Martin Landau

Martin Landau was an American actor famous for portraying master of disguise Rollin Hand in Mission Impossible, and Commander John Koenig in Space: 1999. His career reached it's peak in 1994 with the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for the film Ed Wood, and consolidated his position as a character actor.

Biography
Landau's father emigrated from his home, near Salzberg, Austria, when he was 12. Landau himself grew up in a poor, tough neighbourhood of varied European immigrants. He initially studied art at the Pratt Institute and the Art Students League in New York. At 17 he joined the New York Daily News as a staff artist, drawing caricatures for a column, and a cartoonist, assisting Gus Edson on his strip 'The Gumps'. Though the job was well paid and secure he decided after five years that he did not want to spend the rest of his life with the paper. He left to become a comedy writer and then a solo comic in a night club.

In the early 1950s television was expanding and he found many acting roles, generally as juvenile delinquents. He started to train as an actor, taking summer stock work, plays, "little theatre" groups, and drama classes for three years.

He then joined Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio: Landau and Steve McQueen were the only two out of 2000 others accepted that year. He gained prominent roles in New York plays, including Chekov's Uncle Varya and Franz Werfel's Goat Song. He began teaching drama classes, and while assisting Curt Conway in 1955 he met his future wife, Barbara Bain. She had just come from a modelling assignment and Landau initially thought her vain and vacuous, while she thought him arrogant and scruffy. However, at a party a fortnight later they met and reversed their former opinions, and thereafter became inseparable. A year and a half later, on 31st January 1957, they married in the New York City Hall, and on 10th February 1957 they married again in a religious ceremony.

Prompted by Bain to improvise Curt Conway's role in the current hit Broadway play Middle Of The Night, his interpretation impressed writer Paddy Chayefsky and he was awarded the role when it became available three months later. Landau acted on Broadway with Edward G Robinson, then went with the play on a six month tour of 16 cities in the U.S. and Canada. Bain also had a minor role, so the tour served as a honeymoon for them. The tour ended in Los Angeles, where Alfred Hitchcock saw him and gave him his film debut in North By Northwest (1959). He also appeared in the film Pork Chop Hill (59), and the Landaus made Los Angeles their home.

He appeared in several prominent film roles, some to critical praise, such as Cleopatra (62), The Hallelujah Trail (65), The Greatest Story Ever Told (65), They Call Me Mister Tibbs (1970), and as the title role in Welcome Home Johnny Bristol (1971). He also took guest roles in much television: The Twilight Zone (episodes Mr Denton on Doomsday, 1959, The Jeopardy Room, 1964), Wagon Train (60), The Untouchables (61), Bonanza (61), The Outer Limits (episodes The Man Who Was Never Born, 1963, The Bellero Shield, 1964), Alfred Hitchcock Presents (64), The Wild Wild West (65), Gunsmoke (66). He was offered the role of Illya in The Man From Uncle but he was not interested, though he appeared in the episode The Bat Cave Affair (1965).

In 1965 he was offered the role of Spock in Star Trek, but Landau rejected this for the part of a master of disguise in Mission: Impossible. This role was created for him by series creator Bruce Geller and was originally named "Martin Land", though this became "Rollin Hand". He played alongside his wife as Cinnamon Carter for three seasons, some 80 episodes, before leaving in 1968 when Paramount took over production and the standards of the scripts were in decline. He was in the 1970 Italian comedy Operation Snafu (aka Rosolino Paterno, soldato) in which he fell from a horse and hurt his back, an injury that caused him problems the rest of his life. In the early 1970s he starred in Joseph Stefano's pilot Haunted and another pilot Savage (1973), directed by Steven Spielberg and also starring Bain, and guest starred as twins in an episode of Columbo (1973). He turned down the leads for the series High Chaparral and, with Bain, McMillan and Wife, but in 1973 they both accepted the roles of Koenig and Helena in Space: 1999.

Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and Abe Mandell had a series of three interviews with them in California in early 1973. Though the project was shelved from April to August, Landau and Bain moved with their two daughters from their Beverly Hills home (a Tudor style house built in 1922, the former Harvey Mudd Estate, called by the Landaus "Sous Les Arbres") to London in October 1973. They stayed first in Little Venice, near Regent's Canal, and then in a fashionable Georgian square in Belgravia.

Director Val Guest reported ""Martin was having terrible problems with Barbara at the time."" After the series finished in December 1976 the Landaus returned to California. They were separated in the early 1980s and divorced in 1993.

Subsequently Landau appeared in a number of B-movies, including Strange Shadows In An Empty Room (1977), Meteor (1979), Fall Of The House Of Usher (1979), The Being (1980), The Return (1980), Without Warning (1980), Alone In The Dark (1982), Access Code (1984), Cyclone (1986) and the British film Empire State (1987). He also appeared in the TV movies The Harlem Globetrotters On Gilligan's Island (1981 with Bain), Trial By Terror (1985), The Kung Fu Movie (1986) and The Return Of The Six Million Dollar Man And The Bionic Woman (1987). He guested in the series The Twilight Zone (episode The Beacon, 1985), Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1987), and Beauty And The Beast (1988). He was well received starring in a touring play Dracula (1984-85).

In 1989 Landau's role in the film Tucker (1988) earned him a Golden Globe award for best supporting actor, and an Oscar nomination in the same category. Subsequently he appeared in Woody Allen's Crimes & Misdemeanours (1989), earning another Oscar nomination. Later films included Paint It Black (1989), The Color Of Evening (1990). He also appeared in the tv movies The Neon Empire (1989), Max and Helen (1990), The Grand Tour (1990), By Dawn's Early Light (1990). He finally earned an Oscar for best supporting actor for Ed Wood (1994) and was famously cut off in his acceptance speech. His new prestige earned him parts in many major movies and TV miniseries. Highlights include: Pinocchio (1996) (and reprised in the New Adventures of Pinocchio (1999)), City Hall (1996), the X-Files movie (1998), Ed-TV (1999), Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow (1999), Very Mean Men (2000), Ready To Rumble (2000), Shiner (2000), Very Mean Men (2000), Joyriders (2000), Haven (miniseries, 2000), In The Beginning (miniseries, 2000), The Majestic (2001). Hollywood Homicide (2003). The Commission (2003). He guest starred in the TV series Without a Trace in 2004, earning his third Emmy award nomination, and reprised the role in two further episodes in 2005. In 2006 he was in the short lived series The Evidence, his first regular TV role since Space: 1999. He earned his fourth Emmy award nomination for his recurring role in the series Entourage (2006, 2008, playing a character inspired by producer Robert Evans, who sued the show for defamation). He was a voice in the animated film 9 (2009), the TV series The Simpsons (2010), and Tim Burton's film Frankenweenie (2012)

Space 1999
Landau was brought up on Jules Verne and H.G.Wells books and reads Asimov and Bradbury science fiction. Around the time of filming, Landau was 1.9 m (6'3") tall and weighed 84 kg (185 lbs). His hair was dark brown, his eyes blue.

He says of Space: 1999 ""It was a much better show than people realise. We hit some, we missed some, we tried things."" He admits he preferred the first series. ""I felt that it would grow. Episodes like the Christopher Lee show (Earthbound), The Black Sun and War Games were ones with ideas and integrity. Freddie Freiberger helped in some respects, but overall I don't think he helped the show. I think he brought a much more ordinary, mundane approach to the series. Space 1999 had a style of its own, a feel of its own, a look of its own, that would have grown if it had been left alone. It needed time and wasn't given that time. They rushed the process. If the format hadn't been changed, I know it would have been a hit."" He has said he would have done a third series if it returned to the first season format, but not if Freiberger was involved.

Landau was popular with cast and crew. Johnny Byrne commented ""Martin and Barbara were highly intelligent, invariably courteous to all and generous to a fault. They were a joy to work with."" Director Val Guest was one of the few who had difficulties with Landau. ""Martin had got an idea into his head as to how he should play his part, and anything I tried to do to goose him up was a bit of a strain for him.""

Landau was a guest at the 1978, 1986, 1992 and 2012 Spave: 1999 conventions in the U.S. He appeared in The Space: 1999 Documentary (1996). He was a guest at the DragonCon 2011 convention in the U.S. and Autographica 2012 in the UK. Martin Landau and Mark Spalding, October 3, 2009