Robert Bernard Altman ( ; February 20, 1925 – November 20, 2006) was an American filmmaker. He is considered an enduring figure from the New Hollywood era, known for directing subversive and satirical films with overlapping dialogue and ensemble casts. Over his career he received numerous accolades, including an Academy Honorary Award, two BAFTAs, three Independent Spirit Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, a David di Donatello Award, and a Golden Globe, as well as nominations for seven competitive Academy Awards.
Altman was nominated for five Academy Awards for Best Director for the war comedy M*A*S*H (1970), the musical film Nashville (1975), the Hollywood satire The Player (1992), the dark comedy Short Cuts (1993), and the murder mystery Gosford Park (2001). He is also known for directing Brewster McCloud (1970), McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), The Long Goodbye (1973), California Split (1974), Thieves Like Us (1974), 3 Women (1977), A Wedding (1978), Popeye (1980), Secret Honor (1984), The Company (2003), and A Prairie Home Companion (2006).
Also known for his work on television, he directed the HBO political mockumentary miniseries Tanner '88 (1988) for which he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series. He also directed the HBO television film The Laundromat (1985). On stage, he directed the Broadway revival of the Ed Graczyk play Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1981) and later the 1982 film of the same name. He directed the West End revival of Arthur Miller's penultimate play Resurrection Blues (2006).
In 2006, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized Altman's body of work with an Academy Honorary Award. He died that same year at the age of 81. Despite seven nominations, Altman never won a competitive Academy Award. His films M*A*S*H, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye and Nashville have been selected for the United States National Film Registry. Altman is also one of five filmmakers whose films have won the Golden Bear at Berlin, the Golden Lion at Venice, and the Palme d'Or at Cannes (the other four being Henri-Georges Clouzot, Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean-Luc Godard and Jafar Panahi).
Early life Altman was born on February 20, 1925, in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of Helen (née Matthews), a Mayflower descendant from Nebraska, and Bernard Clement Altman, a wealthy insurance salesman and amateur gambler who came from an upper-class family. Altman's ancestry was German, English and Irish; his paternal grandfather, Frank Altman Sr., anglicized the spelling of the family name from "Altmann" to "Altman". Altman had a Catholic upbringing, but he did not continue to follow or practice the religion as an adult,"Interview: Robert Altman" , The Guardian although he has been referred to as "a sort of Catholic" and a Catholic director. He was educated at Jesuit schools, including Rockhurst High School, in Kansas City. He graduated from Wentworth Military Academy in Lexington, Missouri in 1943.
Soon after graduation, Altman joined the United States Army Air Forces at the age of 18. During World War II, he flew more than 50 bombing missions as a co-pilot of a B-24 Liberator with the 307th Bomb Group in Borneo and the Dutch East Indies.Robert Altman, 81. The Washington Post. Retrieved May 18, 2021. Upon his discharge in 1947 he moved to California. He worked in publicity for a company that had invented a tattooing machine to identify dogs. He entered filmmaking on a whim, selling a script to RKO for the 1948 picture Bodyguard, which he co-wrote with George W. George. Altman's immediate success encouraged him to move to New York City, where he attempted to forge a career as a writer. Having enjoyed little success, he returned to Kansas City in 1949 and accepted a job as a director and writer of industrial films for the Calvin Company. He directed some 65 industrial films and documentaries for the Calvin Company. Through his early work on industrial films, he experimented with narrative technique and developed his characteristic use of overlapping dialogue. In February 2012, an early Calvin film directed by Altman, Modern Football (1951), was found by filmmaker Gary Huggins.
Altman also had a career directing plays and operas parallel to his film career. While he was employed by the Calvin Company he began directing plays at the Resident Theatre of the Jewish Community Center. These plays allowed him to work with local actors, such as fellow future director Richard C. Sarafian, whom he directed in a production of Richard Harrity's Hope Is the Thing with Feathers. Sarafian would later marry Altman's sister and follow him to Hollywood.
Career
1957–1969: Directorial debut and early work Altman's first forays into television directing were on the DuMont drama series Pulse of the City (1953–1954), and an episode of the 1956 western series The Sheriff of Cochise. In 1956 he was hired by a local businessman to write and direct a feature film in Kansas City on juvenile delinquency. The film, titled The Delinquents, made for $60,000, was purchased by United Artists for $150,000, and released in 1957. While primitive, this teen exploitation film contained the foundations of Altman's later work in its use of casual, naturalistic dialogue. With its success, Altman moved from Kansas City to California for the last time. He co-directed The James Dean Story (1957), a documentary rushed into theaters to capitalize on the actor's recent death and marketed to his emerging cult following. Both works caught the attention of Alfred Hitchcock who hired Altman as a director for his CBS anthology series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. After just two episodes, Altman resigned due to differences with a producer, but this exposure enabled him to forge a successful television career. Over the next decade Altman worked prolifically in television (and almost exclusively in series dramas) directing multiple episodes of Whirlybirds, The Millionaire, U.S. Marshal, The Troubleshooters, The Roaring 20s, Bonanza, Bus Stop, Kraft Mystery Theater, Combat!, as well as single episodes of several other notable series including Hawaiian Eye, Maverick (the fourth season episode "Bolt From the Blue" also written by Altman and starring Roger Moore), Lawman, Surfside 6, Peter Gunn, and Route 66.
By the 1960s Altman had established himself as a television director due to his ability to work quickly and efficiently on a limited budget. Though he was frequently fired from television projects for refusing to conform to network mandates, Altman always was able to land new assignments. In 1964 the producers decided to expand "Once Upon a Savage Night", one of his episodes of Kraft Suspense Theatre, for release as a television film under the title Nightmare in Chicago. In a 1963 episode, "The Hunt", his cast included James Caan and Bruce Dern.
Two years later Altman was hired to direct the low-budget space travel feature Countdown, but was fired within days of the project's conclusion because he had refused to edit the film to a manageable length. He worked with Caan again, who led the cast with Robert Duvall. He did not direct another film until That Cold Day in the Park (1969), which was a critical and box-office disaster. During the decade, Altman began to express political subtexts within his works. In particular he expressed anti-war sentiments regarding the Vietnam War. Because of this, Altman's career would somewhat suffer as he came to be associated with the anti-war movement.
1970–1979: Breakthrough and stardom
In 1969 Altman was offered the script for M*A*S*H, an adaptation of a little-known Korean War-era novel satirizing life in the armed services; more than a dozen other filmmakers had passed on it. Altman had been hesitant to take the production, and the shoot was so tumultuous that Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland tried to have Altman fired over his unorthodox filming methods. Nevertheless, M*A*S*H was widely hailed as a classic upon its 1970 release. It won the at the 1970 Cannes Film Festival and netted five Academy Award nominations. It was Altman's highest-grossing film, released during a time of increasing anti-war sentiment in the United States. The Academy Film Archive preserved M*A*S*H in 2000.
Now recognized as a major talent, Altman notched critical successes with McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), a revisionist Western in which the mordant songs of Leonard Cohen underscore a gritty vision of the American frontier; Images, his single, Bergman-inspired attempt at making a horror film; The Long Goodbye (1973), a controversial adaptation of the Raymond Chandler novel (scripted by Leigh Brackett) now ranked as a seminal influence on the neo-noir subgenre; Thieves Like Us (1974), an adaptation of the Edward Anderson novel previously filmed by Nicholas Ray as They Live by Night (1949); California Split (1974), a gambling comedy-drama shot partially on location in Reno, Nevada; and Nashville (1975), which had a strong political theme set against the world of country music. The stars of the film wrote their own songs; Keith Carradine won an Academy Award for the song "I'm Easy". Altman's next film, Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson, won the Golden Bear at the 28th Berlin International Film Festival.
Although his films were often met with divisive notices, and some, like A Perfect Couple and Quintet were widely panned, many of the prominent film critics of the era (including Pauline Kael, Vincent Canby and Roger Ebert) remained steadfastly loyal to his directorial style throughout the decade. Audiences took some time to appreciate his films, and he did not want to have to satisfy studio officials. In 1970, following the release of M*A*S*H, he founded Lion's Gate Films to have independent production freedom. Altman's company is not to be confused with the current Lionsgate, a Canada/U.S. entertainment company. The films he made through his company included Brewster McCloud, A Wedding, and 3 Women.
1980–1991: Career fluctuations
In 1980, he directed the musical film Popeye. Produced by Robert Evans and written by Jules Feiffer, the film was based on the comic strip / cartoon of the same name and starred Shelley Duvall and the comedian Robin Williams in his film debut. Gilda Radner was also considered for the lead female role; her manager, Bernie Brillstein, discouraged her from taking the role, in part due to his worries of her working for months on an isolated set with Altman, known for his erratic behavior and unorthodox creative methods. Designed as a vehicle to increase Altman's commercial clout following a series of critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful low-budget films in the late 1970s (including 3 Women, A Wedding, and Quintet), Popeye was filmed on location in Malta. It was soon beleaguered by heavy drug and alcohol use among most of the cast and crew, including the director; Altman reportedly clashed with Evans, Williams (who threatened to leave the film), and songwriter Harry Nilsson (who departed midway through the shoot, leaving Van Dyke Parks to finish the orchestrations). Although the film grossed $60 million worldwide on a $20 million budget and was the second highest-grossing film Altman had directed to that point, it failed to meet studio expectations and was considered a box office disappointment.
In 1981 the director sold Lion's Gate to producer Jonathan Taplin after his political satire Health (shot in early 1979 for a Christmas release) was shelved by longtime distributor 20th Century Fox following tepid test and festival screenings throughout 1980. The departure of longtime Altman partisan Alan Ladd Jr. from Fox also played a decisive role in forestalling the release of the film.