Robert Altman, a motion picture and television director, producer, and writer, is most noted for his films M*A*S*H (Twentieth Century Fox, 1970), McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Warner Brothers, 1971), Nashville (Paramount, 1975), The Player (Fine Line Features, 1992), Short Cuts (Fine Line Features, 1993), and Gosford Park (USA Films, 2001).
He was born in Kansas City, Missouri on February 20, 1925. Raised as a Roman Catholic, he attended Jesuit schools before studying mathematical engineering at the University of Missouri for several years. From 1943 to 1947 he served in the U.S. Army; during the war he flew B-24s on missions over Borneo and the Dutch East Indies. After his discharge in 1947, he returned to Kansas City and worked as a producer, director, writer, set designer, photographer, and film editor of industrial films for the Calvin Company.
Early in the 1950s Altman and Lou Lombardo, his cameraman at the Calvin Company, went to Hollywood where Altman sold several screen treatments and tried unsuccessfully to write for radio and magazines. He returned to Kansas City, which he left briefly once more to try to sell a film in Hollywood. In the mid-fifties Altman went to Hollywood for the third time, this time with The Delinquents, a film he had produced, directed, and written. Focusing on the problem of juvenile delinquency, this was his first feature length film and was released by United Artists in 1957. Later that year Warner Brothers released The James Dean Story, a feature length documentary produced and directed by Altman and George W. George.
For the next seven years Altman worked in television. He produced, directed, and wrote for such series as Bus Stop, Combat, The Roaring Twenties, Bonanza, and Kraft Mystery Theatre. One of his Bus Stop segments sparked some of the initial complaints about excessive violence in television. There were also complaints about an antiwar episode of Combat directed by Altman. Because of the restrictions placed on him and of the fear of losing his creativity in television, Altman quit the medium about 1964. For several years thereafter he was unemployed and in debt.
Returning to work in motion pictures, he directed Countdown (Warner Brothers, 1968) and That Cold Day in the Park (Commonwealth United, 1969) before M*A*S*H was released by Twentieth Century Fox in 1970. Altman directed this film after more than fourteen other directors had rejected it; for his labors, he was nominated for an Academy Award for best director. In addition, M*A*S*H was chosen the best film at the Cannes Film Festival and won the National Society of Film Critics award as the best film of 1970. Brewster McCloud, written and directed by Altman, was also released in 1970 by MGM. This was followed by McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Warner Brothers, 1971), directed and co-authored by Altman; and Images (Columbia, 1972), directed and written by Altman. Susannah York won the Cannes Film Festival award for best actress for her role in Images. Following that was The Long Goodbye, which Altman directed in 1972. All of these films were characterized by a “concern for emotional rather than literal accuracy.”
Altman continued to work in film, television, and theater until his death on November 20, 2006. He was married to the former Kathryn Reed, and had six children: Christine Westphal, Michael Altman, Stephen Altman, Connie Corriere, Robert Reed Altman, and Matthew Altman.
