Nashville: Putting on the Show

Abstract

Robert Altman's career can stand as the epitome of the direction the American Cinema in the 1970s might have taken — but did not. After an especially “long march” from industrial filmmaking in Kansas City to Bonanza ‐type television work, a break on Alfred Hitchcock Presents and a worthy but unappreciated attempt at making an “outside the box” Hollywood film ( That Cold Day in the Park , 1969), the enormous success of M * A * S * H (1970) promised Altman a degree of control that until then was barely thinkable within the American film industry. It seemed to predestine him to play a leading role in transforming the moribund studio system into a leaner, more dynamic and more responsive “New Hollywood” for the post‐Vietnam era and generation.