Michael Landon's Second Marriage Was Torn Apart By Infidelity & Hollywood

Michael Landon's marriage to his second wife, Marjorie Lynn Noe, started in 1963 and lasted until 1982 — one year before his show "Little House on the Prairie" went off the air. But although Landon spent roughly half of the marriage playing Charles Ingalls, a near-perfect, devoted husband and father, his union with Noe didn't exactly mirror the sweet, wholesome relationship his character enjoyed onscreen. In fact, Landon's almost 20-year marriage to Noe ended due to infidelity. You see, Landon became involved with his third wife, Cindy Clerico, during his marriage to Noe ... and the affair nearly destroyed his family-friendly image.

Landon's relationship with Clerico kicked off when she was working in Hollywood as a body double for Melissa Francis, who played Cassandra Cooper Ingalls on "Little House." Soon after, Landon ended his marriage to Noe. However, in 1985, he told People that, despite what the press claimed, he didn't leave Noe strictly because of Clerico. "I would have done anything to make that relationship continue, but I could not," he said of his first marriage. 

As for Noe, she blamed their problems partly on herself. "I was too busy being the kind of wife he wanted me to be, " she said. "I lost myself little by little. I made Michael my god." Noe also extended grace to her ex-husband's new wife. "If it hadn't been Cindy, it would have been somebody," she continued, adding, "He had reached that point in his life."

Marjorie Lynn Noe wasn't the only one who was impacted by Michael Landon's eventual marriage to Cindy Clerico, which controversially started when she was only 18 years old. Karen Grassle, who played Landon's onscreen wife, Caroline Ingalls, opened up about her complicated feelings about Landon's affair in "Bright Lights, Prairie Dust: Life, Loss and Love from Little House's Ma," her 2021 memoir. "I knew his wife ..." she wrote (via the New York Post). " She had been kind to me. And I thought about her children — there were three of them still at home ... and younger than Cindy." But she wasn't the only cast member who was unhappy. "It was awkward as hell for us in the company," she continued, adding, "Everyone saw. Everyone looked away."

Although Melissa Gilbert had a very close relationship with Landon, she was also impacted by his age-gap relationship with Clerico. Despite spending years playing his TV daughter and becoming close with his real-life family, she had a hard time accepting he was capable of an affair. "In public, Mike was seen as a pillar of morality and family values," she wrote in her memoir "Prairie Tale," released in 2009 (via Showbiz Cheatsheet). "A real-life incarceration of Charles Ingalls, not someone who would leave his wife for a younger woman." She continued, "The public believed it. So did my mother. And to some extent, so did I. Then, bada bing, the picture cracked." 

Unfortunately, the sobering realization that Landon wasn't like her TV dad fractured their close bond. However, they made up briefly in 1991 when they crossed paths at the wedding of Landon's daughter, Leslie. Landon died from pancreatic cancer that same year.