Ely Abraham Landau (January 20, 1920 – November 4, 1993) was an American producer and production executive best remembered for films of plays in the

American Film Theatre From 1973 to 1975, using approximately 500 movie theaters across the US, The American Film Theatre presented two seasons of film adaptations of well-known plays. Each film was shown only four times at each theatre. By design, these were not films ...

series. Landau began working in television as a director and producer in the late 1940s following

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

military service. Landau co-founded

National Telefilm Associates National Telefilm Associates (NTA) was an audio-visual marketing company primarily concerned with the syndication of American film libraries to television, including the Republic Pictures film library. It was successful enough on cable television ...

, a New York-based television distribution company, with

Oliver A. Unger Oliver A. Unger (August 28, 1914 – March 27, 1981) was an American film producer, distributor, and exhibitor. In a 45-year career, he was also a television producer and owner of movie theaters and television stations throughout the United Sta ...

and Harold Goldman in 1954 and subsequently became the president and chairman of the board of the company. Among NTA's assets were television stations including WNTA-TV in Newark, N.J. (now

WNET WNET (channel 13), branded on-air as "Thirteen" (stylized as "THIRTEEN"), is a primary PBS member television station licensed to Newark, New Jersey, United States, serving the New York City area. Owned by The WNET Group (formerly known as the ...

),''Forbes,'' The 'Used Movie' Czars, May 15, 1958. whose pioneering programming included award-winning shows such as '' Play of the Week,'' '' Open End'' (hosted by

David Susskind David Howard Susskind (December 19, 1920 – February 22, 1987) was an American producer of TV, movies, and stage plays and also a TV talk show host. His talk shows were innovative in the genre and addressed timely, controversial topics beyond th ...

), and ''The Mike Wallace Interviews''. Landau won a

Peabody Award The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Peabody, honor the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in television, radio, and ...

for ''The Play of the Week'', a series of stage plays mounted for television from 1959 to 1961. NTA, which won praise for being innovative, distributed the series, for which Landau was primarily responsible. In a 1959 interview, he said: "With this I'm bucking the trend. But I don't think any independent station is going to succeed if it just does the Westerns and crime and situation comedy shows that we find everywhere else."">"Ely Landau, Producer, 73, Dies; Filmed Plays for TV and Theaters" - New York Times
/ref> In 1961, Landau and Unger turned to feature-film production, forming the Landau-Unger Company, which produced films such as ''Long Day's Journey into Night'' (1962) and ''The Pawnbroker'' (1964). The earlier film, a screen rendering of the play by

Eugene O'Neill Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (October 16, 1888 – November 27, 1953) was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Nobel Prize in Literature, literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into the U.S. the drama tech ...

, was shown at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival, where its stars ( Katharine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson,

Jason Robards Jason Nelson Robards Jr. (July 26, 1922 – December 26, 2000) was an American actor. Known as an interpreter of the works of playwright Eugene O'Neill, Robards received two Academy Awards, a Tony Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and the Cannes ...

and

Dean Stockwell Robert Dean Stockwell (March 5, 1936 – November 7, 2021) was an American actor with a career spanning seven decades. As a child actor under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, he first came to the public's attention in films including ''Anchors A ...

) won the Best Actress and Actor awards collectively. The Landau-Unger Company also distributed ''

The Eleanor Roosevelt Story ''The Eleanor Roosevelt Story'' is a 1965 American biographical documentary film directed by Richard Kaplan. It won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1965. The Academy Film Archive preserved ''The Eleanor Roosevelt Story'' in 200 ...

'' (1965), which won the

Academy Award for Best Documentary The Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film is an award for documentary films. In 1941, the first awards for feature-length documentaries were bestowed as Special Awards to '' Kukan'' and ''Target for Tonight''. They have since been best ...

. The Landau-Unger Company was sold to Commonwealth United Corporation in 1967, at which time he was named president and CEO. In 1970, he compiled and produced the 185-minute television documentary '' King: A Filmed Record... Montgomery to Memphis'', an account of the public career of the Rev. Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...

The documentary was praised as achieving a density and shapeliness that would be rare in any movie, let alone a documentary committed to the sequence of actual events. Always interested in adapting theatrical productions to film, he founded the

in 1972 to make movies adaptations of stage plays.

Select producing credits

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Landau, Ely 1920 births 1993 deaths American film producers American film studio executives 20th-century American Jews 20th-century American businesspeople Burials at Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery