Michael Landon~
He Plays Cowboys And Indians For $13,000 A Week
TV Guide~July 22, 1967

     'After eight years as Little Joe, Michael Landon is a bit bored by the whole game except for the money'

     The news last March caught the television industry completely by surprise.  Mighty 'Bonanza' the show that dominated the Neilsen ratings like none other, had slumped to 15th position in the biweekly popularity poll, its lowest ranking in years.  There were nervous looks in the Paramount Pictures commissary.  The bewildered producer of the series shook his head.  Columnists were already anxious listening for even the faintest soundings of the death knell.

     Michael Landon couldn't care less.  The deeply tanned actor sat naked in a boxlike cubicle near the 'Bonanza' set, enjoying his daily sauna bath.  Next season would be his ninth time around as Little Joe Cartwright, the baby-faced heart-throb of the Ponderosa.  He would be earning an estimated $13,000 episode, making him one of the most highly paid actors in a series.  Even if 'Bonanza' suddenly expired--a remote possibility at best--Landon could well afford his insouciance.  Investments had multiplied his total well into the millions.

     The heat rose to 150 degrees as Landon reclined on a wooden slat in the bathouse, "For nearly one-third my life I have been doing the same show," he observed wiping the moisture dripping from his chin.  "That's a long time when you stop and think about it.  To get excited about playing cowboys and Indians at my age is ridiculous."

     When producer David Dortort first tapped him as the show's $500-week juvenile lead back in 1959, Landon was just another name in the phone book.  In fact, he had appropriated his stage name from the Los Angeles central telephone directory.  Somehow it seems more appropriate on a marquee than his real name, Eugene Orowitz.

     At the time, Landon was probably best remembered for a sensitive portrayal of the title role in "I Was A Teenage Werewolf".  Collectors of trivia will attest he sank his teeth into the throats of three nubile young lovelies and a dog who once stood in for Rin Tin Tin, before the film mercifully came to a halt.  Between sporadic acting jobs, Landon landed such eclectic employment as heating up glue in a ribbon factory and running a machine that sealed hot cans of Campbell's tomato soup.

     In the sauna Landon blotted the perspiration from his forehead with a towel.  Still a youthful looking 30, he had in recent years become the vice president of the Eon Corporation, a California manufacturer of automobile seat belts.  He was one-third owner of the Merrill Produce Company, an Oregon potato-packing plant.  His widespread real estate holdings included an 11-story condominium apartment development in Laguna Beach, California; an office building in downtown Los Angeles; and shares in a 10,000-acre ranch near San Francisco.  Along with co-stars Dan Blocker and Lorne Greene, he purchased a half-mile of Malibu beach-front for nearly $2,000,000.

     Landon had also found time to parlay his tremulous baritone, boyish smile and winning personality into an attraction which grosses him nearly $175,000 annually on the lucrative personal-appearance circuit.  "Mike knows he can't sing," says Blocker, who served as best man at Landon's second marriage five years ago.  "He's flat.  He's off-key.  Michael's not kidding himself, but if those jerks'll pay for it, he'll sing."

     The enterprising actor has traded his quick smile for the quick buck at rodeos and horse shows fron Vineland, New Jersey, to, Illinois, to Malmo, Sweden, to the Dream Bowl, a bowling alley in Vallejo, California.  On rigorous weekend journeys to such picturesque locales, he has worked with fevers as high as 103 degrees, fainted on stage, and passed out in several airplanes.  Foul weather has stranded him of miles from home, compelling him to chartering planes (a breach of his contract), hop trains and ride buses in order to return to Hollywood in time for 'Bonanza' shooting schedules.

     "I am so deeply invested," Landon admitted, as he walked from the steam room to the shower, "that I have to work in order to keep money coming in.  I must keep investing to take advantage of lower tax-rates on long-term capitol gains."

     Eight years before, his abiding concern was an undernourished physique.  During 'Bonanza's' initial season he weighed a puny 132 pounds.  He wore a heavy sweatshirt beneath his costume of twill and corduroy, so as to appear more formidable around the chest and shoulders.  Work-outs involving push-ups, chin-ups, punching bags, and lifting weights built him up so he could discard the padding.

     Today, Landon weighs in at a muscular 148 pounds.  The only padding he requires is the foam-rubber cushions he attaches to his knees and elbows for fight scenes.  He relishes the opportunity to leap from elevations onto galloping horses, to monkey-flip adversaries over his head, to snowball down hillsides and to wrestle in the dust.  These chores are normally the well-paid specialty of skilled doubles.  But Landon prefers to plot his own stunts.

     On a nine 9-day tour of 18 Swedish cities several years ago, Landon's enthusiasm worked against him.  His realistic repertory in a series of stage shows included a fistfight, a sword fight, and a barroom brawl in which he was whacked over the head with a breakaway whisky bottle.  The dueling sequence became a little too realistic when his opponent's sword skewered Landon's right hand just below the wrist.  "I really started to bleed," Landon remembers.  "The blood was running down the microphone.  After that, everyone on the first five or six rows were convinced that everyone was on the level: "I wound up with a broken wrist."

     Another violent routine required Landon to take a head butt in the stomach from his close friend, stuntman Bobby Miles.  One night, he and Miles got their signals crossed.  They collided head-on and both sprawled to the stage.  Miles was knocked out cold.  Landon suffered dizzy spells.

     Until recently, nevertheless, Landon willingly performed his 'Bonanza' stuntwork free of charge, although his participation in such activities was not specified in his contract.  Then he and producer David Dortort began wrangling over salaries Landon felt were due a group of musicians he had taken on a personal-appearance tour.  When management continued to refuse payment, Landon cited his contract and demanded compensation for his stunts.  As he stood beneath the shower, making certain to keep his shaggy hair dry, he recalled completing a certain fight scene earlier in the day.  The cameraman needed two takes to get it right, Landon promised he would send Dortort a bill for $175.

     There have been additional clashes with the front office over scripts Landon has written for the show.  To relieve the tedium of waiting for his scenes to be filmed, the actor characteristically sits off-camera, blocking out scenes for future episodes, in longhand on a lined tablet.  Seven of his scripts have been accepted for shooting and his writing price has soared to $2750 a show.  The extracurricular pursuits at the same time, have prompted an unusual number of executive memoranda.
     In one script Landon wrote a line: "God, please help me!" The continuity acceptance department balked.  They insisted that "God" be replaced by "Lord" and circulated an advisory which cautioned: "Be sure that the word God is always used in a reverent manner by Ben (Cartwright) and Joe."  It was like telling the Ecumenical Council to remember to say good-bye to the Pope.

     "It's a Lot of Bull", a Landon comedy script which will be aired as a 'Bonanza' episode next season, also caused considerable upper-echelon concern.  The storyline features a 300-pound Indian girl, obviously a ploy for Blocker.  "Continuity felt that it was inconceivable that Hoss and Joe could speak to the Indians, since the Indians wouldn't understand English," Landon complained on the way to the massuer.  "How many years has Hollywood been making pictures where cowboys and Indians speak to each other in English?  We certainly should be able to take this much dramatic license.  You begin to get the feeling somebody's just trying to think of something to write down, so they can send a memorandum."  Note: Landon's above script was refused by NBC and never filmed.

     Landon went on to mention that his only current concern--growing old in the Little Joe part.  "At the beginning of the show, I was supposed to be playing a 17-year-old boy," he recalled.  "I'm getting gray already.  How much of a youthful image can I keep creating?"

     His wife, a former model instructor who customarily trims Landon's hair with thinning shears, offered one answer to that paradox at her husband's 30th birthday party last October 31.  As a gag, she gave him a can of hair coloring, for his prematurely gray tresses.  Did Landon use the rinse?  Not even his fans know for sure.


     ~By Richard Warren Lewis