Robert Altman has come a long way since leaving his home town of Kansas City. After serving as a pilot in World War Two, he invented a dog tattoo-registration scheme. Despite Altman somehow managing to persuade President Truman to have his dog tattooed, the rest of the canine world was not so enthusiastic about his innovative approach, and Altman moved on.
His film career started with the Calvin Company in Kansas City, a firm that produced industrial films. By one of those strange coincidences in life, the company was run by the father of Frank Barhydt, his co-scriptwriter on Kansas City.
Eventually, Altman was given the feature break he was looking for, and directed The Delinquents. His debut feature didn't exactly set the film world alight, and the following years found him scripting teleplays for series like Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Combat, in which Kansas City star Jennifer Jason Leigh's father, Vic Morrow, appeared.
It was a decade before he returned to the cinema, and another two years before M.A.S.H., the film that sealed his reputation. The chilling portrait laced with black humour about a US mobile army hospital unit in the Korean War won the 1970 Palme d'Or, and annnounced the arrival of one the US's most challenging and original, not to mention entertaining, filmmakers.
Since then, his career has seen him drift in and out of critical and box-office favour. For every M.A.S.H. and Nashville, there was a Popeye or Buffalo Bill and the Indians to confound both his public and the critics. Notwithstanding, Altman is currently enjoying a higher public profile than ever before, following a string of hits dating back to The Player, which showcased at Cannes in 1992. Altman followed that film with Short Cuts and then the 1994 supermodel/fashion industry extravaganza, Prêt-à-porter. Kansas City looks set to maintain his winning streak.
The film is set in 1934, when a sort of sc