I’ve recently embarked on a comprehensive chronological viewing of the work of Robert Altman, and thought I’d try to gather some thoughts and notes here as I proceed. I’ve done this sort of study - trying to watch everything a filmmaker has worked on, in order, while reading biographies and other supplemental materials - in the past, but never set down my thoughts as I went. So this is as much for my own memory as anything else, and will be sporadic and fairly informal.
Altman was born in 1925 into a big fish family in the relatively small pond of Kansas City, Missouri. His father, B.C., was a salesman, a gambler, and a womanizer - all traits that his son would inherit. But where B.C. turned his hucksterish charms toward glad-handing and ingratiating, his son leaned more toward the roguish and independent, a born iconoclast.
His entrée into the world of film came in front of the camera, not behind it. He worked as an extra in the 1947 adaptation of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty - just before Danny Kaye performs the “Symphony for Unstrung Tongue” number, Altman can be seen sitting at a bar in uniform as Kaye talks to another military officer. By this time Altman had already worked as an insurance salesman, a meat company rep, a lobbyist for California’s power utility in Mexico, a songwriter, and a co-pilot in a WWII bomber plane flying more than 50 missions in the Pacific.
While stationed in California before the war he became enamored with Hollywood and determined to be a part of it - somewhat ironic given the fact that his later reputation revolved around his being a stubbornly determined outsider. So after the failure of a get-rich-quick scheme involving the tattooing of ID codes onto dogs - through his father’s connections, he and his partner inked Harry Truman’s canine - he teamed with producer George W. George for his first stabs at breaking into the film business.
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