once when one of my cousins was putting on airs over some high profile success he had achieved, my grandmother shrugged. “Mr. Big Deal he isn’t,” she sputtered. “I knew him when he was an apple tree.”
Grandma’s pronouncement was an allusion to a favorite joke of hers, a long, convoluted story about an old Jew who, having provided the carving wood, was unimpressed by a religious icon.
Polly Platt knew a lot about apple trees. Many of the biggest shots in Hollywood got to be that way because of the wood she brought to a variety of shops. It was Polly, standing by her man Peter Bogdanovich, who first conceived of the brilliant film his Targets and Last Picture Show would become. She co-wrote (at least) both scripts, designed the productions and, according to industry insiders, co-directed.
Polly provided the blueprint for Louis Malle’s American debut, launched meteoric careers for Wes Anderson, Owen Wilson and Bart Simpson and was the stronger half of Gracie Films, the half that made the best choices, including hiring Matt Groenig and saving audiences from the excruciating ordeal of listening to Nick Nolte (or anyone else) sing in I’ll Do Anything.
But for all her success, Polly could be remarkably cynical. “Don’t move out here,” she advised me in 1997 when, at age 50, I embarked on a career change and was writing screenplays. “You’re too old,” she blurted. “And too fat. No one over 40 or bigger than a size 4 should try to make it in this town.”
Platt had good reason to dole such counsel. Having overcome the humiliation of Bogdanovich’s well-publicized affair with Cybill Shepard while hugely pregnant with her second child, having had to re-imagine herself creatively without Bogdanovich’s partnership, having risen to the top against all odds in a man’s world– she was the very first woman ever to be inducted into the Art Directors’ Guild – Polly had by then nearly reached 60 and had found she couldn’t get arrested in Hollywood. Her talent was still there, her drive and her brilliance were still in tact, and she was petite and adorable as ever, but no one wanted to hire her. She had become part of that invisible netherworld inhabited by all but the tiniest percentage of women over fifty, expected to step onto an ice floe and drift out to oblivion.
The Hollywood mob, like most of the mobs that govern our society had decided she had overstayed her usefulness. Though James L. Brooks now extols Platt’s virtues as a mentor, a team inspiration, a life force to be reckoned with, was more than willing to let her go over “artistic differences.” As I heard it, he didn’t even attempt to find a way to make her stay.
The press loves to make a big show of valuing older women, if they are willing to compromise themselves and self deprecate, à la Betty White. But even women designated HOT complain that they cease to feel relevant when they hit the age wall. No one writes roles for older female actors because funders don’t want to take the risk of investing in them. A woman over 50 reinventing herself after her children leave home or after pursuing a “first” career will more often than not be entirely overlooked in the talent pool of any operation.
Truth is that women in general are still highly marginalized. The few who are in the forefront get a lot of attention, and it looks from the outside as though we have achieved a kind of equality. But, as Gloria Steinham is wont to point out, women still only have 17% of the political seats in congress, women still have huge income inequity, divorced women still fare far worse than divorced men, and most women will wind their upward trajectory blocked by an impenetrable if well-camouflaged glass ceiling.
Steinem assures us that there is hope. If more men were more critically invested in child rearing and less of the responsibility were to fall on women, women would someday cease to be threatening to the male infrastructure of our world. As it is, women do inhabit the mob, but those women only help to maintain the status quo.
The real pioneers, the truly brave, free spirits like Polly Platt get put out to pasture.
Please do not pity Polly Platt. She was smart enough to invest shrewdly, to protect herself from the inevitable halt to her career. But remember her story, keep her in mind. When you find yourself thinking that you’ve come a long way, baby, remind yourself that you still have an even longer way to go.
Tags: female power, feminism, film art director, film directors, gender equality, glass ceiling, Hollywood, peter bogdanovich, Polly Platt
