Dedication to craft remained undimmed
MARTIN Landau, who died recently, aged 89, was an Oscarwinning veteran who appeared in classic films such as Tim Burton’s Ed Wood and Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest and starred in the Mission: Impossible television series in the 1960s.
He won his Academy Award for his portrayal of washedup Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood.
Throughout his prolific career, the tall, lean actor remained enthusiastic about his craft, which saw him inhabit roles that included a master spy, space commander, former Hollywood heavyweights, the prophet Abraham and a wheelchairbound Holocaust survivor.
Landau’s dedication was apparent during his tenure as coartistic director for Actors Studio West with Oscarnominated director Mark Rydell. He recently starred in the CBS police procedural Without a Trace, playing a man with Alzheimer’s disease, and HBO’s Entourage, playing bumbling film producer Bob Ryan.
Born in Brooklyn in 1928, Landau began his career as a newspaperman at age 17, working for five years at the New York Daily News as a staff cartoonist and illustrator while studying at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. After five years at the News, Landau suddenly quit to try his hand at acting.
Landau had few job prospects and lived off his savings as he made the rounds. He was hired for a summer stock company on an island off Portland, Maine, did 12 shows — including musicals — in 13 weeks and had a great time.
While living in New York in the
1950s, he fraternised with pal James Dean and competed for roles with the likes of Sydney Pollack and John Cassavetes.
‘‘I would meet them in offices and waiting rooms before readings,’’ he said.
Shifting to theatre, Landau auditioned with 2000 other actors for Lee Strasberg’s prestigious Actors Studio in 1955. Only he and a young Steve McQueen were accepted.
He made his film debut in Pork Chop Hill (1959), but few can forget his breakout role as Leonard, the villainous henchman stalking Cary
Grant in Hitchcock’s classic thriller North by Northwest (1959).
Landau became wildly popular for his role as Rollin Hand, the ‘‘man of a million faces’’ sleuth on the 1960s hit series Mission: Impossible with thenwife Barbara Bain. The actor was not meant to be a regular on the show but became so popular that he went on to receive Emmy nominations for each of the three seasons in which he appeared, and in 1968 won a Golden Globe for male TV star.
He quit the show in a contract dispute and went on to costar with Bain in Britain’s shortlived scifi drama Space: 1999. The couple had two daughters together — actress and ballerina Juliet Landau and producer Susan Landau — before they divorced.
He spent a year working on Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 1963 epic Cleopatra, playing the loyal righthand man to Julius Caesar (Rex Harrison) and Marc Antony (Richard Burton). When the film marked its 50th anniversary in 2013, Landau recalled the monumentally mediocre movie’s other headlining scandal: Elizabeth Taylor’s adulterous affair with Burton.
TV curse aside, Landau went on to play numerous roles in film, including the wheelerdealer Abe Karatz in Francis Ford Coppola’s Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988), for which he was nominated for an Oscar and won a Golden Globe for supporting actor. On
Tucker, he put his old illustrating skills to work, drawing a sketch for makeup man Richard Dean of how he thought Abe ought to look. Dean and Coppola agreed.
The next year, he was lauded for his role as the philandering Judah Rosenthal, the doctor who has his mistress murdered and gets away with it, in Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), and was nominated for his second consecutive supporting actor Oscar.
But after the Oscar nods, the ‘‘good, good parts’’ for late 50s and early 60something actors came his way. However, many of his pay cheques came from cheap, directtovideo movies and overseas television.
Which, coincidentally, was one of the reasons why director Tim Burton wanted him to play morphineaddicted Dracula star Lugosi in 1994’s Ed Wood, starring Johnny Depp as the memorably inept, lowbudget filmmaker Edward D. Wood jun (Landau’s daughter Juliet also appeared in the film).
The 63yearold Landau played the ageing 1930s star as a feisty old man crippled by a profound sadness.
For the role, Landau finally won the supporting actor Oscar and his third Golden Globe Award. During his Oscar speech, he hit the podium and shouted ‘‘No!’’ when the orchestra attempted to truncate his speech. He also received
top honours from the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics for his performance.
He followed up his Oscar win playing woodcarver Gepetto in 1995’s The Adventures of Pinocchio, which landed a sequel in 1999. He also voiced Woodrow Wilson in the miniseries 19141918, Scorpion in the animated SpiderMan series and reunited with Tim Burton in 2012 to voice science teacher Mr Rzykruski in Frankenweenie.
In 1998, he starred in Rounders, playing poker hustler Matt Damon’s professormentor, mirroring his reallife role with young film talent — Ed Wood also laid the foundation of his friendships with Depp and Burton.
In 2000, Landau, who was of Jewish descent, played Abraham, father of the Israelites, in In the Beginning, which chronicled the biblical books of Genesis and Exodus.
After a few TV movies, he took on meatier small screen roles in The Evidence. In Without a Trace he played Frank Malone, Jack’s (Anthony LaPaglia) Alzheimer’s riddled father from 2004 to 2009. He also found a new audience playing the memorably out of touch producer Bob Ryan, a parody of legendary Chinatown and Godfather producer Robert Evans, in HBO’s Entourage series and subsequent film.
Landau is survived by daughters Juliet Landau and Susan Landau Finch. — Los Angeles Times