Altman Page #2

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He just wanted me to be happy.

Soon after we were married we had Bobby.

We bought a house, it was a great house

and we had lots and lots of parties.

Bob loved to throw a party.

I started in "Bonanza"

and "The Roaring 20's"

and a lot of those series.

And I became one of the

top television directors.

The more television he did

the more he realized all these

TV scripts he was given

were just the same old

thing over, and over.

A'.

By the time he was doing "Combat"

he tried to use his own

experience in the war

to make the show more true to life.

He did one episode where Vic

Morrow was shell-shocked,

but that got him into trouble.

Joey?

Medic!

That's my brother, my brother Joey.

And he's, he's dead.

It's all my fault.

Geeze is this guy out of it.

Walking down the road

carrying a dead German

and thinking it's his brother.

A man named Selig Seligman

produced that series

and he forbade me to make that.

He said I don't want you to do that.

Then he went out of town and...

and, uh,

I didn't have a decent script

to go in with and so we did it.

And when he saw it I was fired.

And to edit the show the

editor would come...

there was a bar there over there

on... on Washington Boulevard,

over by MGM.

I would go sit in the bar

and Vic Morrow would go to the editor

and then come and sit with me

and he says here's what he's doing.

I said well tell him do 'so

and so' and 'so and so'.

Then Vic would go back and...

And then that episode got

quite a bit of attention.

I think it won an Emmy.

He continued to push for more realism

in all of his shows, but the

producers wouldn't go for it.

In an episode of "Kraft Suspense Theater"

he wanted to cast the black

actor as a convict on the run.

And when the sponsor refused

the idea of a black character

he quit television and

bad-mouthed the sponsor.

I felt I had just done all

I could do in television,

and I felt I'd better leave.

What does Altmanesque mean?

Playing the long shot.

After burning his bridges in television,

Bob wanted to write and

direct his own films.

He thought that would give

him more creative freedom.

Around that time we adopted

Matthew and our family grew.

But we were running out of money.

When you have six children

and can't pay the milkman,

that's pretty bad.

It was our fifth anniversary and

he told me for our anniversary

we're flying to Las Vegas for the weekend,

so get ready.

I'm just going to run out to the racetrack

and I'll meet you at the airport at six.

Later, I found out he had

our last $200 in his pocket

and he'd bet it all on a

twenty-to-one long shot

and he won.

When we landed in Las Vegas he

went directly to the craps table

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