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Michael Landon : His Triumph and Tragedy
Explores the life of the popular actor, from his unhappy childhood to his death from cancer
217 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1991
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
February 17, 2017
I can't say I'm truly a fan of Michael Landon, but like most everyone else my age, I grew up virtually surrounded by him. He was everywhere, in droves. There were days I stayed home sick from school and spent upwards of 5 hours watching Michael Landon on a tv that only got 6 channels. There's a quote in this book, I believe it was Brandon Tartikoff, former head of NBC, who said it: "My ideal television network would be 22 hours of Michael Landon programming." In 1985 it felt like we almost had that.
At the time, I didn't think about him much as a person. A lot of my friends grew up wanting to marry him, but sorry, Charles Ingalls, I met Johnny Gage first and never looked back. However. A friend recently gave me the complete Little House on the Prairie series on DVD and I've been marathoning them ever since. And that's where this book comes in. The first season, when Ed Friendly still had some say in his own show, is nice. A little sweet, a little sappy, a little more Jesus-y than I normally go for, but so are the books it was based on (which I love and have read just dozens of times).
But by the end of the third season, when two different characters had attempted suicide by self-immolation, one of them successfully, I had to know: What the ever loving heck was the matter with Michael Landon? I'm on season 6 now and he's still burning people alive, killing children, and making himself the hero who defeats the bad guys by literally beating love and understanding into them. As an adult and (basically unknown) writer of fiction I can see that he's working out his own deal here, and that it has literally nothing to do with the life and writings of Laura Ingalls Wilder.
This book answers a lot of my questions. Especially why every character who suffers any kind of setback instantly gives up on life and becomes suicidal, until Charles shows up and punches them a couple of times. (Spoiler: It was his mother. Suicide drama for days, and he once did have to punch her in the face and knock her down to keep her from walking any further into the ocean. He was 10 and the water was already up to his neck.) His early life was a seemingly endless nightmare of abuse, neglect, bullying, betwetting, and public humiliation. It's a shame that he had no use for psychiatry or any kind of structured therapy because if ever a man needed it, it was Michael Landon. (Real name Eugene Orowitz. They called him Ugie. That alone should be considered child abuse. But I digress.) Apparently a lot of the fist fighting on Little House, and to a lesser degree Bonanza (more in the episodes he wrote), was simply an excuse for him to beat someone up. Not because he wanted to hurt them, he didn't, but he did need to vent his feelings and that's what stuntmen are for.
Unfortunately, this book isn't what it could be. Landon died in July 1991 and the book was released in September. It's not an authorized biography. There are no new interviews with the family, no childhood photos, nothing that a contemporary fan with a few magazine subscriptions and a scrapbook wouldn't have been able to compile. Its only real value is for people who weren't born yet, or were too young to care about his private life as it happened.
The editing is also pretty slipshod. There are minor mistakes that the most casual Little House viewer will notice, like saying Laura is the oldest sister, and identifying the family dog, Jack, in early cast photos as Bandit, an entirely different, later, dog. And then there are things that are genuinely confusing and required Google to clear up. In a chapter on his pre-stardom career, it says he got a small role in "God's Little Acre" and then his big break, "I Was a Teenage Werewolf", in 1957. A couple of paragraphs later, on the same page, the author says that his role in "God's Little Acre" came next, after "Teenage Werewolf", in 1958. We're also told that his mother, Peggy O'Neil, died in March of 1981, and then in the very next paragraph that Peggy was living with her adult daughter and teenage granddaughter in a rundown neighborhood when their apartment was robbed in August of 1981. There are also a lot of children to keep straight--biological, step, adopted, adopted step--and the author was clearly not up to the task. All of these are things that no competent copy editor should have allowed into print.
But, as I said before, it did answer my basic question, re: WTF, dude? Landon was very honest regarding his own shortcomings in his interviews and his version of events typically matches that of his family, friends, and colleagues. He was a very complicated man who wanted simple answers and a simple life, which meant he couldn't ever be completely happy. It's amazing that he was as kind as he was, and didn't have more enemies. He had a real streak of meanness and cruelty (just ask Priscilla Presley), but between the genetics of mental illness, and the environment of abuse in which he was raised, it was his fate. Meanness and cruelty were simply bred into him. What matters is how very hard he worked to not be the man his parents raised him to be. How he tried over and over to create safe, warm, loving families, with his wives and children and cast members and crews--all of whom he loved, and who (almost all) loved him, as long as he had his own way. He was an inarguably special man, and he deserves all the credit for that. He wanted to be special and he made it happen, against all odds, for better or for worse.
I also give him bonus points for hiring actors with disabilities to play disabled characters. Even today, over 25 years after his death, no one does that.
The book lost a star for poor editing, and another star for being slapped together in two months to capitalize on his death, but it's still the best bio available for anyone who wants a balanced story. The others are basically hagiographies by his children, or devoted fans who consider that even mentioning basic facts like he cheated on his first two wives to be mean-spirited hatchet jobs by liberal commies who hate Jesus and quality family TV.
We can only hope that with a little more time and distance, a truly in depth biography will be written. There hasn't been another actor-director-producer-etc in my lifetime who is more thoroughly interesting, or less honestly examined.
At the time, I didn't think about him much as a person. A lot of my friends grew up wanting to marry him, but sorry, Charles Ingalls, I met Johnny Gage first and never looked back. However. A friend recently gave me the complete Little House on the Prairie series on DVD and I've been marathoning them ever since. And that's where this book comes in. The first season, when Ed Friendly still had some say in his own show, is nice. A little sweet, a little sappy, a little more Jesus-y than I normally go for, but so are the books it was based on (which I love and have read just dozens of times).
But by the end of the third season, when two different characters had attempted suicide by self-immolation, one of them successfully, I had to know: What the ever loving heck was the matter with Michael Landon? I'm on season 6 now and he's still burning people alive, killing children, and making himself the hero who defeats the bad guys by literally beating love and understanding into them. As an adult and (basically unknown) writer of fiction I can see that he's working out his own deal here, and that it has literally nothing to do with the life and writings of Laura Ingalls Wilder.
This book answers a lot of my questions. Especially why every character who suffers any kind of setback instantly gives up on life and becomes suicidal, until Charles shows up and punches them a couple of times. (Spoiler: It was his mother. Suicide drama for days, and he once did have to punch her in the face and knock her down to keep her from walking any further into the ocean. He was 10 and the water was already up to his neck.) His early life was a seemingly endless nightmare of abuse, neglect, bullying, betwetting, and public humiliation. It's a shame that he had no use for psychiatry or any kind of structured therapy because if ever a man needed it, it was Michael Landon. (Real name Eugene Orowitz. They called him Ugie. That alone should be considered child abuse. But I digress.) Apparently a lot of the fist fighting on Little House, and to a lesser degree Bonanza (more in the episodes he wrote), was simply an excuse for him to beat someone up. Not because he wanted to hurt them, he didn't, but he did need to vent his feelings and that's what stuntmen are for.
Unfortunately, this book isn't what it could be. Landon died in July 1991 and the book was released in September. It's not an authorized biography. There are no new interviews with the family, no childhood photos, nothing that a contemporary fan with a few magazine subscriptions and a scrapbook wouldn't have been able to compile. Its only real value is for people who weren't born yet, or were too young to care about his private life as it happened.
The editing is also pretty slipshod. There are minor mistakes that the most casual Little House viewer will notice, like saying Laura is the oldest sister, and identifying the family dog, Jack, in early cast photos as Bandit, an entirely different, later, dog. And then there are things that are genuinely confusing and required Google to clear up. In a chapter on his pre-stardom career, it says he got a small role in "God's Little Acre" and then his big break, "I Was a Teenage Werewolf", in 1957. A couple of paragraphs later, on the same page, the author says that his role in "God's Little Acre" came next, after "Teenage Werewolf", in 1958. We're also told that his mother, Peggy O'Neil, died in March of 1981, and then in the very next paragraph that Peggy was living with her adult daughter and teenage granddaughter in a rundown neighborhood when their apartment was robbed in August of 1981. There are also a lot of children to keep straight--biological, step, adopted, adopted step--and the author was clearly not up to the task. All of these are things that no competent copy editor should have allowed into print.
But, as I said before, it did answer my basic question, re: WTF, dude? Landon was very honest regarding his own shortcomings in his interviews and his version of events typically matches that of his family, friends, and colleagues. He was a very complicated man who wanted simple answers and a simple life, which meant he couldn't ever be completely happy. It's amazing that he was as kind as he was, and didn't have more enemies. He had a real streak of meanness and cruelty (just ask Priscilla Presley), but between the genetics of mental illness, and the environment of abuse in which he was raised, it was his fate. Meanness and cruelty were simply bred into him. What matters is how very hard he worked to not be the man his parents raised him to be. How he tried over and over to create safe, warm, loving families, with his wives and children and cast members and crews--all of whom he loved, and who (almost all) loved him, as long as he had his own way. He was an inarguably special man, and he deserves all the credit for that. He wanted to be special and he made it happen, against all odds, for better or for worse.
I also give him bonus points for hiring actors with disabilities to play disabled characters. Even today, over 25 years after his death, no one does that.
The book lost a star for poor editing, and another star for being slapped together in two months to capitalize on his death, but it's still the best bio available for anyone who wants a balanced story. The others are basically hagiographies by his children, or devoted fans who consider that even mentioning basic facts like he cheated on his first two wives to be mean-spirited hatchet jobs by liberal commies who hate Jesus and quality family TV.
We can only hope that with a little more time and distance, a truly in depth biography will be written. There hasn't been another actor-director-producer-etc in my lifetime who is more thoroughly interesting, or less honestly examined.
Want to read
November 23, 2015Little House was my favorite show for years and years. Still watch them on DVD. Michael Landon on always seemed so perfect to me. I wanted him as a father at first, and then when I was older as a husband. He was a wonderful actor and director. I was very sad and tearful when he passed so young of that horribly cruel disease, pancreatic cancer. My husband lost his life to the same disease last year at age 56.
Read
August 16, 2011Good book about a man who really fell short in his life ,of what the man he really wanted to be.But we all have if we are honest with ourselves. Michaels portrayals in his shows put so much heart into the american family. I don't know of too many who weren't touched by his acting and his directing. Highway to Heavan was one of my favorite Tv shows.
September 27, 2018
Like many women of my generation, I fell in love with Michael Landon as Little Joe on "Bonanza". And, as a long time lover of the "Little House" books, was excited when he started "Little House on the Prairie", but was very disappointed at the changes he made. Over the years, I'd heard & read many good things about him as well as many bad. I decided I wanted to learn more. This book seems to present a fair picture of him - he wasn't a saint, but he did try to do a lot to make this world better.
October 19, 2019
I pretty much grew up watching Michael Landon in his various major roles, starting with Bonanza, then on to Little House on the Prairie and finally Highway to Haven. And while I very much enjoyed watching the TV series, I wanted to find out more about the actor and the man himself.
Aileen Joyce did her research, and a great job at evaluating the information gathered and putting pen to paper. It was very interesting to learn what made the actor 'tick' and, essentially, why. Michael was a very hardworking man, literally up to his untimely by cancer.
Aileen Joyce did her research, and a great job at evaluating the information gathered and putting pen to paper. It was very interesting to learn what made the actor 'tick' and, essentially, why. Michael was a very hardworking man, literally up to his untimely by cancer.
May 11, 2020
Michael Landon packed a lot of work into a life that was far too short. Aileen Joyce does an admirable job of critiquing Landon's career. She includes personal information that sheds light on Landon's creative process, but this is not a biography. The pacing is good. The writing is interesting and concise.
March 16, 2019
When I started the book I liked it. But then I started seeing errors. Very minor details that anyone who was a fan would notice. And I thought OK if there are these minute problems I'm recognizing what else is there that I'm not seeing?
And I lost interest.
And I lost interest.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 25, 2020
I really enjoyed reading this book about Michael Landon's life. He wasn't a perfect man by any stretch of the word, but he was a brilliantly talented man.
February 26, 2021
A quick, easy read. Nothing wonderful nor terrible to say. A middle of the road biography.
April 28, 2022
I would have loved to give this a higher rating, but there were just too many mistakes in it.
June 23, 2025
This was written just after Michael Landon died of pancreatic cancer in 1991. A good biography about a man who was always working. He had a disfunctional family life growing up, which made him want to write stories about the good in people, and stories about the family life he never had. He is famous for playing Little Joe on Bonanza, and then Charles Inglalls in Little House on the Prairie, and then Jonathan Smith, an angel, in Highway to Heaven.
I just reread this book, as I see him on Hallmark Family Channel with Little House on the Prairie, and Highway to Heaven. He made a great success in these two series. He was a workaholic and after Highway to Heaven ended, he decided to spend more time with his family, although he created yet another TV series to star in. He had stomach issues and found out that he had inoperable pancreatic cancer. He was only 54 years old and passed away only 3 months later. I reread this book on June 23, 2025.
I just reread this book, as I see him on Hallmark Family Channel with Little House on the Prairie, and Highway to Heaven. He made a great success in these two series. He was a workaholic and after Highway to Heaven ended, he decided to spend more time with his family, although he created yet another TV series to star in. He had stomach issues and found out that he had inoperable pancreatic cancer. He was only 54 years old and passed away only 3 months later. I reread this book on June 23, 2025.
September 19, 2016
I don't know what I think about this book. Michael is someone I grew up watching on tv and loving. Who didn't want to be Melissa Gilbert in Little House on the Prairie. There is a dark side to him and I was getting upset by it but by the end it all came full circle for me.
Want to read
July 23, 2008This man was awesome, I wouldve like to have met him.
February 27, 2015
Pretty sparse, and info I've read other places contradicts some things.
Read
June 11, 2018Enjoyed very much. Always love to learn what goes on in the real lives of the people we grew up watching on tv.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews