How did Little Joe die on Bonanza

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July 2, 1991, Section D, Page 18Buy Reprints

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Michael Landon, who won fame as Little Joe Cartwright in the television series "Bonanza" and who enhanced his celebrity as a creator, writer and director of other television hits, died yesterday at his ranch in Malibu, Calif. He was 54 years old.

He died of cancer of the liver and pancreas, said a spokeswoman for Jay Eller, his lawyer.

Mr. Landon announced his medical condition on April 5, telling reporters: "I am going to fight it. Live every minute, guys."

At that news conference, Mr. Landon said he would be starting chemotherapy and would have to cancel a forthcoming television series, "Us," in which he was to portray a traveling columnist.

Mr. Landon's battle against cancer became highly public. He appeared on the "Tonight" show to discuss his condition and also gave other interviews. Young Man and a Frontier Father

The actor, an athletic man with thick curly hair, played the youngest member of the Ponderosa Ranch's all-male clan in 1959 to 1973 on "Bonanza." He went on to play an idealized frontier father in "Little House on the Prairie" in 1974 to 1982 and the altruistic angel assigned by God to aid mankind and spread love in "Highway to Heaven" in 1984 to 1988.

The three NBC series, along with several television plays and "Father Murphy," a 1981-84 series he supervised, made him a major shaper of prime-time family fare for nearly three decades.

Detractors assailed Mr. Landon's shows as sentimental happy-ever-after contrivances. Admirers praised him for sincerity in striving to deal honestly with sentiment and social concerns and for integrity in using his own company, Michael Landon Productions, to back his shows. Of 'Simple Needs'

The main values of "Little House on the Prairie," he said in 1975, "are the little things that nobody seems to care about anymore: the simple needs of people and how difficult it was in those days out West to supply them."

John J. O'Connor wrote in The New York Times in 1974 that "Little House on the Prairie" was overburdened by "family warmth and struggle," but he praised its historical value, citing "the building of the small windowless log cabin; the threat of wild wolf packs and prairie fires, the hunting for fox, muskrat and beaver, the diet of rabbit stew and biscuits."

In 1984, Arthur Unger wrote in The Christian Science Monitor that "Highway to Heaven" "is all the things its critics will say it is: simplistic, saccharine, gushy, sentimental, ingenuous, unsophisticated." "But it is also unique in contemporary television," he added. "It is a warm and loving and compassionate show for the whole family." A Marred Childhood

Mr. Landon, whose name was originally Eugene Maurice Orowitz, was born on Oct. 31, 1936, in Forest Hills, Queens, to Eli Maurice Orowitz, a movie theater manager, and the former Peggy O'Neill, an actress. The family soon moved to the suburb of Collingswood, N.J., where he grew up.

His childhood was marred by parental quarrels and the anti-Semitic taunts of his schoolmates, he said in interviews. Though he was slight, he became a champion javelin thrower, but otherwise he was an outsider who found solace in comic books and solitary walks.

He won a track scholarship to the University of Southern California but dropped out after a year. He worked at many jobs, studied at the Warner Brothers acting school and began his acting career as Michael Landon, a name he said he picked from the Los Angeles telephone book.

In his film debut, in 1957, he terrorized a high school campus from behind a fanged mask in the title role of "I Was a Teen-Age Werewolf." He played a headstrong farm boy in "God's Little Acre" and a Confederate hero in "The Legend of Tom Dooley." At the age of 22, he got his big break when he was cast as Little Joe in "Bonanza."

He also wrote and directed occasional episodes of "Bonanza." He described his first effort as shallow but functional, "not as good as some scripts we'd had, better than some, and a lot better than not working."

His penchant for perfection led to disputes. David Dortort, the executive producer of "Bonanza," said in 1974: "Landon developed very quickly as a good director. Then, as an actor, he began to criticize what he thought were errors being made by other 'Bonanza' directors. It was the same with Mike Landon, the writer. He'd challenge nearly every line, every scene, every setup in other writers' scripts. It got increasingly bitter toward the end."

In his later work, Mr. Landon insisted on overseeing virtually every aspect of production, prompting some associates to call him arrogant, obstinate and abrasive.

In reply, he said in 1974 that most actors were content to have everything done for them. These "nice guys trusted other people to make their decisions, and they bombed in basically bad shows," he said, adding that "if Michael Landon bombs, I don't want anyone else to have to take the blame but Michael Landon."

His first two marriages ended in divorce. He is survived by his third wife, Cindy, a Hollywood makeup artist, whom he married in 1983; five sons, Mark, Josh, Michael Jr., Christopher Beau and Sean, and four daughters, Cheryl, Leslie Ann, Shawna Leigh and Jennifer.