Michael Landon Joked His Second Wife Was a Vampire Because of a Common Habit
Little House on the Prairie star Michael Landon once joked to his friend Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show that he thought his second wife, Lynn Noe, was a vampire. But which of her habits made him say that?
Michael Landon married his second wife, Lynn Noe, in 1963
Landon married three times and was a father to nine children before he died in 1991. First, he married Dodie Fraser in 1956 when he was 20. He said the failure of his first marriage was due to youth and he and Noe married in 1963.
In those first two marriages, Landon became a father to seven children. Some of those kids he conceived with his wives, and others were adopted from previous relationships.
While married to Noe, the actor found himself on a different schedule than the rest of his family when he would get up as early as four-thirty in the morning to start doing handiwork. In chatting with Carson about that work, he mentioned observing one of Noe’s habits and how he thought it was a red flag for vampirism.
Michael Landon told Johnny Carson his second wife was a vampire on ‘The Tonight Show’
In a 1974 interview for The Tonight Show, Landon told his friend and neighbor Carson about some amateur handiwork he’d been doing around his house early in the mornings. But he mentioned, “My wife sleeps rather late. I thought she was a vampire for 12 years.”
“Does that cause problems?” Carson asked and Landon replied, “No, as long as she only bites my throat.”
After the laughter, the host explained he was asking if there was any resentment from Landon toward his wife for sleeping in while he was up early working. But Landon told him he liked to get up earlier than everyone else. “It’s better that way,” he explained before adding, “It’s quiet. It’s nice.”
Michael Landon and Lynn Noe divorced and he married his third wife
Landon eventually ended his marriage to Noe, and not because she slept late. Per People, he said, “I would have done anything to make that relationship continue, but I could not. It’s not just difficult for the wife. It is painful for the husband too. But it is far better than letting it stay the way it was.”
Onlookers generally thought he left his second wife for his third, Cindy Clerico, whom he met when she was a makeup artist on the Little House set. Landon denied she was the reason for the split.
“You don’t dissolve a relationship to go to bed with someone 20 years younger,” he shared. “You have to have major differences and a deep-rooted need to stop a relationship after as many years as I was married.”
Noe told People she agreed with some of what her ex said, specifically that it wasn’t Clerico’s fault the marriage ended. “If it hadn’t been Cindy, it would have been somebody. He had reached that point in his life.”
