Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1456917
Polly Platt 1939-2011 Polly Platt was born on January 29, 1939, in Fort Sheridan, Illinois, USA as Mary Marr Platt. Her father John Cheney Platt was an Army colonel and her mother Vivian Marr worked in advertising. At age 6, she moved to Germany with her mother and brother Jack, where her father was working in the Judge Advocate General's Corps of the United States Army at the post-World War II Dachau Nazi war-crimes trials. Platt studied scenic art at Carnegie-Mellon and was the first woman to join the Art Directors Guild as a Production Designer. As an Oscar-nominated Production Designer, screenwriter, producer and executive who put her stamp on some of the greatest and most loved films of the 1970s and '80s, she was one of the industry's most versatile and distinguished creative talents. She designed costumes and sets for such films as The Last Picture Show (1971), Paper Moon (1972), What's Up Doc? (1972), The Bad News Bears (1976), A Star Is Born (1976), and Terms of Endearment (1983). She was also a Production Designer on Bud Yorkin's The Thief Who Came to Dinner (1973), Garry Marshall's directorial debut, Young Doctors in Love (1982), The Man with Two Brains (1983), and The Witches of Eastwick (1987). She is also credited with discovering and launching the acting careers of Tatum O'Neal & Brooke Shields, as well as bringing cartoonist Matt Groening (The Simpsons) to Gracie Films. As a writer, Platt co-conceived the story for the thriller Targets (1968), wrote the story and screenplay and served as associate producer for Louis Malle's Pretty Baby (1978), and adapted William Inge's novel for the film Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff (1979). She also wrote the teleplay for the short Lieberman in Love (1995), directed by Christine Lahti and adapted the novel The Map of the World (1999), starring Sigourney Weaver and Julianne Moore. She was executive vice president of James L. Brooks' production company, Gracie Hall of Fame Inductee