Robert Altman

by Mitchell Zuckoff

  They had a lunch break and Bob and I and the kids were walking along. There was a long table to the right and the lunch was out for the cast and crew. Kathryn was standing at the table with her back to us. Bob looked over to her, and I said, “Well, Bob, you don’t have to bother with lunch now.” He just devoured her with his eyes. He just snorted and said, “You caught me again.”

  MICHAEL ALTMAN (son): Bob put me and my mom in the helicopter with Stephen strapped to her. He told the pilot to take ’er up. The pilot turned the thing upside down and there’s no fucking doors on it, and my mom just started screaming and pounding on him and flipping out. And Bob was down there laughing his ass off. That’s what I remember.

  STEPHEN ALTMAN (son): I remember a helicopter ride, but that’s it.

  MICHAEL ALTMAN: Steve and I grew up with our mom and my step-dad. It wasn’t like she would, like, rag on him all the time, but there was some heavy-duty resentment there. In the early years it was really tough on her, but then, he didn’t have anything going on. That day at Whirlybirds, she just went down there probably to get twenty-five dollars for groceries. I’m sure she was down there trying to get a couple of sacks of pinto beans, you know?

  I don’t think he was maliciously withholding money from my mother. I think it was just, you know, he didn’t have twenty-five dollars to send her. You know that joke about the producer who says to the other producer, “Hey, I got this great deal on this property, it’s only a million bucks. The bad news is they want a hundred dollars down.” Right? It was that kind of deal. He was always in hock up to his …He lived well, but he was living off the next paycheck. And God only knows how he managed it.

  STEPHEN ALTMAN: There was not a lot of friendship for him on my mom’s side when we were growing up. It was always, “We don’t have any money for the rent and da, da, da. He’s an asshole.” Kids are pretty perceptive, I think, and I kind of threw that part out. You know, “I think you’re being emotional, Mom.” Sometimes kids are a little more rational than the adults can be. I never grew up with a chip on my shoulder for him. I only got it later after working with him [laughs].

  KATHRYN REED ALTMAN: He didn’t appeal to me at all at first. But by the end of the day I caught on. That night we all went out for a drink on the way home, probably to Nickodell’s, which was the hot spot at RKO. After I’d settled down and we had a drink I got the whole idea.

  The next day I showed up—we hadn’t gotten really intimate—it was all kind of polite with everybody else around. The next day the call was at a church and I was sitting in a pew reading The Diary of Anne Frank between takes. He was going up and down the aisle, setting lights, and he said, “Oh, you like that book?” We were still very distant, we weren’t buddies.

  I said, “It’s terrific, did you read it?”

  And he said, “Oh yeah. It was great.”

  Well, he never read it, I found out later. Courting behavior.

  That night we all went out. It was a Friday night, “Tight Shoe Night,” an assistant used to call it, and Bob and I always laughed at that. And it’s been “Tight Shoe Night” for the rest of our days. So we had a whole good time after drinks. That was fun, and the next day Konni, my daughter, and I were doing Saturday errands and all that kind of thing. We got home and there was a card under the door—I still have it—and it said, “That’s showbiz.” That’s all it said. I remember Konni immediately got that jealousy thing. And so she wrote on it, “Whoop-dee-doo.”

  KONNI CORRIERE (stepdaughter): I was moody and pouty and shy, but he never did try to win me over, at least not the way her other boyfriends did. You know, try to get in good with me or whatever.

  KATHRYN REED ALTMAN: I spent Sunday afternoon with him, and he was trying to show off that whole day. He was going with this girl, Ricky Barr. She was real aggressive; she was an agent. I guess they had a date on this Sunday night. And he wasn’t returning her call. I don’t know how it all worked. She came over and beat on the door and he went outside and had this big conversation with her. So we went out to dinner and came back and she was still there. It was a big deal. I don’t know who else she called, but the next day Tommy Thompson had this great line to Bob: “I hear they were bunching up at the gate at your apartment last night.” It was fun.

  Lotus, his estranged wife, came over one of those nights, too, to meet me. She probably would have been one of my best friends if I had met her a different way. We both cooperated with the little boys all of the way through. I was comfortable enough and she seemed to be. I think she hoped up to that point there was a possibility, and she said she realized then there wasn’t. We never had any problems and we’ve been through a lot.

  LOTUS CORELLI ALTMAN MONROE: That evening I was going to a play with a bunch of kids from Los Angeles City College. After, I called him up and said, “You want some coffee?” He said, “Yeah, sure, come on up.” I went there, and Kathryn was there. He said, “Kathryn, meet my wife.” Well, it was very convenient for him to stay married because he would tell his girlfriends, “I can’t marry you. I’m already married.” So I was kind of a safety net.

  We chatted, and I was wound up from drinking coffee and seeing the play. I said, “I’m sorry I interrupted.” So I left. I thought, “She’s nice.” He was still coming and going. I knew that it would never work. We had tried it. It was supposed to be the two of us together. Before Stevie was born he’d call me and we’d talk, and he’d play me the whole music score from My Fair Lady. It took me a long time to get over this, but I knew it wasn’t going to work. It was not working for me.

  I didn’t know her that well from that short meeting. I graduated from Hollywood High the same year as Kathryn. I didn’t know her there, but I found out later we had mutual friends. They started living together and we became better acquainted. Kathryn was perfect for him. We were divorced that same year they got married.

  Kathryn and Robert Altman on April 5, 1959, during the first week they met, at what they came to call their “engagement dinner”

  Robert Altman, from an undated,

  unpublished poem titled “Infatuation”:

  Infatuation,

  May fool this heart of mine

  Infatuation

  May seem like love at times

  Knowing that it’s light romancing

  Hoping that it’s love advancing

  Infatuation

  Came when we met by chance

  Infatuation

  Sprang from a subtle glance

  Then you kiss me

  My heart soared high above

  Infatuation

  Became love.

  SUSAN DAVIS (actress and cousin): When I think about Kathryn, I think about the older generation of Altman girls—[his aunts] Marie and Annette and Pauline and Ginny. Ginny is interesting because I think she’s the prototype of Kathryn, I always have. Ginny Altman was funny. She was only a teenager when Bob was born. See, it was like having the groovy, sexy aunt. That’s who Kathryn is. I met Kathryn the day Bob had me doing P.R. for Troubleshooters. I thought, “God, she’s like Ginny. He found a redhead who’s just like Ginny.” She has the same sense of humor, same kind of laugh, and knows just how to handle Bob.

  KATHRYN REED ALTMAN: We went right into a full-time relationship—I never worked again after Whirlybirds—with a lot of ups and downs, a lot of adjustments. When you first meet somebody and all of a sudden you’re tight from the beginning, of course all kinds of things come up. And then I found myself pregnant, with Bobby. I don’t know if you want to go into the pregnancy thing or not, but that was the reason we got married.

  KONNI CORRIERE: The next thing I know, we’re getting all dressed up because he’s taking us to dinner, my mother and myself, to some really fancy restaurant. He literally did it in order to ask me for my mother’s hand in marriage. I was thirteen. He did all the talking: “Konni, what would you think if I decided to marry your mother,” or whatever. I don’t know where my voice came from or who I thought I was, but I said, “Well, I t
hink it’s all right, but actually she just came out of a marriage, her second marriage, and I think she needs some time by herself or something.” I said, “No, I think it’s too soon for her to do that.” I didn’t know she was pregnant.

  KATHRYN REED ALTMAN: I’m not sure I would have married Bob if I hadn’t been pregnant. I was stuck to marry him at that point. There wasn’t anything I could do about that pregnancy. I had Konni and I had gotten her into the whole situation, and I was stuck. I never told him that and probably shouldn’t be saying it now. “Stuck” is probably too strong a word. I was crazy about him and I wanted it to work.

  He was very much in love with me. He was determined. A couple of those episodes, those partying behaviors, I pulled back a couple of times. But he always convinced me. It was his charm, absolutely.

  We went to Ensenada to get married. We couldn’t just live together. I wouldn’t even consider it because of my daughter. And he wouldn’t have, either. He still had a little of that Catholic upbringing that had come to the fore, as they say it will.

  Robert Altman and his stepdaughter, Konni, in December 1959, at the Crescendo Nightclub, on the night Kathryn Reed Altman gave birth to Robert Altman’s third son, Robert Reed Altman

  KONNI CORRIERE: When they got married we had to move, and I had to go to a father-daughter dinner at Paul Revere Junior High School. So Bob came. I was completely new and scared and he was there, and it was just the two of us and we didn’t know each other that well. We put name tags on, and I was Konni Pederson. So all night long, everyone introduced themselves to “Mr. Pederson” and he went with it. He played the part of Mr. Pederson, which was so sweet.

  CHAPTER 9

  Cheese

  *

  KATHRYN REED ALTMAN: When we got married Bob was in the middle of Hawaiian Eye. He was doing a lot of TV. After we were married, it was Bonanza and Combat! and all kinds of things. We were getting out of debt. We were terribly in debt when we got married. We were living off my child support, practically. Then we got a really good business manager; his name was Charlie Goldring and he got Bob straight. He had us on a regular budget. It worked out very well because he got us out of debt and on our feet. I just kind of thought that was going to be our life. We bought a house with a swimming pool in Mandeville Canyon. We lived there for nine years. We bought a house and we had a baby and we had the other kids coming over. It was a great house and we had lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of parties.

  Television Directing

  Hawaiian Eye—1959; The Millionaire—1958–59 (five episodes); Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse—1960; Sugarfoot—1959–60 (two episodes); Gale Storm Show—1960; Maverick—1960; Lawman—1961; Surfside 6—1961; The Roaring Twenties—1960–61 (nine episodes); Bonanza—1960–61 (eight episodes).

  DAVID DORTORT (producer): I produced Bonanza, and George W. George was someone I respected. I knew his father’s reputation. I had hired George to write an episode of Bonanza, and he did an excellent job. I mentioned how struck I was by the use of the camera on the James Dean movie, and George said, “How about giving Bob a chance to direct?” We were number one in the world and I didn’t know anything about this guy. I met him and he was so overweight, heavy, and drinking. I said, “If I hire him, he must promise that he would stop drinking.” That was no easy thing.

  Directing Ray Danton (left) and Roger Moore in an episode of The Roaring Twenties

  He was fantastic on Bonanza. He was the best director I had. The series became sharper, more focused. He was born with a camera in his brain. The guys on the show immediately recognized his talent compared to the other directors. But he told me that as much as he liked working for me, now he wanted to be able to direct a feature.

  Television Directing

  Route 66—1961 (one episode);

  Bus Stop—1961–62 (eight episodes).

  ROBERT BLEES (producer): I did the television adaptation of Bus Stop from both the William Inge play and the Fox movie, which starred Marilyn Monroe. When I realized that I had to make thirty-nine hours the first year—thirty-nine new shows—I fought to get some assistance.

  We were going along and I couldn’t get the talent that I wanted for behind the camera, and I knew there was a show at Warner Brothers, The Roaring Twenties, that had gotten a little bit of talk. I looked at some reels of that show, from three different episodes, and all were good. The director on all three was Bob Altman.

  We learned we were both from Kansas City originally and we hit it off. When I called up the producers of the Warner Brothers show, I said, “Tell me about Altman.” They said, “He’s trouble. He’s good, but trouble. Fights over everything. There were almost blows exchanged.” Nevertheless, we hired Altman, because he was good.

  He was doing overlapping dialogue, even in those days. He was very good about casting—he wouldn’t go the obvious ways. On Bus Stop, he cast Robert Redford, the all-American boy, as a member of a criminal plan. And Barbara Baxley, everybody’s sensible grandmother, as part of a criminal enterprise.

  SUSAN DAVIS: I was commercial looking, so I could pay the rent, but it was a constant struggle. He hired me on a show called Bus Stop and Robert Redford and Barbara Baxley were on there. I was hired, and we were going to shoot my part in one day. It was very simple. He rehearsed it, but we didn’t shoot it, and I’m sitting there for the rest of the day. It was a Friday, and about five thirty he said, “Okay, the scene with Susan Davis and so-and-so, we can’t get to that. We’ll have to bump that over to Monday. Can you make it, Susan?” And I’m thinking, “Whoa, that’s two rent checks, two days.” He knew exactly what he was doing, taking care of me. He never mentioned it, but I thought, “Wow.”

  ROBERT BLEES: Bob responded to provocative ideas and sometimes wanted to do things that were too provocative. Not from a censorship point of view, but for the sake of being provocative. He was always pushing it. Sometimes, to my mind, erroneously.

  FABIAN FORTE (singer and actor): The Bus Stop episode I was in that Bob directed was about evil. It walks among us. That was the title, “A Lion Walks Among Us.” Evil. It’s out there. And you never know where it’s coming from. It was perfectly written. I played a drifter, a psychopath. He was very, very charming. Wandered into this little town and took advantage of anything he possibly could take advantage of. He repaid anyone who was nice to him by killing them, and he almost got away with it.

  I met with the producers, Roy Huggins and Bob Blees. They said the only way you could possibly get this, me being Fabian, is you have to meet with Bob Altman. So I drove up to his house in Mandeville Canyon. I don’t think anybody knew anything about Altman at that time. I knew I was going to have to read for this guy and convince him I could do this. I was nervous as hell. I walked in, and he reminded me of a hippy-dippy kind of guy, which I loved. He was cool, he was warm, he asked me a lot about my personal life, I guess to put me at ease.

  KATHRYN REED ALTMAN: When Fabian came over to the house, Konni and Christine just couldn’t believe it. They served him a sandwich, and the potato chips he didn’t eat, they put them under their pillows or something. They were just gaga over him.

  FABIAN FORTE: At first he wanted to improvise a few things about the character. I read with him. We read from the script, and I think it was because of his input I totally transformed myself into this really fucked-up guy. He opened windows into the guy—“How would you feel if you had this in your past?” He really wanted you to have that power to see if you could do it. We did it eight or nine different ways. He didn’t say much, just a word here or a word there. He had the power to make you go to another dimension. He was that way on the set, too. He never bludgeoned you or was harsh with you. He was very astute—very few words but right to the point emotionally. Then he’d walk away. He did that with all the actors. To me it was, “Wow, if this is the way acting is, this is what I want to be part of.”

  Teen heartthrob Fabian, star of Robert Altman’s “A Lion Walks Among Us” episode of Bus Stop

&nb
sp; ROBERT BLEES: Bob, of course, saw this as an opportunity to make a shockingly violent picture. We had to reshoot two different scenes because of the gore and the violence. One was the opening scene, in which Fabian murders the little store owner. That was enough to make anybody gag except Bob. Still, it was a powerful piece.

  Jack Gould, story headlined “TV: An Hour of Ugliness,” The New York Times, December 4, 1961: An hour of dark and sordid ugliness—cheaper than anything yet seen on television and its crude reliance on primitive violence and such—was presented on “Bus Stop” last night. … The vehicle was entitled “A Lion Walks Among Us,” and starred Fabian, one of the wiggling vocalists created for the TV market. … A play often can be extremely unpleasant but still command interest and respect because of the depth of its insight into characters. But last night’s presentation had no such justification or excuse; it was unrelieved exploitation of the base instincts of an animal run amuck.

  Censorship on TV is certainly odious, but restraint does have its place. Given tact and delicacy, almost any scene can be handled, but last night’s onslaught of mayhem and suggestiveness surely was misplaced in an hour known to appeal to a substantial young audience.

  ROBERT BLEES: You know who wrote the book that episode was based on? Tom Wicker of The New York Times. I was amazed he never stepped forward to defend it.

  FABIAN FORTE: The reviews were the best I ever got as an actor. I give Altman a lot of credit for that. But then the advertisers got scared about the content of the show, and then it got brought up in the congressional hearings they had going on.