Landon gave interviews over the years revealing aspects of his childhood and his dislike of his mother. According to the Los Angeles Times, Landon’s mother was regularly suicidal, and she was also open about wishing Landon would die.
In a 1987 interview with Redbook magazine, the actor described his mother as abusive and mentally unstable, saying “she was a stabber, a kicker, and a wacko,” he told the magazine (via Showbiz Cheatsheet). “She was abusive. My mother would sit on the sofa in her nightgown, she always wore her nightgown when she was upset, holding a bible, asking God to kill me.”
He told author Tom Ito in the book “Conversations with Michael Landon,” that his mother once chased him around with a knife (via Showbiz Cheatsheet). And in his final interview with Life magazine, before he died of pancreatic cancer in 1991 at 54 years old, he said his mother constantly tried to commit suicide when he was a boy. But Landon also said she was nice to strangers and people who didn’t know her very well thought she was “the sweetest” person. But Landon knew better.
