Remembering Michael Landon ....

Ed Hooks                                                                                            click here → Ed Hooks' Official Website

Michael gave me guest star billing on the "Help Wanted: Angel" episode of Highway to Heaven, but the truth is that I played the role of a desk clerk in a hotel. It amounted to a couple of pages of dialogue and one day of work. I mention this because actors playing roles of that size are relatively low on the totem pole of importance around the set.

As it happened, on the same day I was working on Highway to Heaven, my agent set me up with a call-back audition for a larger role on a show at a different studio across town. I turned it down because I was already working and could not possibly get there. Regardless of the size of a role, actors are expected to be on the set in the morning and to stay there until they are released. They can't take off and go to another audition and then return to the set.

Along about 9:30 or 10 am, I was getting a bagel from the food table and mentioned to an Assistant Director, in humorous passing, that this was an expensive bagel I was about to eat. He asked why and I told him about the lost call-back audition. He chuckled and went on his way.

No more than half an hour later, this same A.D. found me in my dressing room and asked what time that call-back audition was. I said it was "this morning". "Michael is going to reschedule your scene for this afternoon so that you can make your audition. Go ahead and do it."

A person probably has to be in the entertainment biz to understand how unusual and generous a gesture that was. And only those who have worked with Michael Landon would know that it was totally typical of him. He was a big star, director and producer, but he was concerned about this fellow playing the desk clerk. He knew full well that, at my level, every job was important to feeding my family.

I went to the audition, did indeed get the job and, by noon was back on the set of Highway to Heaven, just in time for lunch. Michael came over and sat down next to me, asking how the audition went. He cared.

Michael Landon was one of the kindest and most talented people I ever worked with in Hollywood. Our loss of his creativity and humanity is profound.

From the Highway to Heaven episode "Help Wanted: Angel"