Robert Altman

He died on November 20, 2006 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in West Hollywood, due to complications from leukemia, at the age of 81.

Posthumously, his wife, Kathryn, co-authored a book on Altman in 2014. She also served as a consultant and narrator or the 2014 documentary ‘Altman’.

Robert Altman was born on February 20, 1925, in Kansas City, Missouri to Helen and Bernard Clement Altman. He belonged to an upper-class Catholic family and his father worked as an insurance salesman.

Early on, Altman gained his education from Jesuit schools. Completing his high school studies from Rockhurst High School, he gained admission at Wentworth Military Academy, graduating from the same in 1943.

During World War II, Altman enrolled himself in the United States Army Air Force. He was a part of the crewman on a B-24 Liberator. He flew more than 50 bombing missions.

Relieved off his military duties in 1946, Altman moved to California. It was during this time that Altman tried his hand at filmmaking. He sold a script that eventually turned into a hit film, ‘Bodyguard’. The initial success lured him to take up filmmaking professionally.

Motivated by his early success in scripting, Altman moved to New York City but failed to commence a career as a writer. He moved back to Kansas City in 1949 and took up a job of a director and writer of industrial films for the Calvin Company.

After making 65 industrial films and documentaries, Altman was finally offered to write and direct a feature film on juvenile delinquency. He came up with ‘The Delinquents’ which was bought for double the money in 1957. Same year, he co-directed a documentary ‘The James Dean Story’.

Having found success, Altman moved to California to try his luck. His early work earned him the attention of Alfred Hitchcock who hired him for his anthology television series ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents’.

Interestingly, though Altman directed just two episodes of ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents’ show due to differences with the producer, the show did give him the exposure that he needed. In the following decade, he directed successful TV shows including ‘Whirlybirds’, ‘The Millionaire’, ‘U.S. Marshal’, ‘The Troubleshooters’, and so on.

Altman achieved mainstream success in 1970 with the film ‘MASH’. Depicting the life of medical personnel stationed at a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital at the backdrop of Korean War, the film was an adaption from Richard Hooker’s novel of the same name. ‘MASH’ was made on a budget of approximately $3 million and went to earn $81.5 million at the box office. It gained five Academy Award nominations, a Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture, and the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

During the last decade of his career, Altman came up with three extremely successful films including, ‘The Players’, ‘Short Cuts’ and ‘Gosford Park’. Each of them won him several Academy Award nominations. All the films had a trademark Altmanesque style to them – a large ensemble cast, overlapping dialogues and loose action. ‘Gosford Park’ became Altman’s second highest grossing film of his career.