You may be familiar with Michael Landon from his roles in Bonanza or Highway to Heaven, but what do you know about his first wife, Dodie Levy Fraser?
Fraser led an interesting life, having been wed three times. She was married to Michael Landon for six years before he started dating a model behind her back, and their marriage ended in a divorce.
However, that wasn’t Dodie’s last marriage!
Here’s everything we know about Michael Landon’s first and late wife.
Dodie Levy Fraser Biography
| Birth Date | 16th of March, 1933 |
| Parents | Nissim and Victoria |
| Siblings | Mary and Solomon |
| Marriages | 3 |
| Net Worth | $500,000 in 1994 |
| Death | 5th of July, 1994 |
The Early Life of Dodie Levy Fraser
Dodie was born in March of 1933, three years before Michael Landon was born. Her birthplace was New York City, and she was born to Nissim, her father, and Victoria Samarel, her mother. She had a brother and a sister, and she mentioned once that they were the ones to raise her.
This implies that her parents were maybe dead or out of the picture, but we don’t know enough about her secretive personal life to say for sure.
Fraser got into acting in primary school, and she used to participate in theatrical shows to feed her talent. When she graduated from high school, she started her professional career in acting, and she started working as an author alongside her main career a couple of years later.
When Fraser died, she was working as a legal secretary, so we can say her career life took an interesting turn.
The First Marriage of Dodie Levy Fraser
Dodie didn’t share a lot about her first marriage because she was apparently so young at the time. Her husband died shortly after the marriage, and she shared a child with him called Mark.
Mark was about 12 years old at the time she married Michael Landon, and the American actor gladly took him under his wing.
Fraser’s Marriage to Michael Landon
Michael Landon and Dodie Fraser met in 1956, and they tied the knot in the same year. At the time, Fraser had a boy from her first marriage, and she went on to adopt another with Landon. The second son was called Josh, and the couple adopted him while he was still an infant.
In 1961, the marriage was already falling apart because Landon had apparently been seeing a model behind his wife’s back. Strangely enough, Fraser thought adopting a third son would bring them together and fix their torn marriage.
She went through with the adoption, adopting a boy named Jason in May 1961. However, the marriage was gone beyond saving, and the couple got a divorce a year later.
According to the news back then, Landon was publicly dating Marjorie Lynn Noe, a model, before his divorce from Fraser was final. He went on to marry her in 1963, but they divorced in 1982 as well.
Dodie Levy Fraser’s Last Marriage
Although Michael Landon went in to get married only a year after his divorce from Dodie Levy Fraser, she didn’t do the same. In fact, she waited 9 years to tie the knot again. In 1971, she married Dr. Peter Lake, and it’s believed they stayed married until her death.
Fraser was pretty secretive about her third marriage, which is understandable considering her marriage with Michael Landon stayed under the spotlight for a long time. That’s why we don’t know much about her third marriage, which was apparently successful.
Dodie Levy Fraser’s Death
Dodie Levy Fraser’s life came to an end on the 5th of July, 1994. She was 61 years old back then, and she died in Riverside County, California.
There’s been no declared reason for her death, so we believe it might have been a natural cause.
Meanwhile, Michael Landon died three years before Dodie, suffering from pancreatic cancer. He was then married to his third wife, Cindy Landon.