Robert Altman Study Part 3: The Calvin Company

After his first stabs at breaking into Hollywood yielded less than ideal results, Altman returned home to Kansas City and began working for the Calvin Company, a local production outfit that made industrial films for a host of well-known clients - ironically, housed in a building that had been built by Altman's grandfather. Over the next six years, Altman would write, direct, edit, scout, and gofer for dozens of films touting everything from International Harvester to Goodyear to General Mills. This was his film school, lending him the technical training he'd carry into his own films. The few films that are available to view today are of little interest beyond that fact - to quote Frank Barhydt, Altman's boss at the time, the Calvin films are "dull enough to halt a herd of charging rhinos."

Modern Football is especially excruciating, especially as someone not in the least interested in the game. It's a monotonous recitation of plays and rules for high school football delivered by a coach in front of a chalkboard, occasionally interrupted by blatant ads for Wheaties and Wilson's sporting goods. At best, you could say it's an establishment version of the game that Altman rebelled against with the anarchic football sequence in M*A*S*H.

The Magic Bond is slightly more interesting. For the most part, it's another soberly-narrated advocacy piece, this one for the VFW. But before the rah-rah blandness begins, Altman inserts a short prelude set in a bombed-out building somewhere in Europe, where a commander harangues his soldiers for saving him at the expense of one of his other men. It's an endorsement of the military's bravery, sure, but shot through with a slight tinge of cynicism, offering a hint of what was to come in Combat! 

Altman quit or was fired repeatedly during his years at Calvin, at which times he'd make another stab at breaking into Hollywood. But he stuck it out for roughly sixty Calvin films, and his break would come in his hometown, not in the movie capital.