Michael Landon
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Image:MichaelLandonB.jpg Michael Landon (October 31, 1936 - July 1, 1991), was an American actor, producer and director. Landon's father, Eli Maurice Orowitz, was a Jewish American and his mother, Peggy O’Neill, was an Irish American Catholic.
Landon was best known for his starring roles in three TV series spanning three decades. In the 1960s he starred as "Little Joe" on Bonanza. In the 1970s and into the 1980s, he starred as Charles Ingalls in Little House On The Prairie and later in Highway to Heaven as an angel, also in the 1980s. Landon also often directed the last two series. He was also a long running co-host (with Kelly Lange) of NBC's popular worldwide broadcast coverage of the annual "Tournament of Roses Parade."
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Early life
Landon was born Eugene Maurice Orowitz in the Queens suburban area of Forest Hills, New York, the younger brother of a sister, Evelyn. He moved with his family to Collingswood, New Jersey in 1941, where his father, Eli Orowitz, accepted a job in working at theater, while his mother, Peggy O'Neill, became a popular comedienne of the 1940s. As a little boy in the 1940s, he would often wet his sheets on the bed, as his disturbed mother would hang them up in the neighborhood in order to shame him. Several years later, it was also at the time while watching the 1949 movie Samson and Delilah that his own obsession with long hair began, and he began to believe he would derive athletic prowess from it.
In high school, Orowitz excelled at track, especially with the javelin. He held the national record for the longest throw by any high school athlete at the time. This earned him an athletic scholarship to USC but could no longer attend after tearing a ligament in his arm. At this point, he started taking small roles and bit parts. He decided his birth name was not appropriate for an aspiring actor, so he changed his name to Michael Landon. He decided on the name by picking it out of a Los Angeles phone book. Before he became an actor, he also took on a number of odd jobs, from working as a gas station attendant to selling blankets door-to-door.
Rebellious young actor
After changing his last name, Landon became one of the more popular and enduring young actors of the late 1950s, after making his first appearance during "The Mystery of Casper Hauser". This part led to other roles, often as a moody, rebellious youth. He guest-starred in such as, Crossroads, "The Rifleman", The Adventures of Jim Bowie, Wire Service, Telephone Time, General Electric Theater, The Court of Last Resort, The Tales of Wells Fargo, among many others. He even starred in a pilot of a TV show that never aired, named "Johnny Risk".
Film career
Landon was discovered by producer Herman Cohen, who cast the young man in his first big role as teenager Tony Rivers in the feature film I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957). Landon also gained exposure as Tom Dooley in the western The Legend of Tom Dooley (1959).
Television career
Bonanza
In 1959, at age 22, Landon had his first starring tv role as Little Joe Cartwright on Bonanza, NBC's answer to Gunsmoke, which was also the first TV series to be in color. Also starring on the show were the late Lorne Greene, Dan Blocker and Pernell Roberts, who is the only surviving cast member of the show. Landon's character was the cocky, mischievous, young brother of the family. He was also cast as a ladies' man and became a TV sex symbol, often appearing shirtless on the show. During Bonanza's first season, it was a smash hit, and by its third season, the show became a powerhouse in the Nielsen ratings, clobbering almost every other television series.
On Bonanza, Landon often performed his own stunts. In 1968, he was also permitted to write and direct episodes. In 1972, after the season finale, his co-star and friend (Dan Blocker) died from a lung clot. Landon was originally intended to write the two part episode based on the character's death, but couldn't do it. During its final season in 1973, Bonanza declined in the ratings and was cancelled that same year.
Landon appeared in all 435 episodes of Bonanza.
Little House on the Prairie
The year after Bonanza was cancelled, Landon went on to star in the pilot of yet another successful western television series called Little House on the Prairie, again for NBC. The show was taken from a 1935 book that was published by Laura Ingalls Wilder, who was played by a then unknown actress Melissa Gilbert. Young Gilbert was the perfect choice to play one of Landon's TV daughters. In addition to Gilbert, Melissa Sue Anderson played Mary Ingalls, the oldest daughter in the Ingalls family, and Karen Grassle also starred as Charles's wife, Caroline Ingalls, and the entire cast shared a close bond with Landon. He even served as Executive Producer, Writer, and Director of the show, making him one of the series' driving forces. In an example of real life echoing what is on screen, his co-star (Melissa Gilbert) spent most of the weekends visiting Landon's family. Though Little House was tremendously popular with viewers, the show was never nominated for any Emmys or Golden Globes. After eight seasons,Little House was cancelled by NBC in 1982. That same year, Landon produced and directed Little House: A New Beginning, for syndication, and the series lasted one year.
Highway to Heaven
After producing both the Father Murphy TV series and a movie, Sam's Son, he then went on to star in another successful television series. On Highway to Heaven, he played Jonathan Smith, a guardian angel whose job consisted of saving various people while he earned his angel wings. His co-star on the show was Victor French (who previously co-starred on Landon's Little House on the Prairie). He played the ex-cop, Mark Gordon. NBC didnt feel the show had a prayer, but it too proved to be another hit for Landon. This was also the first religious fantasy drama series and aired long before Touched by an Angel. On Highway, Landon also served as: Executive Producer, Writer and Director of the show. Though Landon felt that he like writing the best, and acting the least, he continued to act because actors get more money than than writers. On one episode, Ed Asner (of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Lou Grant fame) guest-starred, as well as Dick Van Dyke (of The Dick Van Dyke Show and Diagnosis: Murder fame). By 1985, prior to hiring his son Michael Landon Jr. as the director, he also brought real-life cancer patients to the setas well as with disabled people. He also revamped the classic 1957 movie, I Was a Teenage Werewolf. By its fifth season, Highway took a nose dive in the ratings and at the same time, his co-star (Victor French) had passed away from lung cancer that June. Before the series cancellation in 1989, he even invited his younger daughter Jennifer Landon for the final episode.
Final days
Landon had produced all three of his series for NBC, but after ending Highway, he was let go. He then went to CBS and in 1991 starred in a two hour pilot called Us. This was meant to be another series for Landon, but he was soon diagnosed with pancreatic cancer that had spread to his liver. Landon's last public appearance was on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in May 1991.
A few weeks later, on July 1, 1991, Landon passed away in Malibu, California with his family, children, and colleagues by his side. He was interred in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California.
For his contribution to the television industry, Michael Landon has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1500 N. Vine Street. In 1998, he was inducted posthumously into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.
Family
Image:MichaelLandonHTH.jpg Landon was married three times. His first wife was Dodie Frasier, a legal secretary who was six years his senior. He adopted her son, Mark, and together they adopted another boy. A few years later in 1962, he divorced Dodie to marry (Marjorie) Lynn Noe, a model, who had a young daughter from a previous marriage. Landon treated Noe's daughter like his own child, and he had four more children with Lynn (Leslie, Michael, Jr., Shawna and Christopher). Lynn and Michael were divorced in 1982. Landon later married Cindy Clerico, a makeup artist and stand-in on Little House. Clerico was 21 years his junior. They married in 1983 and had two children, Jennifer (born in 1983) and Sean (born in 1986). (Jennifer has starred as Gwen Norbeck on the soap opera As the World Turns since 2005.)
In 1956, Landon lost his father, Eli Orowitz, to a massive heart attack, while working as a theater manager. In 1973, his eldest daughter, Cheryl was involved in a serious car accident. She was hospitalized in a coma. Three years later in 1976, Cheryl had suffered bouts of depression which lead to an addiction to painkillers. In 1981, just two years, before Landon married Cindy, his mother, Peggy O' Neill, passed away, though Landon wasn't close to her. Like one of his daughters, Peggy had suffered bouts of depression.
His co-star on Little House, Melissa Gilbert, named her son, Michael Garrett Boxleitner (1995), after Landon.
External links
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Categories: 1936 births | 1991 deaths | American television actors | American television directors | American television producers | Character actors | Deaths by pancreatic cancer | Entertainers who died in their 50s | Hollywood Walk of Fame | Irish-American actors | Jewish American actors | Little House on the Prairie | Match Game panelists | People from New Jersey | People from New York