Biography
Frank Barhydt Sr. was born in Minnesota around 1915. He was reared in journalism, and by 1936 was working as a continuity writer-director and later a publicity director for WHB Broadcasting Co. in Kansas City, Missouri. Barhydt Sr.'s colleagues during these years included Kansas City newspaper and radio people such as Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, John Cameron Swayze, and Howard K. Smith, who later became big network news names. In 1942, Barhydt Sr.'s son, Frank Jr., was born. That same year, Frank Sr. gave up his promising career in broadcasting and journalism to devote himself to work at the Calvin Company of Kansas City, then one of the leading producers of industrial and educational short films in America. There, Frank Sr. was seduced by the steady income for twenty-nine years. He was beguiled by a business "where, for the first time, you could see what you'd done and keep looking at it." In 1947, after five years, Frank Sr. was promoted to a position as "head of production," meaning he was in charge of coordinating all productions and crews as well as clients as the studio's operation had grown large enough for this to be required. By 1972, Frank Sr. had supervised the making of several hundred nuts-and-bolts films, although there were some exceptions --- for instance, in the early 1960s, Frank Sr. directed a series of short comedy films on the subject of the industrial film business (such as "Your Name Here") for the entertainment of the attendees of the Calvin Workshops, annual events held in Kansas City by Calvin for the training of other industrial filmmakers. The best years at Calvin had been in the 1950s, when the filmmakers were all young and enthusiastic, and when there was a feeling that this small-pond filmmaking might lead to something bigger and better. Indeed, back in those days, Frank Sr. had helped director Robert Altman, an early Calvin employee, learn the ABCs of filmmaking. Altman later made a feature film, "The Delinquents," in Kansas City, and went on to become one of Hollywood's most important filmmakers. Calvin's business had declined since the 1960s. By 1972, when Frank Sr. retired, the company was no longer at the top, far from its heyday, and it went out of business several years later. However, Barhydt's son, Frank Jr., went on to have great success in Hollywood screenwriting and news reporting. After taking after his father and studying journalism at the University of Kansas during the 1960s, Frank Jr. reported for the Kansas City Star and joined the Associated Press and then moved to Hollywood in the 1971 and for eight years wrote for a health magazine. This experience led him to write the screenplay for Robert Altman's film "Health". Altman and Frank Jr. got along well as collaborators, and also worked on "Quintet" (1979), "Tanner '88" (1988), "The Player" (1992), "Short Cuts" (1993), and "Kansas City" (1996). Both Frank Barhydt Sr. (now 91 years old) and Frank Barhydt Jr. (now 64) live in the Kansas City area today.
