Fantasy Football - Footballguys Forums
This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!
Martin Landau, dead at 89 (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter badmojo1006
- Start date
Johnny Rock
Footballguy
Never was a big fan of the Landau Top.
shoke
Footballguy
Limp Ditka
Footballguy
:(
![[scooter]](/data/avatars/m/22/22287.jpg?1659477690){kind=avatar}
Charlie Steiner
Footballguy
James Bond
Footballguy
Sorry to see him go. And his signature role was definitely Rollin Hand on Mission Impossible. RIP
Last edited by a moderator:
Encyclopedia Brown
Footballguy
I never knew that he and James Dean were best friends, and that Dean had wanted to be a famous photographer much more than as an actor, and had used Landau as his subject for dozens of photographs.
El Floppo
Footballguy
He was amazing in both of these. Honestly two of my favorite ever performances by any actor. So many subtle nuances brought to roles that could have played very flat in the hands of less talented actors. Rip.
Andy Dufresne
Footballguy
I liked him in Tucker: The Man and His Dream
Abe: [to Tucker] ... When I was a little kid, maybe five years old, in the old country, my mother used to say to me; she'd warn me, she'd say, 'Don't get too close to people. You'll catch their dreams... '... Years later, I realized I misunderstood her... 'Germs', she said, not 'dreams', 'You'll catch their *germs*'...
[they both laugh]
Abe: I want you to know something, Tucker. I went into business with you for one reason - to make money. That's all... How was I to know...
[chokes up, head down]
Abe: ... if I got too close, I'd catch your dreams...
Abe: [to Tucker] ... When I was a little kid, maybe five years old, in the old country, my mother used to say to me; she'd warn me, she'd say, 'Don't get too close to people. You'll catch their dreams... '... Years later, I realized I misunderstood her... 'Germs', she said, not 'dreams', 'You'll catch their *germs*'...
[they both laugh]
Abe: I want you to know something, Tucker. I went into business with you for one reason - to make money. That's all... How was I to know...
[chokes up, head down]
Abe: ... if I got too close, I'd catch your dreams...
Dan Lambskin
Footballguy
I liked his arc on entourage "what if I was to tell you..."
shoke
Footballguy
North By Northwest is in my top 10 movies . Here's an interesting write up about Landeau's character in NbNW
Leonard (Martin Landau)
BACK
NEXT
Character Analysis
Leonard is Vandamm's yes-man, but since he refers at one point to his "woman's intuition", maybe we should call him the chief villain's yes-woman…?
This guy walks around with the most villainous leer imaginable. He's always watching.
And yes, it's as creepy as you're imagining.
Leonard's coded as gay not only because of this joking claim to women's intuition and his mannerisms ("his attitudes," in the screenplay's blunt words, are "unmistakably effeminate"), but also because he's "tellingly fashion-conscious," as theorist Lee Edelmanwrites.
In other words, in an age before the invention of the Metrosexual, Leonard's impeccable style was a dead giveaway. Plus, the association of gayness with villainy wasn't uncommon at the time when NXNW was made. Queers are murderous—and murderers are queer—in several other classics by Hitch himself, films like Strangers on a Train and Rope.
Here's what Martin Landau himself had to say about it:
I chose to play Leonard as a gay character. It was quite a big risk in cinema at the time. My logic was simply that he wanted to get rid of Eva Marie Saint with such a vengeance, so it made sense for him to be in love with his boss, Vandamm, played by James Mason. Every one of my friends thought I was crazy, but Hitchcock liked it. A good director makes a playground and allows you to play. (Source)
You may be thinking: wait. Isn't the clean-shaven, grey-suit-sporting Thornhill himself kind of a metrosexual avant la lettre? We hear ya. And that's why we suspect that Leonard's a foil for the film's hero.
Leonard falls to his richly deserved doom after trying one last time to kill Thornhill and Eve. Sadly, that ending spelled happiness to the straight America of 1959. The threat posed by Leonard's sexuality is eliminated, and in that way Thornhill's straightness is shored up, protected from the doubts that that beautifully tailored grey suit might raise, without Leonard there to take the fall.
Leonard (Martin Landau)
BACK
NEXT
Character Analysis
Leonard is Vandamm's yes-man, but since he refers at one point to his "woman's intuition", maybe we should call him the chief villain's yes-woman…?
This guy walks around with the most villainous leer imaginable. He's always watching.
And yes, it's as creepy as you're imagining.
Leonard's coded as gay not only because of this joking claim to women's intuition and his mannerisms ("his attitudes," in the screenplay's blunt words, are "unmistakably effeminate"), but also because he's "tellingly fashion-conscious," as theorist Lee Edelmanwrites.
In other words, in an age before the invention of the Metrosexual, Leonard's impeccable style was a dead giveaway. Plus, the association of gayness with villainy wasn't uncommon at the time when NXNW was made. Queers are murderous—and murderers are queer—in several other classics by Hitch himself, films like Strangers on a Train and Rope.
Here's what Martin Landau himself had to say about it:
I chose to play Leonard as a gay character. It was quite a big risk in cinema at the time. My logic was simply that he wanted to get rid of Eva Marie Saint with such a vengeance, so it made sense for him to be in love with his boss, Vandamm, played by James Mason. Every one of my friends thought I was crazy, but Hitchcock liked it. A good director makes a playground and allows you to play. (Source)
You may be thinking: wait. Isn't the clean-shaven, grey-suit-sporting Thornhill himself kind of a metrosexual avant la lettre? We hear ya. And that's why we suspect that Leonard's a foil for the film's hero.
Leonard falls to his richly deserved doom after trying one last time to kill Thornhill and Eve. Sadly, that ending spelled happiness to the straight America of 1959. The threat posed by Leonard's sexuality is eliminated, and in that way Thornhill's straightness is shored up, protected from the doubts that that beautifully tailored grey suit might raise, without Leonard there to take the fall.
wikkidpissah
Footballguy
*applause* I'm gonna miss the TwilightZone-era 'do the job' actors when they're gone, and Martin Landau was one of the best. No matter how small or silly the role, he always heightened the reality by making his characters believable and queer, a rare talent. Never left you wanting less. I admired him fundamentally as did any kid of my gen who was sure that it was men from UNCLE and Impossible Mission teammates were the ones keeping the world safe for democracy (and for somehow landing Barbara Bain *yum*) but the payoff was his Bela, the best conceived & realized character in the whole Tim Burton universe. Everything about our hopes & fears, realized & dashed, were in that pathetically wonderful little man. "Puuuull da string!". You did mine, Mr, Landau. RIP -
Leroy Hoard
Footballguy
Similar threads
