Goodbye, Commander.

Veteran actor Martin Landau has died at 89.  If things had worked out a bit differently Landau might be known as a cartoonist instead of an actor.  He was still a teen when the New York Daily News hired him as a cartoonist, but five years later he decided to quit to pursue acting.  A student of Lee Strasberg, Landau's big break came when Alfred Hitchcock saw him in a play, and cast him as the villainous Leonard in North by Northwest, leading to a nearly 60 year career.

My first real exposure to Landau was as Commander John Koenig in Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's Space: 1999, where he starred opposite his then wife Barbara Bain.  In memoriam here's the Space: 1999 episode "The Black Sun," one of Landau's favourites.