David Landau (actor)

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David H. Landau (* 9. March 1879 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania as David Magee ; † 20th September 1935 in Hollywood , California ) was an American actor.

life and career

David Landau initially worked as a theater actor for over three decades. He traveled through America with theater troupes and had supporting roles in ten plays on Broadway during the 1920s . The character actor made his first film Bandwomen in 1915, but it was his only film appearance during the silent film era . In 1930 Landau played the role of a broken man in a wandering theater company in Elmer Rice's play Street Scene , which kills his wife and her lover. He received so much praise and attention for his performance that he played the role again in the 1931 film adaptation of Street Scene by King Vidor . Landau stayed in Hollywood for the last years of his life and made 33 film appearances in four years.

The tall, somewhat gaunt and furrowed-looking actor was often used as a grim and bitter villain during the Pre-Code : Landau was seen as an opponent of the Marx Brothers in Blooming Nonsense (1932) and acted as a torturer of Paul Muni in the prison drama Hunt James A. Landau also took on a major supporting role in You Wrong Himself (1933) alongside Mae West and Cary Grant . Landau only occasionally played more personable roles, for example as the honorable workers leader in Gregory La Cava's political film Between Today and Tomorrow (1933). He had established himself as a successful supporting actor in Hollywood when he suffered a heart attack in 1934. He was unable to recover from the consequences of this; he died a year later at the age of 56 without having made another film.

David Landau is buried in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale . There is little reliable information about his private life: He was probably married to the actress Mrs. David Landau, who played Lillian Gish's mother in Far East (1920). Landau later married again as a second marriage. After his death, an inheritance dispute broke out between the two women because the first Mrs. Landau was supposedly still officially married to Landau.

Filmography

  • 1915: Bandwomen
  • 1931: I Take This Woman
  • 1931: Street Scene
  • 1931: Arrowsmith
  • 1931: taxi
  • 1932: This Reckless Age
  • 1932: Gentleman for a day (Union Depot)
  • 1932: Polly of the Circus
  • 1932: It's Tough to Be Famous
  • 1932: Amateur Daddy
  • 1932: The Roadhouse Murder
  • 1932: Lonely Hearts (The Purchase Price)
  • 1932: Blooming Nonsense (Horse Feathers)
  • 1932: 70,000 Witnesses
  • 1932: The cabin in the cotton field (The Cabin in the Cotton)
  • 1932: Heritage of the Desert
  • 1932: False Faces
  • 1932: Air Mail
  • 1932: Hunt for James A. (I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang)
  • 1932: Under-Cover Man
  • 1932: They Just Had to Get Married
  • 1932: Lawyer Man
  • 1933: They did him wrong (She Done Him Wrong)
  • 1933: The Crime of the Century
  • 1933: Between Today and Tomorrow (Gabriel Over the White House)
  • 1933: The Nuisance
  • 1933: No Marriage Ties
  • 1933: One Man's Journey
  • 1934: Bedside
  • 1934: As the Earth Turns
  • 1934: Wharf Angel
  • 1934: The Man with Two Faces
  • 1934: Death on the Diamond
  • 1934: Judge Priest

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. David Landau at the Internet Broadway Database
  2. ^ David Landau at Immortal Ephemera