Who Are Michael Landon’s Three Wives?
Michael Landon had an incredibly busy professional life, starring in three different hit TV shows between 1959 and 1989 — Bonanza, Little House on the Prairie and Highway to Heaven. He also had an incredibly busy personal life, marrying three times and fathering nine children. Who were Michael Landon’s three wives? How did he meet them, and how many children did he have with each?
Dodie Levy-Fraser (1956-62)
Landon’s first wife was born in or around 1930 and had already been married once before meeting Michael Landon. When she and Landon married in 1956, he adopted Dodie’s son, Mark, who was born in 1948. The couple adopted another son, Josh. Levy-Fraser and Landon divorced after six years of marriage in 1962; she married again in 1975, to Dr. Peter Lake. She passed away in 1994.
Marjorie Lynn Noe (1963-82)
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Marjorie Lynn Noe, who went by Lynn, was born in 1933 and worked as a background actress, with small roles as an extra in films like 1956’s Around the World in 80 Days. Noe and Landon met during one her extra gigs, on the set of Bonanza. Their daughter, Cheryl Landon Wilson, wrote in her memoir: “According to everything I’ve ever been told by both my parents, it was love at first sight. Their eyes met, and as Dad explained, he knew in that instant that he ‘had to have her,’ that this woman had to be his mate.”
Noe had been married twice before she met Landon and had one child, Cheryl, whom Landon adopted. The pair went on to have four more children together — Leslie, Michael Landon Jr., Shawna and Christopher.
Their marriage lasted nearly 20 years, and the couple often appeared in public together, on talk shows and in a series of Kodak TV ads in the ’70s that also featured their children.
They divorced after Landon began an affair with his third wife, Cindy Clerico, on the set of Little House on the Prairie. Lynn Noe died in 2015.
Cindy Clerico (1983-91)
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Cindy Clerico was born in 1957. She and Landon met on the set of Little House on the Prairie, where she was working as an extra. She later became one of the show’s makeup artists. After his divorce from Noe, he married Clerico in a small ceremony on Valentine’s Day 1983, while she was pregnant with their first child. Together, they had two children, Sean and Yellowstone star Jennifer. Landon and Cindy were still married when he passed away from pancreatic cancer in 1991.
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Today, she is a producer, working on films like the 2016 documentary Sanctuary.
Favorite TV Families
December 2020
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