June 6, 1959 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0001IN0PS?ie=UTF8&tag=doc06-20&link... http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.com/
Robert Bernard Altman (February 20, 1925 -- November 20, 2006) was an American film director known for making films that are highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective. In 2006, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his body of work with an Academy Honorary Award.
His films MASH, Nashville and McCabe and Mrs. Miller have been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
In 1969 Altman was offered the script for MASH, an adaptation of a little-known Korean War-era novel satirizing life in the armed services, which had already been passed over by over a dozen other filmmakers. Altman agreed to direct the project, and though production was so tumultuous that stars Elliot Gould and Donald Sutherland even attempted to have Altman fired over his unorthodox filming methods, MASH was widely hailed as an immediate classic upon its 1970 release. It won the Grand Prix for the Best Film at the 1970 Cannes Film Festival and netted six Academy Award nominations. It was also Altman's highest grossing film. Now recognized as a major talent, Altman's career took firm hold with the success of MASH, and he followed it with other critical breakthroughs such as McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), The Long Goodbye (1973), Thieves Like Us (1974) and Nashville (1975), which made the distinctive, experimental "Altman style" well known.
As a director, Altman favored stories showing the interrelationships between several characters; he stated that he was more interested in character motivation than in intricate plots. As such, he tended to sketch out only a basic plot for the film, referring to the screenplay as a "blueprint" for action, and allowed his actors to improvise dialogue. This is one of the reasons Altman was known as an actor's director, a reputation that helped him work with large casts of well-known actors.
He frequently allowed the characters to talk over each other in such a way that it is difficult to make out what each of them is saying. He noted on the DVD commentary of McCabe & Mrs. Miller that he lets the dialogue overlap, as well as leaving some things in the plot for the audience to infer, because he wants the audience to pay attention. He used a headset to make sure everything pertinent comes through without attention being drawn unto it. Similarly, he tried to have his films rated R (by the MPAA rating system) so as to keep children out of his audience -- he did not believe children have the patience his films require. This sometimes spawned conflict with movie studios, who do want children in the audience for increased revenues.
Altman made films that no other filmmaker and/or studio would. He was reluctant to make the original 1970 Korean War comedy MASH because of the pressures involved in filming it, but it still became a critical success. It would later inspire the long-running TV series of the same name. In 1975, Altman made Nashville, which had a strong political theme set against the world of country music. The stars of the film wrote their own songs; Keith Carradine won an Academy Award for the song "I'm Easy".
The way Altman made his films initially didn't sit well with audiences. In 1970, following the release of MASH, he attempted to expand his artistic freedom by founding Lion's Gate Films (which has no relation to today's Canada/U.S.-based entertainment company Lionsgate). The films he made for the company include Brewster McCloud, A Wedding, 3 Women, and Quintet.
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Sam Bass - Tales of Wells Fargoby 19JAP542,295 views
This was a syndicated series (the sequel to John Bromfield's earlier "syndie", "SHERIFF OF COCHISE"- here, his character of Frank Morgan is a U.S. Marshal). This was actually the 25th episode of season two [initially seen on local stations around March of 1960], as the series originally appeared from 1958 through 1960.
fromthesidelines 1 year ago