One of the few women to make films in the 1970s and 80s, Edie Landau worked with her husband, Eli Landau, outside the studio system to bring unconventional films to large audiences. died at his home in London on 24 December. Century City district in Los Angeles. she was 95 years old.
The death was confirmed by his son John.
In the 1980s and 90s, indie films were associated in the public imagination with writers and directors too young and eccentric for the studio system, thanks to figures like Jim Jarmusch, Quentin Tarantino, and Wes Anderson. rice field. In the years before that, Landaus made artistically ambitious indie films, following different models and adapting great literary works into cinema for the big and small screens.
Their focus was theater. In the 1970s, Landaus started the American Film Theater, inviting viewers to regular screenings of film versions of works such as Eugène in his Ionesco, Bertolt in his Brecht, and Edward in his Alby.
There have long been movies based on classics, like A Streetcar Named Desire, that perfectly translated the play into a cinematic idiom. But American Film Theater tried something else. It was a simple, inexpensive production that followed closely the play’s text.
The Landaus made more than 10 films, often featuring celebrities in unexpected roles. In 1973, tough movie star Lee Her Marvin starred in the film version of Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Comes. The following year, Harold Pinter took an unusual turning point as a filmmaker, directing Simon Gray’s adaptation of Butley.
Reviewing the project in The New York Times in 2003, film historian and critic Richard Schickel described it as a “noble experiment”. ”
Landau frequently acted as a budget manager and set organizer, but over time she took on an increasingly creative role in her partnership with her husband, especially after he suffered a stroke in the 1980s. I’ve come to bear it.
She took the lead in “Mr. Halpern and Mr. Johnson” (1983), an original HBO drama starring Laurence Olivier and Jackie Gleason. She developed a relationship with author Chaim Potok, and his 1967 novel The Chosen One, which she adapted into a film in 1981 and a musical for the stage in 1987.
“From the beginning, it was only natural that The Chosen One would be a musical, since Eddie Landau approached me with the idea two and a half years ago,” Potok told The Times in 1987. .
Richard F. Shepard of The Times praised the film version for its recreation of 1940s Brooklyn.
Edythe Rudolph was born on July 15, 1927 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Her father, Harry, was a minor league baseball umpire, and later she worked as a projectionist at a Manhattan movie theater owned by Edie and her Ely. Her mother, Rose (Zatkov) Rudolf, was a clerk.
After graduating from Wilkes College with a bachelor’s degree in education in the late 1940s, Eddie moved to New York City. She worked as an assistant in a radio and television production company hoping to move up the corporate ladder. While working for the television distribution company National Her Telefilm Associates, she met Ely Her Landau, one of the company’s founders. They got married in 1959.
That year, WNTA, a New York television station owned by National Telefilm, began airing the American Film Theater-preemptive anthology series Play of the Week. Mr. Landau was promoted to Executive Vice President of National Telefilm and has directed several original shows such as “Play of the Week.”
The Landaus children went on to pursue careers behind the scenes in the performing arts. Alongside director James He Cameron, his son John produced ‘Titanic’ (1997), ‘Avatar’ (2009) and the recently released ‘Avatar: Path of Water’. Her daughter, Tina Landau, is a noted theater director. Her daughter Cathy Landau is executive director of Symphony Space, an arts organization in Manhattan.
John said that being able to work on the film adaptation of The Chosen One kick-started his own producing career, and that his parents invited producer Hillard Elkins to perform a play Tina had written. , she remembered performing at her high school. Performed in professional Los Angeles theaters.
Landau credits her mother with making these breakthroughs. “She was the one who made things happen,” he said.
Landau’s first marriage, to Harold Raine, ended in divorce. Ely Landau died in 1993. Her children of her Miss Landau survived her along with her son-in-law Les Landau. She has four grandchildren; two step-grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
Photos of her days as a film producer reveal that Ms. Landau was the only woman in a room full of men in suits.
In 1958, when she filed a formal complaint against United Airlines for not allowing her to board an “executive flight” from Chicago to New York, she called it blatant “discrimination against women.” We fought back — designed exclusively for cocktail and steak travel men. Mr. Landau later earned a law degree from the University of West Los Angeles, which he did as a hobby. She told the airline that she was also an executive.
The incident proved to be a precursor to repeated protests that eventually led to the cancellation of the flight in 1970.
After retiring, Mr. Landau wrote poetry. One of the succinct pieces, entitled “That Was Then, This Is Now,” reads, “Remember I used to be a key executive, not a stay-at-home mom/So now I’m a CEO.” Believe me…of my own life.”