Martin James Landau[2] (/ˈlændaʊ/; June 20, 1928 – July 15, 2017) was an American actor, acting coach, producer, and editorial cartoonist. His career began in the 1950s, with early film appearances including a supporting role in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959). His career breakthrough came with leading roles in the television series Mission: Impossible (1966–1969) and Space: 1999 (1975–1977).
Landau was born on June 20, 1928, in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Selma (née Buchman) and Morris Landau.[5] His family was Jewish. His father was an Austrian-born machinist who tried to rescue relatives from the Nazis.[6]
After attending both James Madison High School and Pratt Institute,[7] he found work at the New York Daily News. There he spent the next five years as an editorial cartoonist and worked alongside Gus Edson to produce the comic strip The Gumps.[8][9][10] He quit the Daily News when he was 22 to concentrate on theater acting. "I told the picture editor I was going into the theater," he recalled. "I think he thought I was going to be an usher."[11]
Influenced by Charlie Chaplin and the escapism of the cinema, Landau pursued an acting career.[13] He attended the Actors Studio, becoming good friends with James Dean. He recalled, "James Dean was my best friend. We were two young would-be and still-yet-to-work unemployed actors, dreaming out loud and enjoying every moment... We'd spend lots of time talking about the future, our craft and our chances of success in this newly different, ever-changing modern world we were living in."[14][13]
Landau in his role as Rollin Hand in Mission: Impossible
Landau played the supporting role of master of disguise Rollin Hand in the first three seasons of the US television series Mission: Impossible, from 1966 to 1969. Landau at first declined to be contracted by the show because he did not want it to interfere with his film career; instead, he was credited for "special guest appearances" during the first season.[16] He became a full-time cast member in the second season, although the studio agreed to Landau's request, to contract him only on a year-by-year basis rather than the then-standard five years.[17] The role of Hand required Landau to perform a wide range of accents and characters, from dictators to thugs, and several episodes had him playing dual roles—not only Hand's impersonation, but also the person whom Hand is impersonating.[18] In the series Landau acted alongside his then-wife Barbara Bain,[17] who won an Emmy for her performances each year for all three years. He was replaced by Leonard Nimoy, playing a very similar role but not exactly the same character, for the next two seasons of the series after Landau and Bain left the show.
In 1973, Landau guest-starred in the Columbo episode Double Shock alongside Peter Falk. Landau plays twin brothers involved in the murder of their rich uncle. The episode also costarred Dabney Coleman, Julie Newmar, and Jeanette Nolan.
In the mid-1970s, Landau and Bain returned to TV in the British science-fiction series Space: 1999 produced by Gerry Anderson in partnership with Sylvia Anderson, and later with Fred Freiberger.[19] Critical response to Space: 1999 was unenthusiastic during its original run, and it was cancelled after two seasons.[20] Landau was critical of the scripts and storylines, especially during the series' second season, but praised the cast and crew.[19] He later wrote forewords to Space: 1999 co-star Barry Morse's theatrical memoir Remember with Advantages (2006) and Jim Smith's critical biography of Tim Burton.[21] Following Space: 1999, Landau appeared in supporting roles in a number of films and TV series. He appeared in low-budget genre pictures, such as the science fiction films Without Warning (1981) and The Being (1983) or the horror film Alone in the Dark (1982). He appeared in roles in, among others, the TV film The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island (1981), which co-starred Bain in their final on-screen appearance together.[22]
1988-1995: Career resurgence and Oscar win
In the late 1980s, Landau made a career comeback, earning an Academy Award nomination for his role in Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988).[20] He said he was grateful to the film's director, Francis Ford Coppola, for the opportunity to play a role he enjoyed: "I've spent a lot of time playing roles that didn't really challenge me," he said. "You want roles that have dimension. The role of Abe Karatz gave me that."[8] He won the Golden Globe Award for his part in the film.[8]
In 1989, Landau appeared in Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) The film is split into two stories: one humorous, one dark in nature. Landau starred in the darker storyline as Judah Rosenthal, a successful ophthalmologist who tries to prevent his mistress, played by Anjelica Huston, from revealing their affair to his wife (Claire Bloom). Landau's character confides his worries to patient and rabbi Sam Waterston as well as his mobster brother Jerry Orbach. Allen remembered of the cast that:
I just couldn't find anybody good for the part of Judah... He read it, and he was completely natural. It's an interesting thing. Of all the actors I've ever worked with, he gives expression to my dialogue exactly as I hear it. His colloquialisms, his idiom, his inflection is exactly correct. So of all the people who've ever read my lines, he makes them correct every time... One of the reasons for this must be that Martin Landau came from my neighborhood in Brooklyn, right near where I lived, only a few blocks away.[23]
The film received critical acclaim, with Roger Ebert giving the film four stars, writing, "The movie generates the best kind of suspense, because it's not about what will happen to people—it's about what decisions they will reach. We have the same information they have. What would we do? How far would we go to protect our happiness and reputation? How selfish would we be? Is our comfort worth more than another person's life? Allen does not evade this question, and his answer seems to be, yes, for some people, it would be."[24] Landau received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for this performance, losing to Denzel Washington in Glory.
He won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Ed Wood (1994), a biopic in which Landau plays actor Bela Lugosi. Landau researched the role of Lugosi by watching many old Lugosi movies and studying Lugosi's Hungarian accent, which contributed to Lugosi's decline in acting. "I began to respect this guy and pity him," said Landau. "I saw the humor in him. This, for me, became a love letter to him, because he never got a chance to get out of that. I got a chance to make a comeback in my career. And I'm giving him one. I'm giving him the last role he never got."[25]
Landau provided the voice of Scorpion for the first two seasons of the 1990s Spider-Man television series.[26] Landau left the series after two seasons when he won the Academy Award and lacked time for the series; Richard Moll was recast as Scorpion.[27]
He played a supporting role in The Majestic (2001), starring Jim Carrey. The film received mostly negative reviews, although one reviewer wrote that "the lone outpost of authenticity is manned by Martin Landau, who gives a heartfelt performance," as an aging father who believes that his missing son has returned from World War II.[29]
In the early seasons of Without a Trace (2002–2009), Landau was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for his portrayal of the Alzheimer's-afflicted father of FBI Special Agent in Charge Jack Malone, the series' lead character.[20] In 2006, he made a guest appearance in the series Entourage as Bob Ryan, a washed-up but determined and sympathetic Hollywood producer attempting to relive his glory days, a portrayal that earned him a second Emmy nomination.[20]
Landeau appeared in The Aryan Couple (2004 film), in which he played Joseph Krauzenberg, a very wealthy Hungarian Jewish industrial tycoon.
Landau married actress and former co-star Barbara Bain on January 31, 1957. They had two daughters, Susan and Juliet. Landau and Bain divorced in 1993.[32]
Welsh, James Michael; Phillips, Gene D.; Hill, Rodney (2010). The Francis Ford Coppola Encyclopedia. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. ISBN978-0810876507.
Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó, known professionally as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian–American actor, best remembered for portraying Count Dracula in the 1931 horror classic Dracula, Ygor in Son of Frankenstein (1939) and his roles in many other horror films from 1931 through 1956.
Eugene Allen Hackman is an American retired actor and novelist. In a career that spanned more than six decades, Hackman won two Academy Awards, four Golden Globes, one Screen Actors Guild Award, two BAFTAs, and one Silver Bear.
Heywood "Woody" Allen is an American filmmaker, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades. Allen has received many accolades, including the most nominations for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, with 16. He has won four Academy Awards, nine BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globe Awards and a Grammy Award, as well as nominations for a Emmy Award and a Tony Award. Allen was awarded the Directors Guild of America Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995, an Honorary Golden Lion in 1995, the BAFTA Fellowship in 1997, an Honorary Palme d'Or in 2002, and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2014. Two of his films have been inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".
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Barbara Bain is an American actress. She is best known for her role as Cinnamon Carter on the action television series Mission: Impossible (1966–1969), which earned her three Primetime Emmy Awards, as well as a Golden Globe Award nomination. She also starred as Dr. Helena Russell on the British-Italian coproduction science-fiction television series Space: 1999 (1975–1977). Bain has also appeared in the films Animals with the Tollkeeper (1998), Panic (2000), Forget Me Not (2009) and On the Rocks (2020).
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Martin Landau (1928–2017) was an American film and television actor. On television, Landau's most notable roles were that of Rollin Hand in Mission: Impossible (1966–1969) and as Commander John Koenig in the science fiction series Space: 1999 (1975–1977). On film, Landau appeared in notable films such as North by Northwest (1959), Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988) and Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989).
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