MARTIN LANDAU

16 Jul

(20 June 1928 - 15 July 2017)

The first job that the American actor Martin Landau, who has died at the age of 89, had was as a cartoonist on the New York Daily News. By 1951, however, he was determined to take up acting. His stage debut was in Detective Story in Maine, followed by the Broadway production of First Love. Out of two thousand applicants he, along with Steve McQueen, managed to get into Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio. From 1953 Landau appeared in many TV western shows as well as playing John the Baptist in Salome. In 1959 he was in three films, Pork Chop Hill, The Gazebo and North by Northwest, the last from Hitchcock and the film in which Landau made the most impression as Leonard, the ‘friend’ of the villainous James Mason character, who Landau decided should be gay. A lot more television followed until Joseph L. Mankiewicz cast him as Rufio in Cleopatra. Other films included Decision at Midnight, The Hallelujah Trail, The Greatest Story Ever Told (as Caiaphas), Nevada Smith (with Steve McQueen) and They Call Me Mister Tibbs, among many others. By then Landau had gained popularity as Rollin Hand in the TV series Mission: Impossible (1966-69) and later another series, Space: 1999, kept him busy with his then wife Barbara Bain. Landau rarely stopped working but his better films were Francis Ford Coppola’s Tucker: The Man and His Dream (Oscar-nominated), Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors (Oscar-nominated) and Tim Burton’s Ed Wood for which Landau, brilliant as Bela Lugosi, won his only Academy Award. Landau was working right to the end of his life, and there are still two more features of his to come. He and Barbara Bain have two daughters, film producer Susan and actress Juliet.

MICHAEL DARVELL

Michael Darvell

Michael Darvell trained as a librarian at Watford and in Surrey before joining Ealing Libraries where he became Music Librarian for the borough. He edited Masthead, the magazine of the University of North London School of Librarianship, The Surrealist, the staff magazine of Surrey County Library, and contributed to the Assistant Librarian and London Librarian professional journals. A freelance film reviewer since 1970, he has written for Film, Films Illustrated, Film Review, Movie Maker and Radio Times, as well as editing Montage, the London film societies magazine, for ten years. A change of career saw him joining What’s On in London as Features Editor and he eventually stepped into the shoes of the late F. Maurice Speed (founding father of Film Review annual) as the magazine’s Editor. From 2007 to 2015, he was co-editor of the Film Review annual with Mansel Stimpson. As well as writing about films, Michael has reviewed theatre for The Stage newspaper, and has written about music theatre and cabaret for the Classical Source and Musical Theatre Review websites. He is also a former restaurant critic for the ViewLondon website. Michael has been a member of the London Film Critics’ Circle since 2005.

MARTIN LANDAU

PAMELA ENGEL

ELSA MARTINELLI