Survival is this Peter’s principle

Peter Bogdanovich moved to Los Angeles in the summer of 1964, driving cross-country from New York with his wife, Polly Platt, in a battered ’52 Ford convertible. Long before he became a star director in the New Hollywood, Bogdanovich was an actor turned journalist who’d been writing admiring museum monographs and Esquire pieces about the aging lions of the Old Hollywood.

Even though he was poor as a church mouse, it was a great time to be in L.A. Bogdanovich remembers being at the Whisky-A-Go-Go in 1964, just after it opened, when it was such a hip hangout that you’d see beatniks with goatees and surfer girls in tight capri pants at one end of the crowded room, Shelley Winters, Sal Mineo and Dean Martin at the other. The studio system was crumbling. Bogdanovich once strolled into the Universal commissary and found it deserted, except for Spencer Tracy, sitting alone, having a cup of coffee.

The mass-media fascination with Hollywood filmmakers was also still years away, so when Bogdanovich stopped by a director’s house, he could stay as long as he wanted. John Ford and Howard Hawks let him visit their sets, allowing him to soak up invaluable directing tips. Jerry Lewis got so tired of seeing Bogdanovich’s wheezy old convertible that he gave him one of his new Ford Mustangs.

Forty years later, being driven around town to promote his new book, “Who the Hell’s in It,” a collection of memoirs about famous actors, Bogdanovich brims with bittersweet memories from his heady days in L.A. Most of the stories are punctuated with his trademark impressions, including Orson Welles, Cary Grant and John Wayne, all eerily dead-on, though who among us could truly say whether his gruff Hawksian drawl is on the mark or not? After signing copies of his book at a store in Pasadena, Bogdanovich treats me to his account of doing Hawks for Grant, offering impressions of both men, with Grant saying, “Oh my Gawd, Petah, you sound just like Howard!”

Bogdanovich today, at 65, has melancholy brown eyes and a perpetual air of exasperation, like a man who’s been served a steak gone cold. (Not that he’d eat a steak -- he’s been a vegetarian for years.) With his red ascot, corduroy trousers and aristocratic air, Bogdanovich looks uncannily like “Gilligan Island’s” Thurston Howell III, probably a strike against him when he’s trying to convince some baby-faced production executive to give him a directing job.

For some of us, Bogdanovich will be judged not just for his films but for his groundbreaking appreciations of filmmakers. When I was in film school, Bogdanovich was my surrogate professor, having penned hugely

influential pieces on Hawks, Ford and Alfred Hitchcock, casting them in a fresh light, not as studio craftsmen but as important artists. He had a famous feud with Pauline Kael after she denigrated Welles’ role in writing “Citizen Kane.” Bogdanovich wrote a meticulous 15-page

response in Esquire. Just the memory of it gets the old juices flowing. “What she wrote was appalling,” he says. “She didn’t know what she was talking about. I refuted all of it.” His lower lip quivers as he delivers the coup de grace. “Woody

Allen was with her when she read it. He told me she was devastated.”

Nobody has had a Hollywood career quite like Bogdanovich, whose hopes of joining his heroes in the pantheon took off, then crashed and burned. The nerdy film buff catapulted to fame in 1971 with “The Last Picture Show,” which made him Hollywood royalty. The imperious boy wonder quickly dumped his wife for Cybill Shepherd, moved into a Bel-Air mansion and was guest host of “The Tonight Show” when Johnny was away. Then came the slippery years of failure and decline. His films stiffed, his love for Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten shattered when she was murdered by her jealous husband. This was followed by bankruptcies, more flops and a tabloid marriage to Stratten’s half-sister Louise, who was 13 when Dorothy died.

As Robert Evans, who knows something about tumbles, once put it: “Success went straight to Peter’s head. But it left his head and went to his feet pretty quick -- they were in cement.”

Bogdanovich, who moved back to New York in 1997, somehow survived. He even has a dry humor about his troubles. Talking, as all directors do, about a script that is oh-so-close to being bought, he says, “I wrote it with my ex-wife,” then realizing that needs more explanation, adds, “my latest ex-wife.” He still directs, but the jobs are largely in TV, most recently “Hustle,” a biopic about Pete Rose. He’s returned to his other old loves, acting and writing, and is best known, at the moment, as Lorraine Bracco’s psychiatrist on “The Sopranos,” in which he steals scenes using techniques he learned in the ‘50s as a Stella Adler acting student.

His books are guilty pleasures, full of astute observations and irresistible anecdotes. “Who the Hell’s in It” is crammed with little gems, including Bogdanovich’s account of meeting then-President Richard Nixon at a party in San Clemente. After Nixon compliments the director on “The Last Picture Show,” Bogdanovich introduces him to Shepherd. Putting a hand on her arm, Nixon asks what part she played. Bogdanovich says, “She was the one who stripped on the diving board.” After a pause, Nixon pats her arm and with the barest flicker of a smile, says, “Of course, I remember you very well now, my dear.”

The best material includes a poignant appreciation of John Cassavetes and a lively chapter on Adler, who, when Bogdanovich went broke, wrote him a check for $500. Bogdanovich is shrewd about actors and their career choices. Assessing why the stars of yesteryear were better equipped to handle success, he notes that Cary Grant didn’t have his true breakthrough part until “The Awful Truth,” his 29th film.

Which raises the question: Why didn’t Bogdanovich handle success better himself? Did the industry’s inexhaustible supply of jealous sycophants do him in? Or did he have gasoline all over him when Hollywood lit the match? The critic David Thomson, a Bogdanovich friend, views him as a huge talent who ran off the rails. “Peter’s dreams came true so fast that he never quite recovered from it. He’s very hurt because he realizes he could’ve been extraordinary and he blew it. I think he lost his confidence and confidence is a strange thing -- once you lose it, if often doesn’t come back.”

It’s a fate that befell many of his peers from the tumultuous “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls” era of 1970s Hollywood. Though different in many ways, Bogdanovich, Francis Coppola, William Friedkin, Bob Rafelson and Hal Ashby all struggled or self-destructed once the decade was over. “We got thrown into success early on, but we had no experience in how to deal with it,” Bogdanovich says. “John Ford shot 10 two-reelers the first year he was a director. If I’d had that kind of experience, I would’ve known when I was making ‘At Long Last Love’ that you’re an idiot if you don’t preview a musical comedy at least 20 times. Instead, I did it twice, then made some cuts and opened the movie without anyone having seen it. It was a disaster.”

At moments like this, he appears unbearably sad, his face full of rueful recognition of his past transgressions. “I handled success poorly. When you’re hot, it’s a heady atmosphere -- everybody kowtows to you. After all, you’re a director, creating illusions in your films, but it becomes hard to tell what’s an illusion and what’s reality.”

Today he is better at keeping an even keel, having given up sugar, caffeine, dairy and meat during a nine-day fast in the ‘80s designed to wean him off an assortment of prescription medication. He also doesn’t read reviews, unless they’re good, saying, “Once you’ve been burned as much as I have, you lose your girlish laughter.”

Friends say he’s unfailingly loyal. When Orson Welles was down on his luck, Bogdanovich let the old master stay at his Bel-Air home. Not overly grateful, Welles went on a talk show and made an ugly remark about Bogdanovich, who happened to be watching. Furious, Bogdanovich fired off an angry note. “This tells you everything about Orson,” he says coolly. “He sent a letter of apology, a very contrite, self-flagellating apology, and then in the same envelope, he sent a completely different letter, not at all apologetic, and he said, ‘Take your pick.’ ”

I ask if Bogdanovich has any advice for younger directors that might help them avoid the potholes of arrogance that damaged his career. He cited the counsel of Allan Dwan, an old pro whose career stretched from World War I into the 1960s. “He told me that if you stick your head up above the crowd, there would be someone quite happy to cut it off,” he said softly, not even bothering with a Dwan impression. “My head stuck up anyway and it got lopped off. But if you’re a survivor, you learn to grow it back, like a character in a Chuck Jones cartoon.”

As I marveled at the implications of that parable, his assistant said, “I’ve never heard that story before.” Bogdanovich frowned impatiently. “I think it’s in my first book,” he said abruptly, sounding like someone whose head had grown back but would never fit as comfortably as it used to.

The Big Picture runs Tuesdays in Calendar. Comments and responses can be e-mailed to patrick.goldstein@latimes.com.