Movie Stars 06/68

Marriage: Impossible?

Everybody knows that show-business marriages can’t work – everybody, that is, except Barbara Bain and Martin Landau of Mission: Impossible. They’ve been happily married for eleven years

By Nora Ephron

Show business marriages! We know all about standards," he says, "that’s a very long them. They don’t work. They feed on marriage." jealousy. Careers conflict. Long separations She is tall, ash-blonde, gray-eyed, on different coasts, different continents, are stunning, and an exuberant contrast to cool the rule. Show business marriages! They don’t Cinnamon Carter, the intrepid kure she plays last. We know why. Too much ego. Too much each week on CBS‘ smash hit series, Mission: self-love. Too much self-absorption to share Impossible. the spotlight with anyone else – particularly He is taller, dark, blue-eyed, with a flat, with one’s own mate. You know the old joke mobile mouth and an elastic face that seems to about the actor’s marriage. "It’s perfect," it turn itself inside out as it changes from goes. "She loves him and he loves him." Show inscrutable Chinese to scrutable Russian, from business marriages. We know all about them. simpering sheik to strutting storm trooper; and And knowing all about them, we are faced his face does change, each week when he with secret agents Barbara Bain and Martin plays the part of Rollin Hand, "the man of a Landau of Mission: Impossible. As a matter million faces," who is also a member of the of fact, they’re sitting right here at a table in Impossible Mission Force. Barbara Bain and the plush red velvet Edwardian Room of the Martin Landau have a show-business Plaza Hotel in New York. Having lunch. And marriage, yes – but with a difference. And let poking each other. Teasing each other. them tell you, in their own interjecting way, Interrupting each other. just how they worked it out. "Martin, can I say something?" she asks. "We met acting," Landau explained, "so "Sure, Babe, but I’m in the middle of a that’s always been part of our relationship. word." But when we had our first baby seven years She laughs. He breaks into German ago, Barbara stopped. We went to Rome when accents. She wriggles. He grabs for her hand. I did Cleopatra and for five years she did She teases him about his huge mouth. nothing about her career ..." "I used to count his teeth because I was "But when we went back to Hollywood," sure he had more than anyone else," she says. Miss Bain continued. "I began to be offered "Whaddayou putting me down?" he asks. contracts. I realized that if I signed up I’d be "No, dear." tied down; then I’d be the one saying where "You know," he says, "I get letters telling we were going. I like him to tell me where me how often I smile on the show." we’re going. They offered me a big movie "And when you smile, Babe," she begins ... with John Wayne, but I turned it down ..." "It’s a piano," he finishes. "Everyone thought she was crazy." Barbara Bain and Martin Landau have "But he’s always been more important to been married eleven years. "By some me," she said reaching for his hand. Movie Stars 06/68

"That’s a nice lady," said Landau. (The Mission: Impossible approach to "It’s not nice," said his wife. "I just care." opening a beer can would probably be to use a "That’s a good lady," he said. "Every time laser beam.) Miss Bain’s role in the team’s I think about it, it’s groovy." exploits, said one writer, is to be "the cheese "I signed a contract with him," said Miss that baits the trap." Landau’s image changes Bain. in each show, depending on the disguise he "And every year I pick up the options." must assume. "And of course," she added, "so many of "I spend three hours in makeup our friends are in show business, and you sometimes," he said, "which is very hard for can’t help noticing what separations do to me. It’s hard for me to sit still. You get buried their marriages." under plaster of Paris, with straws sticking out "If you want to be together," said Landau, through your nose, and a lot of people who are "there’s so little time. Look , if Barbara had claustrophobic can’t take it. It’s like being gotten something really big she wanted to do, buried alive. And when we did the pilot for of course I would have gone ..." the show, they were using slow-drying plaster "He said, 'I’ll pack and go with you,'" she of Paris ..." recalled. "And I knew he would. But things "When we did the pilot," Miss Bain fell his way, we went where he said, and that interrupted ... was much better." "It took forty-five minutes to dry," Landau Things began to fall Martin Landau’s way went on. shortly after he and Miss Bain were married "Martin, can I get something in here?" on 1957. He was a young New York actor – "Sure, Babe." "Serious, serious, serious," he said, "and I "When he was playing the dictator in the wore nothing but black" - and she was a pilot, he was in makeup for three hours." successful model-turning-actress. Then they "Two and a half," said Landau. "And I moved to California. There, Landau got his came out with this thing on my face – I wasn’t first big part as the sinister spy sidekick in even using my own teeth – and I said to Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. From Barbara, 'Am I here? Is it coming out? I’m in then on, he worked steadily. Like Lee Marvin here somewhere.' I felt as if I were in a cave. I and James Coburn, whom he started out with, said, 'I’m feeling sad– can you see that on the he became an actor’s actor, playing vill ainous outside? Hello out there, I’m in here parts on almost every television series on the somewhere.' " air. In addition he played the third male lead On long days, the Landaus did not get in Cleopatra, though many of his scenes ended home until after dark. But when they do, said on the cutting room floor. But his success was Miss Bain, "We don’t deed to say, 'Well, dear, trifling in comparison to what has happened to how was your day?' We already know, so we him and his wife since Mission: Impossible can talk about other things. We are both great began two seasons ago. talkers." In addition to their daughters, the Suddenly, autograph collectors call their Landau household also consists of a hotel room asking when they plan to go out Hungarian sheep dog named Rags. "Susan for the evening. Suddenly, strangers wave named her," said Miss Bain. "She got past from their cars at stoplights. Suddenly, Blackie, and since the dog didn’t have a spot, crowds form to gape. There are stacks of mail she got past Spotty. When she landed on Rags – love letters say, 'Here we go again,'" said we felt pretty lucky." The Landaus lead an Miss Bain. "Everyone cares about the show." active social life. Among their friends are Generally speaking, Mission: Impossible comedian Carl Reiner and his wife. concerns the efforts of the five-member Martin Landau and Barbara Bain first met Impossible Mission Force to thwart crime and in New York in 1956, when Miss Bain, a despotism and the like. What makes the show model who was studying dance with Martha popular is the fact that these efforts are Graham, walked into Curt Conway’s acting hilariously devious, overwhelmingly class. She was in her early twenties – she is gimmick-laden, and incredibly complicated. now somewhere between thirty-two and Movie Stars 06/68 thirty-five, though she won’t say just where. own, people occasionally suggest that their A Chicago girl whose parents were Russian relationship is similar to Alfred Lunt and immigrants, she attended the University of Lynn Fontanne's. "It’s crazy," says Landau. Illinois, where she was homecoming queen, Or to Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton’s. and came to New York after graduation. "I "It’s nonsense," says Landau. Still, all three was a very unhappy model," she said. "I used couples have this much in common: they have to work with girls who could talk about a managed to make their marriages thrive under shade of lipstick for three hours. I can make it most difficult circumstances. for about eight minutes, but that’s stretching The Landaus fight, loud and hard, but they it." are frank about it. "We don’t bottle things up Landau, now thirty-eight, was a New York inside us," says Landau. "We can live and boy, the son of a manufacturer who made work together and like it." And if there is any money during the Depression and managed to uncommon jealousy or outsized ego operating lose everything when World War II started. in their marriage, it is well hidden. Even the Landau grew up wanting to be an artist; after fact that his wife has won two Emmys is attending Pratt Institute and the Art Students related with delight by Landau, who is by far League, he went to work as a cartoonist for the better actor and who has won none. The the New York Daily News. But one summer, first Emmy Miss Bain won, Landau said, she there was a job in a stock company; the name accepted with the remark, "Cinnamon just lost a successful audition. Before long, Landau her cool. had decided to be an actor. "I had the New "I just saw a tape of the Emmy show the York dismal period," he said, "I lived on other day," said Landau. "It was fantastic. I peanut butter and package dinners." He had had already lost to Bill Cosby and I knew it, long hair and a beard and was dressed in his but it was between Barbara and Barbara usual black ensemble the day his wife-to-be Stanwyck, and we had no idea who’d won. walked into his acting class. Peter Falk got up to give the award and said, "I had just come from a shooting," Miss 'And the winner is Barbara'– it seemed like Bain recalled. "I was wearing white makeup, hours before he said – 'Bain.' And there I ws, a black eyes; I was very skinny and very lifting her out of her seat and shouting 'You dressed. It was no way to go to class, but who did it, Babe.' Talk about uncool! " knew?" "You know," said Miss Bain, "we have a Landau noticed her immediately. "I kind of shorthand between us, and working thought she was just an empty-headed model together is very exciting." who had a lot of nerve walking into an acting "When we started the show," said Landau, school." "we told CBS not to make a point of our being "I hated him," Miss Bain recalled. "I found married. The people we were playing on the him really crude, shallow and ignorant." show weren’t married and we didn’t want to It was, in other words, love at first sight. A make a big thing of it. But everyone seems to year later, they were married in City Hall in think there’s something marvelous about time to grab up a rent controlled apartment on people like us who are married and working West End Avenue; ten days alter there was a together." religious ceremony, with a rabbi, for their "I never wanted to separate us," said his families. And within months the apartment wife. "But when we met – if I’d closed my was vacated, and the Landaus, a now eyes and dreamed how I wanted it to be, it deceased fox terrier, and a pile of old never would have been this good." magazines, referred to as Martin’s junk, were Show-business marriages – we know all on the way to Hollywood. about them. Well, almost all. A few of them In the last couple of years, since Miss Bain work out very nicely. has begun having a successful career of her