Alan Landsburg, the prolific TV producer, died last Thursday of natural causes at the age of 81. In his day, he produced — and sometimes wrote and/or directed — thousands of hours of television programming. He was famous as a documentarian but his company was responsible for dozens of TV movies and dramatic specials, and occasionally dabbled in feature films. Among his more popular programs were In Search Of… and That's Incredible!
I worked for him for three years on the latter and I'll put this as nicely as I can: We did not get along. I did not like a lot of his business practices. He did not like a lot of things I said about them in his presence. To his credit, he was the kind of employer you could criticize in front of others and not lose your job. The show at the time was extremely profitable for him, earning him six figures a week, and I guess at those rates, you can endure a certain amount of snide remarks from one of your writers.
But I'll say this for the man: He knew how to produce a TV show cheaper than anyone else. That can be good and bad. One of his producers once said, "Alan can take the impossible deal and make money on it." In the earliest days of cable TV, he agreed to produce some programming for budgets that others had rejected as absurd. On a lot of his TV Movies, he sold the project by paying top dollar for a script or to land a huge star, then made up for it by producing the film for nine dollars. Some of them were pretty good.
He was on a hot streak when I worked for him, selling new shows and projects every day. This meant that he was always hiring and always had work for those who'd demonstrated competence and/or loyalty. An awful lot of people broke into the business on Landsburg productions and worked for him for years. I never worked with a happier "family" of employees…and for that alone, I'm now inclined to think well of him. I hope his passing receives the proper respect because he really was as amazing as anything we featured on That's Incredible!