I just saw the movie EdTV, which featured Martin Landau in a big role. He was wonderful, as usual.
It occurred to me that although I consider him a Hollywood fixture and a big star, I don’t really know what he is famous for. An IMDB search wasn’t really very enlightening. I searched here in Cafe Society, and saw several references to a career comeback of sorts, but I’m not really sure what happened.
So, let’s talk about Martin Landau!
Jesus, Green Bean—we’ve already killed David Brinkley and Gregory Peck this week; leave poor Martin alone!
Well, he won an Oscar for Ed Wood.
And let’s not forget Space 1999!
Not to mention Hume Cronyn 
Anyway, Landau’s break after years of struggling along (post “1999”) was in Tucker: A Man and His Dream, I think. He was great in that, too; nominated for an Oscar, I think.
And Mission: Impossible
I first saw him and his then-wife Barbara Bain on the 60s TV show Mission: Impossible when I was a wee tot. He also had a role on an episode of The Twilight Zone
The movie roles I remember him most in, besides Ed Wood, are the gay assassin in Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest and as the murderous eye doctor in Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors.
Interstingly, IMDB shows that Landau’s first movie role was in Pork Chop Hill which starred. . . Gregory Peck .
Dang. That’s a lot.
Peter Graves (As Mission: Impossible leader Jim Phelps) addresses disguise expert Rollin Hand (Played by Martin Landau): Okay, Rollin, now for this next assignment, you’re going to have to look like Bela Lugosi…
Yeah, I think it was the “Mission: Impossible” role that really made him a noticeable personality. In one episode of “Get Smart,” Max goes undercover in disquise, and he is made up to look like Martin Landau (actually played by Landau). The Chief says something like, “I don’t know if you really want a Martin Landau disguise.” Later he was on “Space: 1999” (maybe he likes TV series with colons) for three seasons. His only real dry spot seems to be in the mid-70s to about 1980 where his credits are mainly “Space: 1999” “movies” patched together from the series. His 1980 potboiler/turkey “Without Warning,” in which he plays a shell-shocked vet called “Sarge,” is somewhat notable in that it features a very young David Caruso and the *plot would be repeated several years later in a much bigger movie.
*The plot involves an alien who has come to Earth to do some trophy hunting among the local populace. The same actor–Kevin Peter Hall–played the alien in “Without Warning” and later in “Predator.” (They don’t share any writing credits, so apparently the plot similarity is just coincidence.)
I was totally addicted to Mission: Impossible and Space: 1999 as a kid and I think Martin Landau is amazing. He was just incredible as Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood. He played twins in a terrific Columbo episode, one of the only times you see Columbo really flummoxed (although he recovered nicely).
Ed Wood is definitely worth renting. Landau and Johnny Depp–perfect together.
Stupidity is not a religion.–manhattan
Manny, if you’re going to be like that, I’m not letting you in the Pyramid of Protection.–Captain Amazing
…and talent apparently runs in the family. His very beautiful daughter, Juliet, is best-known for her scene-stealing role as Drucilla on Buffy: The Vampire Slayer.
I loved him in the original run of “Mission: Impossible” (the superior Stephen Hill version, not the Peter Graves one). Trivia: Martin never starred in “Mission: Impossible.” Due to contract issues, he was a “Special Guest Star” every week. Roland Hand was supposed to be a guest star in the first episode, but they liked the character and kept him (I believe there even was an episode the first year where he didn’t appear).
Space: 1999 hurt his credibility badly and he didn’t recover credibility until “Tucker: A Man and His Dream” got him an Oscar nomination. Since then, he’s been recognized as one of the best character actors in Hollywood (just saw him this weekend in “The Majestic” – very good, as usual).
Between Tucker & Ed Wood, I liked him as the President in By Dawn’s Early Light.
The most impressive thing to me about him is that he pulled off one of the most stellar comebacks in movie history. He went from “bright young newcomer” friend of James Dean in youth to campy sci-fi series in middle age, then the bottom really fell out and he was doing “Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan’s Island” and godawful made for TV horror schlock (like FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER, where Charlene Tilton literally screams “Eeeek!” in one scene) to the ultimate nadir of nadirs for a name actor: dinner theater with his then wife Barbara Bain. (In one interview I read, he described a sign over the dinner theater dressing room door which read " Don’t Worry- They’re Mainly Here for the Roast Beef Anyway").
Then in his late fifties and sixties he came back with a vengeance, was cast in several Woody Allen films, and ironically won an Oscar for playing the ultimate has-been-turned-to-horror-schlock actor. He’s now more in demand than ever. Way to go Marty!
He was hysterical in Meteor, but then, most of that movie was. (Albeit unintentionally so.)
Aha! This might be the missing information that I’m looking for! Please elaborate.
Nothing too much to elaborate on, really. They were both struggling actors in NYC in the 50s and hit it off in a platonic buddy sort of way. The most recent movie bio of James Dean even included him as a character. (The “actress” Maila Nurmi, best known as Vampira [for that matter, ONLY known as Vampira] claims to have been involved with both of them.)
“We took a walk that first day, and there was a building going up near Sixth Avenue, and we virtually became sidewalk superintendents by barking orders to people. And we proceeded to go over to Rockefeller Center where there was a young girl skating, and we applauded her and she did her command performance. Our minds, our ability to fantasize, and our ability to communicate was kind of an instant thing. I had an amazingly instant rapport with him, and as a result we became friends immediately. He used to come out to my house, my parents’ house in Queens, and my little nephews adored him. [We had] Christmases and Thanksgivings [together]. We were sort of a surrogate family.”
…Martin Landau
On their first meeting
Landau adamantly denies Dean was gay, incidentally, and refuses to grant any interviews about him because he’s had his words twisted in the past to imply Dean was a rent-boy opportunist. If you’ve ever seen ALF, the neighbor lady was played by Liz Sheridan (who also played Jerry’s mom on SEINFELD), who was a good friend of Landau’s and claims to have been Dean’s lover for years (though she didn’t make the comment until long after Dean was dead).
Another platonic member of Dean and Landau’s circle, incidentally, was Elizabeth Montgomery (later of BEWITCHED).
Liz Sheridan
To reactivate a 12 year old thread, the big thing about Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, his wife at the time, was the “Mission Impossible” contract squabble. Landau was on it for two years as a “guest star” and won awards and fame. Since he didn’t have a formal multi year contract, he asked the studio for a big raise. They refused, so he left. Bain, whose character was also popular, supported him by leaving also. Thing was, she had a contract, the studio sued her and won money. It almost certainly put them on the “do not hire for big roles” blacklist.
They had the syndicated “Space 1999” sci fi show in mid 1970s, helping to sell the show with a bunch of foreigners, in the U.S. market. Apparently they had enough pull to make changes for the second season but when profits declined in the second year, Sir Lew Grade pulled the plug.
As Sampiro says, things got dire. Dreadful films such as robots playing the Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan’s Island. Bain and Landau ultimately divorced in 1993 after 36 years of marriage. But Landau did have an impressive resurgence late in his career
I don’t have a cite handy, but I believe Landau was considered for the role of Spock on TOS.
Ironically, Leonard Nimoy joined the cast of Mission Impossible after Landau bailed, playing a similar master-of-disguise character.
If IMdB will suffice, here’s one:
In 1963, Landau played memorable roles on two episodes of the science-fiction anthology series The Outer Limits (1963), “The Bellero Shield” and “The Man Who Was Never Born”. He was Gene Roddenberry’s first choice to play Mr. Spock on Star Trek (1966), but the role went to Leonard Nimoy, who later replaced Landau on Mission: Impossible (1966), the show that really made Landau famous. He originally was not meant to be a regular on the series, which co-starred his wife Barbara Bain, whom he had married in 1957. His character, Rollin Hand, was supposed to make occasional, though recurring appearances, on Mission: Impossible (1966), but when the producers had problems with star Steven Hill, Landau was used to take up the slack. Landau’s characterisation was so well-received and so popular with the audience that he was made a regular. Landau received Emmy nominations as Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for each of the three seasons he appeared. In 1968, he won the Golden Globe award as Best Male TV Star.
He also had the memorable cameo at the beginning of Tim Burton’s “Sleepy Hollow,” as the Headless Horseman’s first victim. By the time you decide it’s him, he’s gone.
