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> 2005
> September/October
Michael Landon, Jr.: The Son Also Rises
He's following in his famous father's footsteps. But he's determined to avoid his father's sins.
By Mark Moring
 1 of 3
When he was a young boy, Michael Landon Jr. spent a lot of time hanging out with his famous father on the set of Little House on the Prairie.
They're some of the happiest memories of his life, and Little House is, to this day, the younger Landon's favorite work from his dad's family-friendly repertoire of long-running TV shows—which also included stints as Little Joe on Bonanza and as the angel Jonathan Smith on Highway to Heaven.
As far as Landon is concerned, Little House was as good as it gets, and his dad was the epitome of Pa Ingalls. Young Michael saw his father the way the rest of the world did—as warm, loving, and a consummate family man who could do no wrong.
"He was my everything as I was growing up," says Michael. "I had a certain vision of my father, a vision I think was perpetuated by the role he was playing at the time and by the way the public perceived him. He was the perfect dad."
But that perfect image was shattered one afternoon when Michael came home from high school. He was met at the door by an uncle, who had clearly been crying. The uncle sat Michael and his sister Leslie down on the couch and broke the news.
"Your dad has left," he said. "Your mother is upstairs. She's a wreck, and she needs you to comfort her."
Today, Landon says he was blindsided by the news. He later learned that his father had been having an affair with someone who worked behind the scenes of Little House, and that unfaithfulness led to his parents' divorce.
The unimaginable had happened: Pa Ingalls, a promise keeper long before Promise Keepers was cool, had had a tryst and split from his wife. A Hollywood scandal indeed.
"My world was completely shattered," says Landon, who was 15 at the time.
That shattered world would soon spin out of control.
Tough years
"After my father left," says Landon, "I went through a few really tough years. I went from being an honor roll student to just barely getting by. I started experimenting with pot and alcohol. All these things came into my life and started to destroy it."
His self-destructive behavior continued through high school and on into his freshman year at the University of Southern California.
Meanwhile, his mother, who had also been shattered by the divorce, had found a sensitive listener in her manicurist, a Christian woman named Louise. As she shared her painful story with Louise, Louise in turn shared her faith.
"And then," Landon says, "she took my mother to church. And then my mother got saved."
Landon, then 18, was still playing the role of party animal, "absolutely raising hell," as he puts it. "My mom started asking me if I wanted to go to church with her. I didn't want to have anything to do with it."
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