Today is Martin Landau's 84th birthday. To celebrate, I'd like to point
out two characters he played on TV (SPOILERS AHEAD!):
IVAN KUCHENKO
'The Twilight Zone'
("The Jeopardy Room")
Trying to defect, former KGB Major Ivan Kuchenko is trapped inside a hotel
room. Commissar Vassiloff, a hitman, and Boris, his assistant, are watching him
from a room across the street. Vassiloff is a sadistic killer who has tricked
Kuchenko into drinking a sleeping potion in the hotel room after pretending to
surrender to Kuchenko. Kuchenko wakens to learn that Vassiloff has planted a
bomb in the room: Ivan must find it within three hours, or he will be shot by
Vassiloff and Boris, who have a gun trained on him at all times. Vassiloff has
hidden the bomb in the room's telephone, where it will be triggered by picking
up an incoming call. Ivan manages to escape and avoid being shot. Later,
Vassiloff and Boris enter the room and try to figure out what went wrong. The
phone rings, and Boris—without thinking—picks it up; Vassiloff, realizing what
is happening, yells at Boris, but the telephone bomb quickly goes off, killing
both Vassiloff and Boris. On the other end of the phone line is Ivan Kuchenko,
escaping to freedom. When the operator notifies him of the bad connection, he
reassures her that the message was indeed delivered. The scene cuts to Vassiloff
and Boris's charred corpses. (Wikipedia)
ROLLIN HAND
'Mission Impossible'
Rollin Hand’s role as an IMF agent was that of an actor and disguise
expert. In a theatrical brochure that headed his dossier, he was described as a
quick-change artist and billed as "The Man Of A Million Faces." As such, he had
formidable skills in mimicry and voice imitation (introduced in the second
season) as well as a mastery of make-up that rivaled that of Lon Chaney, Sr. He
was also an expert at sleight of hand and pickpocketing, which came into play in
several missions where he would pick pockets or hide things on someone else's
person without their knowledge. His language and cultural skills were
formidable. He regularly passed himself off as a citizen of various Latin
American and Eastern European countries and no one ever questioned his
authenticity. He also successfully impersonated well-known public figures, such
as the dictator of a fictitious Latin American country, rumored Nazi fugitive
Martin Bormann, and indeed even Adolf Hitler himself. On at least two missions
he even successfully impersonated a left-handed person, doing all gestures and
reflexive actions left-handed when Rollin himself was right-handed. He
successfully falsified a wide variety of maladies in the course of missions to
dupe targets, including seizures and drug addiction. (Wikipedia)
What if I told you that Kuchenko and Hand were the same person.... Is that
something you might be interested in? (Channeling another Landau TV character,
producer Bob Evans of 'Entourage'.)
After he defected from Russia, Kuchenko changed his name and joined the IMF
agency, bringing all the skills he had at his disposal to be used in the cause
for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Everything mentioned in that
Wikipedia entry for Rollin Hand is what Major Kuchenko used to do for the
KGB.
Also, for those who didn't already know, there's a splainin why the events
of 'Space: 1999' (another Landau series) never happened in the main Toobworld.
Up to a point, they did. There was a Moonbase Alpha, kept secret from the
general public. In fact, there are still several moon bases still in operation
on the Moon. Commander John Koenig was in charge of the facility when the
nuclear waste dumps on the dark side of the Moon exploded. But that did not
trigger the cataclysm of the Moon leaving the Earth's orbit.
Everything we saw from that point on in the series all took place in the
coma dream of Koenig, who had been seriously injured in the blast. That way we
can keep the series' basics in the main TV Universe.
At any rate, happy birthday to Martin Landau - thanks for all you've
contributed to the world of the Toob!
BCnU!
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