Robert Altman

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Robert B. Altman

(born Feb. 20, 1925, Kansas City, Mo., U.S. — died Nov. 20, 2006, Los Angeles, Calif.) U.S. film director. He learned filmmaking by directing industrial films, then directed several television series before making his first feature film, Countdown (1967). The successful antiwar comedy M*A*S*H (1970) established his reputation as an independent director whose work emphasizes character and atmosphere over plot. His most acclaimed films include McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), Nashville (1976), The Player (1992), Short Cuts (1993), and Gosford Park (2001).

For more information on Robert B. Altman, visit Britannica.com.

Search unanswered questions...

Browse: Unanswered questions | Most-recent questions | Reference library

5min Related Video: Robert Altman

Top

Biography: Robert Altman

Top

As a filmmaker, Robert Altman (1925-2006) was known as a risk taker and a nonconformist, who was committed at all cost to his own vision. While this led to what many critics consider a highly uneven output, successes like M*A*S*H (1971), Nashville (1975) and The Player (1991) were instrumental in cementing his strong international reputation.

Altman was born on February 20, 1925, in Kansas City, Missouri. He was the oldest of three children, and only son of Bernard Clement "B.C." Altman, (an insurance salesman), and his wife Helen (nee Mathews). Altman's family was socially prominent in the Kansas City area, though B.C. Altman had problems with both gambling and alcohol, as would his son later in life. Of German descent, the Altmans were a Roman Catholic family, and Altman received much of his education in Jesuit schools. By the time he reached high school, Altman experienced some difficulties. He was transferred first to public schools, and then to the Wentworth Military Academy, in Lexington, Missouri.

Joined Air Force

In 1943, when Altman was 18 years old, he joined the United States Air Force. He was trained as a bomber pilot at March Field, near Riverside, California. While stationed there, Altman got a first look at Hollywood, the city that would play a significant role in his future. After his training was complete, Altman was stationed in Morotai, The Philippines, where he flew bombing missions in B-24s. He reached the rank of lieutenant before his discharge in 1947. After leaving the service, Altman returned home to his wife, La Vonne Elmer, a telephone operator in Kansas City, and their daughter, Christine.

Altman pursued a number of career avenues in Kansas City. He sold insurance for a short while, then studied engineering at the University of Missouri, Columbia, for three years. Altman started a dog tattooing business intended to provide an indelible identification of the animal's owner, but the enterprise eventually failed.

Altman visited his parents, who were then living in California, and met a screenwriter named George W. George. Together they wrote a story which was sold to RKO for a movie called The Bodyguard (1948). Altman also lived in New York City for a while, trying to find work as a writer of screenplays and stories, but was unsuccessful. Instead, his film career began in his hometown of Kansas City.

Altman talked his way into a directing job at the Calvin Company, which made industrial films in Kansas City. Five years at Calvin, taught Altman every aspect of the film-making process. In addition to directing, he also produced and wrote films, and acted as cinematographer, designer, and editor. His experience at Calvin led to work directing local commercials. Altman also wrote a country-and-western musical, Corn's-a-poppin', which was produced locally. At this time, Altman divorced his first wife, and married Lotus Corelli. Together they had two sons, Stephen and Michael. The marriage only lasted a few years, and the couple divorced in 1957. Within a short time, Altman married Kathryn Reed, a former showgirl and film extra, with whom he had two more sons, Robert and Matthew.

Made First Feature Film

In the mid-1950s, Altman was approached by the backer of Corn's-a-poppin', Elmer Rhoden, Jr., about making a feature film. The result was The Delinquent, a movie about juvenile delinquency which Altman wrote, produced, and directed. The Delinquent gave Altman his ticket to Hollywood. It was picked up by United Artists for $150,000, and released in 1955. The first piece that Altman wrote in Hollywood was a 1957 documentary about the recently deceased actor, James Dean. Altman co-produced and co-directed The James Dean Story with his old friend, George W. George. However, the film was a disaster, both artistically and at the box office.

The James Dean Story did catch the attention of Alfred Hitchcock, who offered Altman a job directing episodes of his television show, Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Altman would spend the next eight years directing television, as well as some writing and producing. However, his time with Hitchcock was short: Altman was fired after only two episodes. It would not be the last time he was fired from television work because of his penchant for experimentation, including improvisation and, what would later become his trademark, overlapping dialogue. Altman continued to be hired because he was competent and completed his work on or under budget. In addition to Alfred Hitchcock Presents, he directed episodes of The Whirly-birds, The Roaring Twenties, Combat, Maverick, and Bonanza.

Altman's work on television led to his return to film. "Nightmare in Chicago," a two-part episode of Kraft Mystery Theater, was made into a feature film. In 1963, Altman founded a film production company, Lion's Gate, with Ray Wagner. Two years later, he left television, not to return for two decades. While his company found its footing, Altman paid the bills by making commercials and short films. By 1968, he was directing features, making about a movie a year. The first was Countdown, which was released by Warner Bros. The documentary-like movie explored the politics of the American space program via two astronauts played by James Caan and Robert Duvall. Altman was angered that the film was re-edited before its release, but Countdown did garner some critical acclaim. His second film, Cold Day in the Park (1969), got a similar reaction.

M*A*S*H Cemented Reputation

In 1970, Altman produced his first critical and creative triumph, M*A*S*H. The black comedy-drama commented on the absurdities of the Vietnam War, though it was set during the Korean war. The film used many techniques that became hallmarks of Altman's style. They included overlapping dialogue, an episodic structure, and use of improvisation. M*A*S*H was nominated for six Academy Awards, and won the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or. Though it was a box office success, Altman was only paid $75,000 and saw no money from the hit television series based on the film.

Altman's subsequent films were not as popular with audiences, but were critically and artistically important. He reworked several genres, making them realistic and character driven. The 1970 film Brewster McCloud was a fantasy focusing on a man who lives inside Houston's Astrodome and longs to fly inside it. In 1971, he made McCabe and Mrs. Miller, a so-called "anti-western." The unromantic movie made the previously heroic westerner type into an opportunistic capitalist. It also featured some of Altman's trademarks, including overlapping dialogue on the soundtrack. He took on the film noir genre with The Long Goodbye (1973), using the Raymond Chandler detective character, Phillip Marlowe. Altman's Marlowe was far from the hard-boiled detective. He was effete and unethical. In 1974's Thieves Like Us, a gangster movie set in the Depression era, Altman de-romanticized the outlaw heroes, like Bonnie and Clyde. As Altman grew as a director, he tended to use many of the same actors, actresses, and crew.

Directed Ambitious Nashville

In 1975, Altman produced what many deemed to be the best movie of the 1970s, Nashville. An ensemble piece with more than 20 major characters, Nashville focused on their actions during a weekend in that city. Altman used the business of country music, as well as politics, to satirically comment on contemporary American life via an intersecting set of stories. One element of Nashville that was consistently praised was Altman's use of music, which often underscored the action. An artistic triumph, Nashville was also a box office success.

Altman continued to churn out movies in the late 1970s, but none matched the success of M*A*S*H or Nashville. His follow-up was 1976's Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson, about Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show. Though the film starred Paul Newman, it was a flop and closed within two weeks of its release. Subsequent films also failed at the box office. A Wedding (1978), which featured 40 characters, was not successful. Altman continued to push the boundaries of genres with movies like Quintet (1979), a science fiction murder mystery, but it also did not catch on. With H.E.A.L.T.H. (1980), Altman used a format similar to Nashville, - all the action takes place at a health food convention, which he used to comment on modern day society. It too failed to attract much of an audience. Altman did not limit himself to directing. He also began producing at this time, beginning with Welcome to L.A., a film by protege, Alan Randolph.

Altman's career as a film director declined in 1980, after the release of Popeye. Though the film was a box office success, his reputation in Hollywood was ruined . Altman's live-action Popeye was dark, although it was a big budget film ($20 million) for Disney. While he never regarded Popeye as an artistic failure, many critics did. In 1981, Altman sold his production company, Lion's Gate, for $2.3 million. In the same year, he made his debut as a stage director with a production at Los Angeles' Actors Theatre. At the time he told Leticia Kent of The New York Times, "I haven't quit films, I'm merely taking a sabbatical and I'm doing something that I've wanted to do for years and years. I also believed that after two or three theater pieces, when I go to do a film I'll be better."

Throughout the 1980s, Altman used the stage as an artistic home base, directing many plays, then movies based on stage plays. For example, he directed the Broadway production of Come Back to the Five & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, then made a film of it. The film, which was critically lauded, was produced for only $800,000. Altman gave stage plays such as Sam Shepard's Fool for Love and Christopher Durang's Beyond Therapy similar film treatments. He experimented with other genres as well. Altman directed his first opera at the University of Michigan. In the mid-1980s, he returned to television. While living in Paris, he directed The Laundromat (1985) for Canadian television. In 1988, he made the limited series, Tanner '88, an acclaimed pseudo-documentary on the presidential election, for Home Box Office (HBO).

Revitalized Directing Career

In the 1990s, Altman returned to form as a film director. While his 1990 offering, Vincent and Theo, was not considered typical Altman, he received much acclaim for his sensitive portrayal of the relationship between Vincent Van Gogh and his brother Theo. His next film, The Player reestablished his reputation in Hollywood. The movie, which focused on the dealings of Hollywood from an insider's point of view, was arguably Altman's most successful film. His next successful venture was 1994's Short Cuts, a film based on short stories by Raymond Carver. As with Nashville, Short Cuts featured a large cast and intertwined stories. Altman tried to do for the fashion world what he had done with Hollywood and Nashville in 1994's Ready to Wear, but the film was only a modest success.

Altman continued to look to his past for inspiration. In 1996, he made a gangster-jazz movie entitled Kansas City, set in the time of his youth. He also flirted with more mainstream fair. In the summer of 1997, Altman was the creative force behind Gun, a short-lived television anthology series whose main character was a firearm that was passed from story to story. He ended the decade with two non-traditional Altman films. The Gingerbread Man (1998) was based on a John Grisham script, while Cookie's Fortune io (1999) was a gently comic Southern drama. None of these films were big budget affairs, but they allowed Altman artistic freedom. As he told Sharon Waxman of The Washington Post, "There's not a filmmaker who's had a better shake than I have. In 30 years, every film I've made has been of my own choosing. I don't get rich, but I have a lot of fun."

Biography

During the 1970s, an era widely recognized as a renaissance period of American moviemaking, few directors enjoyed greater prominence than Robert Altman. An iconoclast whose work acutely attacked the conventions of genre filmmaking, Altman both satirized and revitalized such warhorses as the Western, the musical, and the crime drama, waging war on the sterile artifice of mainstream storytelling by creating a singularly sprawling and deliberately messy cinematic world bursting at the seams with sounds, images, characters, and plot lines. Famed for his inventive brand of overlapping (and often improvisational) dialogue and an acknowledged master of modern camera technique, Altman's quixotic career has been uneven at best, yet he remains a pivotal figure of contemporary cinema, a true maverick responsible for many of the defining motion pictures of his times.

Born February 20, 1925, in Kansas City, MO, Altman was educated in Jesuit schools prior to joining the Army at the age of 18; over the course of WWII, he flew over 50 bombing missions in Borneo and the Dutch East Indies. Upon his discharge in 1947, Altman studied engineering at the University of Missouri, later inventing a tattooing machine designed for the identification of dogs. He entered filmmaking only as a whim, selling to RKO the script for the 1948 picture The Bodyguard, which he co-wrote with Richard Fleischer. Altman's immediate success encouraged him to move to New York City, where he attempted to forge a career as a writer; he enjoyed little luck, however, and after a similarly fruitless trip to the West Coast, he returned to Kansas City, accepting a job as a director, writer, cameraman, and editor of industrial films for the Calvin Company.

After helming some 65 industrial films and documentaries, by 1955 Altman had secured over $60,000 dollars in financing from local backers to make his own feature; two years later, the finished product, titled The Delinquents, was purchased by United Artists for 150,000, dollars and while primitive, it contained the foundations of his later work in its use of casual, naturalistic dialogue. He next co-produced 1957's The James Dean Story, a documentary rushed into theaters to capitalize on the actor's recent death and marketed to the cult following emerging in the wake of the tragedy; while a box-office disappointment, it brought Altman to the attention of Alfred Hitchcock, who tapped him as a director for his CBS television anthology series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. After just two episodes, 1957's "The Young One" and the next year's "Together," Altman was fired, but the exposure enabled him to mount a successful TV career in series including Bonanza, Combat!, and The Kraft Television Theater.

Television allowed Altman the chance to experiment with narrative technique as well as develop his trademark overlapping dialogue, all the while learning to work with speed and efficiency on a limited budget. Though frequently fired for his refusal to conform to network mandates as well as his insistence upon injecting his material with political subtexts and antiwar sentiments, Altman never lacked assignments in an industry desperate for experienced talent; he even formed his own production company, Lions Gate Films, although his gambling debts nearly brought about its demise. In 1964, one of his episodes for The Kraft Television Theater was expanded for commercial release under the name Nightmare in Chicago; two years later, he accepted an invitation to direct the low-budget space travel feature Countdown, but was fired within days of the project's conclusion because of his refusal to edit the film down to a manageable length.

Altman did not direct another movie until 1969's That Cold Day in the Park, a critical and box-office disaster. For his next project, he agreed to adapt a little-known Korean War-era novel satirizing life in the armed services; the film had already been passed over by over a dozen other filmmakers, and production was so tumultuous that stars Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland even attempted to have Altman fired over his unorthodox filming methods. Upon its 1970 release, however, M*A*S*H was widely hailed as an immediate classic, winning the Palm d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and netting six Academy Award nominations. Now recognized as a major talent, Altman fielded countless offers to direct big-budget studio films, but instead opted to develop the surreal and experimental Brewster McCloud under his own Lions Gate imprint; issued in 1970, the ambitious but flawed film was the victim of poor box-office returns and mixed criticism, although the director himself claimed it to be his favorite among his features.

With the 1971 revisionist Western McCabe and Mrs. Miller, however, Altman returned to form in stunning fashion. Still, regardless of widespread media acclaim (in particular for Vilmos Zsigmond's beautifully hazy cinematography), it met with commercial indifference, and despite the success enjoyed by M*A*S*H, historically Altman never earned mainstream recognition remotely comparable to his critical stature. Indeed, only the likes of Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Woody Allen managed to produce work of a similar caliber to Altman during the early '70s, from the atmospheric, idiosyncratic Raymond Chandler adaptation The Long Goodbye to the Depression-era romantic caper Thieves Like Us to the gambling study California Split. In film after brilliant film, he created one of the most provocative and original bodies of work in contemporary American cinema, yet audiences stayed away in droves; perhaps most emblematic of Altman's box-office woes was California Split, which was already running on television only two years after its theatrical release.

With his 1975 masterpiece Nashville, however, Altman reentered the American cultural consciousness; his finest film to date, it was hailed from many corners as one of the decade's greatest works, earning five Oscar nominations. A sprawling, intricate meditation on show business and politics featuring some two dozen major characters, Nashville not only restored the director's box-office lustre, but it also brought his newly-developed Lion's Gate eight-track sound system to its full realization, allowing Altman to record sound live on the set with microphones instead of more cumbersome equipment, eliminating post-dubbing and making possible later mixing and unmixing to achieve a dense, multi-layered soundtrack. Released during the nation's July 1976 bicentennial celebration, Altman next unveiled Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson, starring Paul Newman. As widely savaged as Nashville was widely acclaimed, it was subsequently re-edited for German consumption by producer Dino de Laurentiis, and upon winning the Grand Prix at the Berlin Film Festival, Altman refused the honor on the grounds that the de Laurentiis cut misrepresented his vision.

The public feud with de Laurentiis ended Altman's hopes of directing the feature adaptation of E.L. Doctorow's novel Ragtime, and also put the skids on a long-planned filmization of Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions. Instead, Altman turned to 1977's 3 Women, a dreamlike, Bergman-esque drama, followed a year later by A Wedding, a complex black comedy with close to 50 major roles. Yet again, audiences failed to relate to the material, and after 1979's futuristic Quintet opened and closed after just one week, both the romantic comedy A Perfect Couple and the satiric Health ran into insurmountable distribution problems and barely even surfaced in theaters.

Altman next mounted Popeye, a musical based on the classic E.C. Segar comic strip with comedian Robin Williams in the title role and a script by Jules Feiffer; when the highly-anticipated production failed to live up to commercial or critical expectations, he responded by selling Lions Gate, effectively bringing to an end his career as a mainstream Hollywood filmmaker for over a decade.

Altman then turned to the stage, forming Sandcastle 5 Productions and agreeing to direct Ed Graczyck's Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean on Broadway; in 1982, he also helmed a feature version for the cable network Showtime. David Rabe's Vietnam War drama Streamers followed a year later, and like its predecessor rejected the freewheeling flair of the director's 1970s work in favor of a more restrained and measured style closer in spirit to the theater; still, Altman remained as idiosyncratic as ever, directing 1984's Richard Nixon docudrama Secret Honor in a campus dormitory with the aid of student assistants while serving as a visiting professor at the University of Michigan. An adaptation of Marsha Norman's The Laundromat, commissioned by Home Box Office, followed in 1985, with a rendering of Sam Shepard's Fool for Love appearing a year later. Altman then enjoyed a remarkably prolific 1987 with two feature films, Beyond Therapy and O.C. and Stiggs, as well as two hour-long presentations for ABC television, The Dumb Waiter and Room.

Altman's return to television after an absence of over two decades continued in 1988 with The Caine Mutiny Court Martial and the HBO miniseries Tanner '88, a scathing and well-received satire of the year's Presidential election penned with Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau. The 1990 Van Gogh portrait Vincent and Theo earned similarly strong notices, prompting many to wonder if Altman was about to make a comeback; 1992's The Player, a brutal attack on Hollywood morality brimming with major stars, answered their questions -- Altman was indeed back, with strong box-office receipts and three Oscar nominations to prove it. Suddenly finding himself again on the A-list, he mounted 1993's Short Cuts, adapted from short stories by Raymond Carver -- -- a brilliantly provocative look at contemporary Los Angeles society similar in execution and tone to Nashville and the recipient of almost as much acclaim. However, both 1994's Ready to Wear (Prêt-à-Porter) and 1996's Kansas City were dismally received, and with 1998's John Grisham adaptation The Gingerbread Man, Altman found himself at the center of controversy when producers re-cut the picture following a disastrous preview screening. It finally appeared in its intended form to decidedly mixed reviews and lackluster box office. However, Altman enjoyed greater success a year later with Cookie's Fortune. An ensemble piece about the denizens of a small Mississippi town, the film received a generally amicable reception.

Altman's next project, Dr. T & the Women (2000), a fanciful comedy about a Dallas gynecologist (Richard Gere) who becomes overwhelmed by the women in his life, marked Altman's second collaboration with screenwriter Anne Rapp after Cookie's Fortune. It also earned mixed but generally positive reviews, many concluding that despite his previous missteps, the director had still not lost his distinctive touch.

Altman's next film, the comedic period murder-mystery, Gosford Park (2002), marked a late-career high point. A direct homage to Renoir's Rules of the Game, the film enlisted a five-star cast including Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Kristin Scott Thomas and Emily Watson; adored by critics and the public alike, it subsequently culled a myriad of Oscar nominations including nods for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay (by Julian Fellowes), losing the first two but winning the latter. 2003's The Company dramatized one year in the life of the Joffrey Ballet and starred Neve Campbell (who doubled as screenwriter); critics responded enthusiastically, even if the picture maintained a far lower profile than Gosford.

Meanwhile, the octogenarian Altman -- a longtime fan of 30-year-plus radio humorist Garrison Keillor -- devised with Keillor the idea for a filmization of his venerable Minnesota-based radio program, A Prairie Home Companion. Thrilled with Keillor's draft of the script, the director stepped behind the camera once again in 2005, and made full use of a once-in-a-lifetime cast that included Altman standby Lily Tomlin, Meryl Streep, Lindsay Lohan, Kevin Kline, John C. Reilly, Woody Harrelson, and Keillor himself. It opened in early summer, 2006, to wide praise for its warm geniality and folksy charm.

With more than a trace of bittersweet, poetic irony, this film, with its ruminations on the end of life, indeed proved to be Altman's last, marking a fitting cap to a masterful career. The 81-year-old director passed away, of complications from cancer, not five months after Prairie debuted, and eight months after receiving his Lifetime Achievement Oscar. He died in a Los Angeles hospital on November 20, 2006.

Altman married his third wife, Kathryn Reed, in 1959. They remained married until his death. He had six children: Michael, Stephen and Christine from his first two marriages; an adopted son, Matthew; Robert, his son with Reed; and Konni, Reed's daughter from a previous relationship. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide

Filmography: Robert Altman

Top

Show More Movies

Robert Altman
Altman at the 2002 Golden Globe Awards
Born	Robert Bernard Altman February 20, 1925(1925-02-20) Kansas City, Missouri U.S.
Died	November 20, 2006 (aged 81) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation	Film director
Years active	1947-2006
Spouse(s)	LaVonne Elmer (1946-1951) Lotus Corelli (1954-1957) Kathryn Reed (1959-2006)

Persondata
NAME	Altman, Robert Bernard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Film director
DATE OF BIRTH	February 20, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH	Kansas City, Missouri
DATE OF DEATH	November 20, 2006
PLACE OF DEATH	Los Angeles, California (leukaemia)

	Buck Buchanan (Actor, Comedy/War)
	Jean Boffety (Cinematographer, Writer, Drama/Comedy)
	Michael Tolkin (Writer, Director, Comedy/Drama)

	Name the actor that did not star in Robert Altman's classic ensemble piece Nashville? Read answer...
	What TV series some episodes of which were directed by Robert Altman was often syndicated as Ponderosa? Read answer...
	List or names of the nude runway models at end of Robert Altman's movie Pret-a-Porter? Read answer...

	What are the contributions of Robert Altman for the development of world cinema?
	1987 anthology movies of ten opera extracts by ten different directors including Robert Altman?
	Who is jessica altmans father?

		Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more
		Biography. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved. Read more
		Quotes By. Copyright © 2008 QuotationsBook.com. All rights reserved. Read more
		Director. Copyright © 2009 All Media Guide, LLC. All rights reserved. Read more
		Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Robert Altman". Read more

Robert Altman

Biography

Contents

Early life and career

Television work

Mainstream success

Later career and renaissance

Personal life

Death

Filmography

Motion pictures

Television work

TV films and miniseries

Television episodes

Quotes

See also

Bibliographies

Additional resources

References

External links

Obituaries