Robert Altman

by Mitchell Zuckoff

  BARBARA ALTMAN HODES: Oh God, one night Mother took Joan and me to see The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Bob was home when we got back from the movie. And I’ve always had a yellow streak down my back. The baby, you know. Joan and I were sleeping in one bed because I was scared to death and everything. And Mother said, “Now it’s time to go to bed.” All of a sudden we heard this loud noise. Bob had put on some of Mother’s makeup and got a hanger. He hooked it in his mouth and hooked it around his neck to pull it back, and stuffed this big pillow up his back. All of a sudden here he comes—the hunchback—leaping into the room. Joan pushes me and Bob grabs me. I about had a heart attack. The neighbors called, thought there’d been somebody murdered.

  Robert Altman, at right, dressed as a woman for Halloween at age thirteen

  ROBERT ALTMAN: My first interest in dramatics was radio. I remember listening to the radio a lot as a kid in the 1930s, lying on the floor like all the kids at that time. My big idol when I was a young man was Norman Corwin, who pretty much created the radio drama. … Anything I know about drama today comes more from Norman Corwin than anybody.

  NORMAN CORWIN (radio pioneer): I went to dinner in Woodland Hills with some friends one night and I got in my car—it was midnight or so—to drive back to the city. I turned on the radio and there was a man being interviewed, and the first thing I heard was, “Mr. Altman, have you had any influences in your life?” He says, “Yes, I was influenced by Norman Corwin.” He proceeded to utter the words with which you are familiar—“Anything I know about drama today …” It was an astounding thing to listen to, having just turned on the radio.

  He was most generous in his evaluation of my own work, when I was not conscious of having contributed to his art at all. I tried to figure out in what way I might have influenced him, and the only thing I could arrive at was the tackling of subjects that would normally defy dramatic reconstruction. Bob tackled difficult subjects and made them palatable and organized.

  I know he said that I was a hero to him growing up. He became a hero of mine as a man. That’s remarkable and rare, to go from being someone’s hero to having him as your hero. That’s what happened between us.

  Letter from Norman Corwin to Robert Altman, thanking him for writing an introduction to a broadcast, May 13, 1996: I tend to worry at times that maybe I’ve fooled a lot of people a lot of the time, but when the Altman Seal of Approval is stamped on the product, I say to myself, what the hell, man, a giant has paid you a great compliment, so accept it, relax, and store it in your heart. Which I do. You continue to hit line drive home runs, and I rejoice in them all.

  * * *

  JOAN ALTMAN SARAFIAN: Bob and Dad clashed, but I think that’s normal because he was extremely gifted. Bob was always being punished. Our parents were not brutal, but the hairbrush would come out on any infraction. And you know it hurt. One time Bob got a spanking and B.C. came out of the room and he says, “That’s it, never again.” Bob wouldn’t cry. And B.C. said, “That’s the end of it. I don’t care what he does, I’m never doing that again.”

  RICHARD SARAFIAN: One time when Bob was brought into court for something, as a kid, B.C. went to the judge. This is how deeply he felt about his son—he pounded his fist on the table so hard he broke his hand. Bob got off.

  BARBARA ALTMAN HODES: Dad pounding his hand—Bob used that later. It was a scene in Bonanza, I think.

  Robert Altman to Hal Hinson, story headlined “Robert Altman, His Way; on Art, Money and Vincent & Theo,” The Washington Post, November 18, 1990: I did introduce comedy to Bonanza…. I had Lorne Greene go into the sheriff’s office and demand that his son be released. He said, “You’re not going to keep my son overnight in jail,” then, pounding on the table, breaks his hand. Well, this is something that happened to me and my father when I was sixteen. My father broke his hand telling a cop that he wasn’t going to keep me in jail. And he wouldn’t show that he hurt himself, but from my cell I could see his face go bright red and then white. And I just had Ben do the same thing.

  Dialogue from Bonanza, Episode 63, “The Secret,” directed by Robert Altman, originally aired May 6, 1963:

  BEN CARTWRIGHT (Played by Lorne Greene): If I were to start doubting my son at this point, everything I’ve lived and worked for would be lost.

  * * *

  BARBARA ALTMAN HODES: The girls from school would be calling Bob all the time. All the time.

  JOAN ALTMAN SARAFIAN: I remember his first love—and he’s had many—was a girl with white-blonde hair at Southwest High School. I believe he was a sophomore and she was a senior.

  JERRE STEENHOF: Of course I dated him. I was blonde. Every blonde in our high school knew him. If they were blonde he dated them. Most everybody would have one date and that was it. Why? Ha! I think he considered himself pretty fast. My best friend said to me, “How come you went out with him twice?” You know what she was implying!

  He was tall and handsome. He had beautiful blue eyes and they sparkled liked nobody’s business. He had a delightful sense of humor. Bob was so neat and so precise in his dress—he had all the class. He knew how to act. My mother thought he was a good kid. He would stand up when she came into the room. He had all the graciousness of any well-raised young man.

  One of the reasons he used to come over to my house was my father had one of the first Zenith radios that had a recorder on it. Bob was fascinated by that. Someplace I still have one of the recordings he made. One side was him reciting from Poe, “The jingling and the tingling of the bells,” and the other side was Gunga Din.

  JERRY WALSH: Once my parents were disagreeing about whether I should be allowed to do something or not, and my father said something like, “Well, you know, when Bob was that age, B.C. let him do it.” And my mother said, “Well, I certainly don’t want him to grow up and be like Bobby Altman!” The reason behind that was that Bob had had kind of a checkered career as a teenager at different schools.

  JOAN ALTMAN SARAFIAN: Bob didn’t like school. In fact, he hated it. I remember when he was in Catholic school, sitting outside while Sister Hildegard was chasing Bob around the room, trying to catch him with a stick to beat him up. Now, most of the nuns were great, but Hildegard was very old—she must have been in her eighties—and Bob was testing her.

  JERRE STEENHOF: He went to St. Peter’s for grade school, then he started out at Rockhurst—the Catholic high school—and I think he lasted there two years. Then he came to Southwest High School, which was a public school. I don’t think a teacher or anybody at school really tapped into his abilities. He had a wonderful imagination about things. He was smart, but he was trying to find himself. There was more talent there than people knew. He just didn’t care too much for organized school. He didn’t hit the books. And everybody who talked in class got the seventh-hour study hall. It was detention. He was in there as much as anybody.

  Robert Altman, center, as a member of the Wentworth Military Academy track team

  As it turned out, he really wasn’t at Southwest all that long. I think I can take credit for him being expelled. He knew the combination of my locker, up on the fourth floor, because he didn’t want to carry his books from one floor to another. So one day he put his books and this cotton-picking green snake in my locker. The snake’s in a jar. He also put a pistol in there. He was in ROTC at Southwest, and I think he wanted to show it to his commanding officer after school. It was a pistol, I think, from World War I. Well, I opened the locker and I let out a scream like a crazy person. It wasn’t long until he was sent to Went-worth Military Academy. I felt badly afterwards.

  NORMA MARING (Wentworth Military Academy alumni director): On September 8, 1941, he entered the academy in his senior year. While he was here, he lettered in basketball and he lettered in track.

  ROBERT ALTMAN: Back then I perceived myself as being in the higher echelon of the people I knew. Anytime I wasn’t, I had a reason—not an excuse, but a reason. For instance, I ran track in high school. We ran on cinder tracks with shoes wit
h those spikes in them. The mile was the first race of the meet, usually, and the half mile was the last. They’d have me run the mile, and I was, say, third or fourth all the time. Then I would run the half mile. I could have been first in that, but I’d just had the energy taken away from me by running the mile. So I ended up always being second in the half mile. And I’d go, “Well, goddammit! I could have been first if I hadn’t run the mile.”

  One time, it was one of those outdoor meets where lots of schools come together. They’d line up maybe twenty, thirty guys, so the takeoff is a sprint. As the mile started, either I hit somebody’s heel or somebody hit my heel, and I went down in the cinders. And these guys ran over me. I actually had holes, spike holes, in me, plus a lot of cinders in my hips and legs. By the time I got back up, they were a hundred yards ahead of me. Instead of just walking off the track, I took off after them. It was a quarter-mile track. And by the end of the half mile, I was in first place. I had caught up with all of them. I had these thoughts—you know, in those races you have a lot of time to think. I’m imagining that I’m going to win this race after falling down, which is inconceivable. I’m running along and I’m seeing these headlines. And then I don’t remember anything—I passed out. And these guys ran around me again. I never even finished the race, but I tried. I think it was because there was a crowd there. I was playing to those unknown people for the first time. I think that’s kind of an important event in my life.

  NORMA MARING: He graduated from high school January 23, 1943, but remained the rest of the school year through May. He had not only his high school degree but also some college credits. His first year he took English comp and rhetoric, algebra and trigonometry, general and organic chemistry. He had physics, economics, salesmanship, and physical education. His second year, which ended up being his one semester of college, he had analytic geometry, international relations, and weather and climate.

  ROBERT ALTMAN: Mathematics was my first subject. That and weather. I took a course in meteorology and I liked it a lot. I liked the idea of how the different cooling levels of a lake affect the atmosphere. And the whole predictability or nonpredictability of weather. I still keep that in my mind. Under the right circumstances, I would have signed up to go into weather. Although I don’t think I would have liked to be one of these weathermen today. But now I can follow these programs and understand the philosophy of weather and climate. I take that more seriously, or I look at that subject more seriously, than most people. And I think that it helps me in terms of the balance of elements.

  NORMA MARING: Every time he came to Kansas City, you’d hear him on the news, he would always say, “I went to Wentworth Military Academy in Lexington, Missouri. I was more of a social student than an academic student.” His record tells you right there he was academically doing fine. He was a member of Alpha Company, and he had the rank of sergeant, which meant he was trusted with responsibility and leadership.

  CHAPTER 3

  307th Bomb Group

  *

  ROBERT ALTMAN: I enlisted because I was going to be drafted. I don’t think it was anything I would’ve chosen otherwise. I went into the Army Air Force because I was in Wentworth and we found out that if we wanted to take the Air Force exam, they had to let us go—and the test was going to be in Kansas City.

  It was one of those multiple-choice things, about a two-hour exam. I didn’t even read the questions. I just went down and arbitrarily marked the answers, ’cause I wasn’t there to take the exam. I didn’t care about going into the Air Force. I cared about having a night or two in Kansas City. They came back and said I got a fairly high score, so I went into the Air Force.

  JOAN ALTMAN SARAFIAN: I remember when he was leaving. He was in this truck with all these kids, and we followed in the car down to the Union Station. We weren’t supposed to upset him or cry or anything, but it was heartbreaking.

  ROBERT ALTMAN: I went to Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis, and we did more tests. And they said, “You tested equally well for all these three things”—you were either a pilot, a bombardier, or a navigator. Most of the kids in there all wanted to be pilots. I didn’t care about that. In fact, I was saying, “Oh, I think I want to be a bombardier,” because I was good at math. But when they said I scored equally well on all three and I could make my choice, I said, “Oh—pilot.” I think I picked pilot because that’s what most of the kids I was there with wanted the most. I don’t know if that means I had a competitive nature or that I wanted to please other people.

  Copilot Robert Altman of the U.S. Army Air Force

  I went to pre-flight training at Jefferson Barracks, and then I was sent to flight training. Muskogee, Oklahoma, then to Coffeyville, Kansas, then Frederick, Oklahoma. Eventually, before going overseas, I got to California, at March Field in Riverside. The P-38 was what I thought I’d like—a twin-engine fighter—but I ended up getting put into multiengine bombers. You were put into those categories according to what their needs were. So in that part of the river, that’s what I was pushed into.

  I was ordinary, middle-of-the-road. I was fairly coordinated. In training, I thought I was hot stuff—everybody thought that they were hot stuff. I don’t know what makes a good car driver or aviator, but I know now I would never have been at the top. I know I would never win an auto race or an aero race.

  JOAN ALTMAN SARAFIAN: When he was in training, he hooked up with a girl named Daphne. She used to go down to Muskogee to see him. I think Daphne would be every young boy’s dream. Gorgeous. She was about four or five years older than him. Her husband had been killed in the war—he flew a Black Spider, and when you’re hit there’s no way you can get out of those, so he died. I think she really kind of introduced him to a more interesting sex life than what he was used to. I remember how she would put on her lipstick, because we’d all watch her. She would powder her lips first, then put on the lipstick. Then powder it again. Then blot them. And we all thought that was something, because we weren’t even allowed to wear any.

  FRANK W. BARHYDT (screenwriter): There’s a story about Bob losing his virginity in a whorehouse. I don’t know about that, but he had a girlfriend who his father didn’t particularly like. So he didn’t want Bob to marry her, and he figured that if Bob got laid his mind would be off it. I’m not sure that’s the beginning, middle, and end of that story. But I do remember his father kind of setting him up.

  BARBARA ALTMAN HODES: Bob met LaVonne, LaVonne Elmer, when he was in training, though he didn’t marry her until later. Blonde, very attractive, and had a real nice figure, very nice.

  JOAN ALTMAN SARAFIAN: He met her in Salinas, California. She was a phone operator. Incredible figure. Always in high heels, and she couldn’t even walk barefooted because her feet were curved for heels. She cooked great breakfasts for him. He didn’t love her. He said he didn’t. But I guess she was a good lay and he liked that. She was wild, but she loved him. God, she loved him so much.

  CHRISTINE ALTMAN (daughter): My mother was from a small town in Nebraska. She graduated and she decided she wanted to go out and see the world and do things. So she went to California and stayed with one of my aunts. That’s when the war was going on, and she would go to these dances at the NCO clubs, and that’s where she met my dad.

  She was very beautiful. She was a knockout. Her hair was brown and she always had a white streak coming down one side. I don’t know if she did that. She was very exotic-looking. She was thin and she was just gorgeous. My dad told me one time she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Of course they hooked it right up, I guess.

  * * *

  Robert Altman at the beach with his first wife, LaVonne Elmer

  BARBARA ALTMAN HODES: When he’d come home during training, he’d say, “All right, now you better go on upstairs and get your good clothes on. We’ve got a date tonight. Not you, Joan, I’m taking Barbara.” And we’d go down to the drugstore, sit up at the fountain, and we’d have sodas, me in my dress and him in his uniform. I must’ve been
about twelve. I thought, “My God, he’s wonderful.”

  JOAN ALTMAN SARAFIAN: We were a very, very close family. When Bob went into the service and was stationed in California, our father moved our family out there, to be with him.

  BARBARA ALTMAN HODES: When we went to California, I was dating R.J., Robert Wagner. You know, he was in high school when I was. He was just a nice person. From a well-to-do family, but, you know, just a nice guy.

  We’d come home and Bob would grab R.J. “What in the hell, where in the hell have you been with my sweet sister?” He used to do that every once in a while. He’d be in a bad mood and grab R.J. and put him up against the wall. B.C. would say, “Come now, Bob. Everything’s fine. She’s home early.” God, it was funny. But Bob used to drink, you know, quite a bit.

  ROBERT ALTMAN: When I first went to California, I really was kind of a star fucker. I mean, I got as close to all that stuff as I could. And I think I fell for the glamour of it, and the girls. I had an aunt and uncle who lived out there, my aunt Pauline and her husband, John Walsh. She had written a song that had been a hit, and he was a hustler of some kind—a lawyer. They were on the edges of people who knew people. And I just decided I wanted into that world.

  JOHN HOROSCHAK, JR. (bomber crew gunner): We were in the 307th Bomb Group. Just before we were going overseas, Bob got together with his aunt Pauline and decided to have a party for the crew. There were ten of us—I was the armor gunner. She supplied cars and chauffeurs to bring us up there. Bob had a convertible Cadillac and he and I were in there. He got stopped for speeding and he talked fast. Somehow he got away with it.

  So we got to his aunt’s house, in Beverly Hills, overlooking Hollywood and L.A., a big, beautiful home with a swimming pool, a tennis court. A bicycle rack maybe fifty bicycles long. We opened the door and she had a band in one corner of the big living room and they played a welcome to us. They had ten girls from UCLA dressed up in evening gowns and they were there to greet us—to dance with us and play tennis with us. We stayed overnight—not that there was anything done, of course. The next day she let the servants off for the day and she made breakfast for all of us and the college girls. My room had a Plymouth-type bed with an overhang. Like something from the movies, you know?