Celebrity Biographies
Robert altman
Director Robert Altman was nominated for an Oscar five times, but had to settle for a lifetime achievement award in 2006. No doubt Altman knew that all that glitters was not gold in Hollywood, as he took it upon himself to make clear in The Hollywood game (1992), his vitriolic look at the world of cinema.
Robert Bernard Altman was born in Kansas City in 1925, and it was precisely his hometown that gave the title to a film that paid homage to jazz, through a particular look at the world of gangsters. Graduated in mathematics, and pilot of a B-24 bomber during World War II, at the end of the conflagration he opted for cinema, first with documentary works and the world of advertising. Struggled for years in the world of television (he directed episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents , Maverick and Bonanza ), his bell in the cinema was given in 1970 with MASH, an acid and funny look at the Korean War through his health corps, which earned him the Palme d’Or in Cannes. And he immediately succeeded with another title, Los vividores (1971), despite the shooting conflicts with Warren Beatty .
Although he proved to be an irregular filmmaker (his Popeye is a title to forget, for example, and neither was his Buffalo Bill and the Indians to shoot rockets), he gave proof of his special suitability for certain types of choral stories, due to his ability to spin plots and subplots, to define all kinds of characters. Along these lines, Nashville (1975), Vidas cruzadas (1993) and Gosford Park (2001) stand out. On the other hand, Prêt-à-porter (1994) worked worse –despite the idea of reuniting Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni– or Dr. T and the women(2000). Married three times, since 1959 he lived with Kathryn Reed. He is survived by five children; one of them, Stephen, became art director for many of his films.
In the detective genre, Altman tried his luck with A Long Goodbye (1973), not entirely successful adaptation of the long novel by Raymond Chandler , with an aging Philip Marlowe; and even tackled an original story for the cinema by John Grisham in the somewhat disappointing Conflict of Interest (1998); the truth is that in this field his most brilliant film was Cookie’s Fortune (1999), where his sense of humor was not lacking, quite black, his personal trademark. When Altman was asked about a possible retirement, he responded precisely with that characteristic humor: “Retire? You mean death, right?” And indeed, death called him with his boots on, after delivering his highly praisedA Prairie Home Companion (another choral title, of course), very applauded at the Berlin Festival, and which, who knows, might be worth a posthumous Oscar. It would not be the first time that the Hollywood Academy remedies its oversights in this way.