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Fission Impossible

Couples
Fission: Impossible? For 19 Years, Barbara's been the Bain of Martin Landau's Existence

By Jerene Jones. Photographs by Ben Martin.

NB: This is an edited version.

The assignment that Martin Landau and Barbara Bain drew last year could have been dreamed up by their old taskmaster at Mission: Impossible. They were to pack up their two daughters mid-semester, rent out their Tudor-style Beverly Hills mansion, and move to England. There, they'd begin shooting an implausible sci-fi epic that (according to the producer) would be the most expensive TV series ever made but had been rejected by all three U.S. networks. If it flopped, presumably they'd all self-destruct.

But by that point, Landau and Bain figured it was ignoble just to rest on their residuals-after all, they were the Lunt & Fontanne of videoland. So they uprooted themselves to London and happiness at Moonbase Alpha. To earthlings, that is the intergalactic HQ of Space: 1999, the syndicated series that, during its first year, spread to 155 U.S. cities and 101 countries, cornering the market on disenfranchised Star Trekkies everywhere.

More startling perhaps than even the ratings success of their discount 2001 is the fact that the show's stars have themselves remained in the same orbit through two decades in their dicey business. The trick, Martin explains firmly, is "we never play married." So Rollin Hand didn't lay a glove on Cinnamon Carter in Mission: Impossible, and Commander John Koenig and Dr. Helena Russell maintain separate quarters on Moonbase Alpha. (Next season, though, Space: 1999's scriptwriters plan to warm up their robotlike characters with some preliminary erotic stirrings.)

...

With Space: 1999, Landau and Bain are living in London like peers of the realm. Every day between 6 and 7 a.m. they are chauffeured to the set in a Rolls Silver Cloud Ill. They take their tea and lunch breaks in their opulent (and separate) dressing rooms. "We treat each other as professionals when we're working," he explains. "Each of us makes a little space for the other. Otherwise it gets too clubby."

According to Barbara, their daughters, Susie, 15, and Julie, 11, are finding "nothing but fun" and new perspectives in London. "They grew up in southern California and never saw a pedestrian before," she cracks. A recent visitor was Lucas Reiner, the 15-year-old brother of Rob, All in the Family's "Meathead." Their folks, Carl and Estelle Reiner, spend every Thanksgiving with Martin and Barbara. "We've adopted each other as families," explains Bain. Seven years ago she and Estelle decided their kids didn't get enough "crowd experience" at snobby Beverly Hills H.S. So the families now combine on a "totally non-posh" annual picnic, inviting 100 friends for such hoi polloi pleasures as sack races.

A live-in Spanish couple maintains the five-storey, 18th-century Landau-Bain townhouse in London's Chester Square. It's a nice job - the family rarely entertains, and the worst that happens is Martin occasionally gets a 4 a.m. whim to wok up Oriental dishes. Landau also paints and writes, including a script for a film which he hopes to produce about the suicide of a friend. Bain's release is needlepoint. She and Martin recently collaborated on a wool rug. He designed the arabesque pattern; she stitched it. "Barbara and I complement each other," he says, "but we also have our differences. I like the sun; she doesn't. She is not an outdoor person." Anything else? Oh, yes. Bain chews (Juicy Fruit); Landau doesn't. Basically, and despite her freeze-dried TV persona, Barbara is an adaptable down-to-earth mother. "Into next week is as far as I can look." she says. "I have always gone with the wind."