Martin Landau and George Romero dead

[Mayerling]

In the last forty eight hours we lost the creator of the "living dead" movie francise idea, and the character actor who first gained our notice as "Leonard" the assistant in "North By Northwest" to "Mr. Van Dam" (James Mason) who due to his jealousy discovers Eva Marie Saint is a U.S. government agent. Landau would gain television fame (with his then wife, Barbara Bain, in "Mission Impossible' in the late 1960s, but he would be nominated three times for the Oscar for best supporting actor for "Tucker", Woody Allen's "Crimes and Misdemeanors" and "Ed Wood", where he finally won for a good performance as "Bela Lugosi". I never saw Landau perform on stage, but years ago I saw him in the audience of a one man show I attended.

Jeff

[Pcdunn]

Yes, Martin was a fine actor, and Romero one of the great contributors to the American horror genre.

I watched "Mission: Impossible"-- sigh, another piece of my past gone now.

[drstrange169]

Landau was indeed a good actor.

Romero, perhaps unintentionally, was a huge influence on American society.

A black Amercian man, not just playing a lead role, but ordering white folk around and (justifiably) slapping a white woman was unheard of up till then and for many years after.

With what was happening with racial tensions at that time, N.O.T.L.D. lead the way in filmic equality. A fact that did not go unnoticed by African Americans at the time.

[Svensson]

In the last forty eight hours we lost the creator of the "living dead" movie francise idea, and the character actor who first gained our notice as "Leonard" the assistant in "North By Northwest" to "Mr. Van Dam" (James Mason) who due to his jealousy discovers Eva Marie Saint is a U.S. government agent. Landau would gain television fame (with his then wife, Barbara Bain, in "Mission Impossible' in the late 1960s, but he would be nominated three times for the Oscar for best supporting actor for "Tucker", Woody Allen's "Crimes and Misdemeanors" and "Ed Wood", where he finally won for a good performance as "Bela Lugosi". I never saw Landau perform on stage, but years ago I saw him in the audience of a one man show I attended.

Jeff

Ed Wood - one of the great movies of all time IMO. Pure Gold