Watch Robert Altman's long-lost short film, Modern Football

As great moviemakers go, Robert Altman was a late bloomer, making his name with his fifth feature film, M*A*S*H, when he was in his mid-forties. But he didn't suddenly appear out of nowhere. Before making his first low-budget movie The Delinquents in 1957 and settling in for years of journeyman work in television, Altman churned out several short industrial films starting in 1949. Most of this stuff is lost to history, but now Altman completists can check out one of his earliest works below, the 1951 Modern Football, an educational sports documentary co-sponsored by Wheaties and Wilson Sporting Goods.