Cindy Clerico, who has been Cindy Landon since she married Michael Landon in 1983, is an executive producer on Fox’s Highway to Heaven revival, which the network ordered on 6 May 2026 for the 2027-28 season. She is 69 and a documentary producer. She is also Landon’s widow and the mother of Jennifer Landon, an actor known for Yellowstone, and Sean Landon. Landon met her on the set of Little House on the Prairie, where she worked as a makeup artist and stand-in.
The surname she took was one Landon had chosen for himself. He was born Eugene Orowitz and picked “Landon” from a phone book after being advised to change a Jewish-sounding name. Getty Images still captions pictures of the couple from 1984 and 1990 under her maiden name, Clerico.
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A family from Helper, Utah
Her father, Richard Clerico, was born in Helper, Utah. By 1964, according to his obituary, she was living in California with her mother, and he moved there to be closer to her. He later joined the California State Police and died in 2014. The obituary lists Cindy Landon and her children among his survivors.
Accounts of her own birth differ. IMDb lists 25 November 1956 in Los Angeles, while a Mercy For Animals donor profile says she was born in Helper. Google’s knowledge panel and several websites give the date as 27 January 1957.
What Cindy Clerico did on Little House on the Prairie
A stand-in takes an actor’s place while the crew sets up lighting and camera angles. Clerico had no credited role on the series, and People magazine describes her job on the set as makeup artist and stand-in.
Landon was still married to his second wife, Lynn Noe, when the relationship began. United Press International reported in 1983 that he had met Clerico about three years before their wedding, and his Little House co-star Karen Grassle later wrote in her memoir that he talked with Clerico longer than he talked to anyone else.
He and Noe divorced in 1982. Landon told People in 1985 that he would have done anything to keep the marriage going but could not. In the same story Noe said she was not bitter toward Clerico. “If it hadn’t been Cindy, it would have been somebody,” she said.
On 14 February 1983 Landon and his third wife married at his beachfront home in Malibu, with about 30 guests, five of them his children. Landon was 46, and Clerico, who was 20 years younger, was pregnant with their daughter Jennifer, born that August.
Two of Landon’s children from the Noe marriage have addressed the split publicly. His eldest daughter, Cheryl, wrote about it in a 1992 memoir, I Promised My Dad, and his son Michael Landon Jr. dramatised it in a 1999 TV movie, Michael Landon, the Father I Knew, with Julie Condra playing Cindy.
A Hebrew name in a 1991 obituary
Landon had dropped his Jewish-sounding birth name decades earlier. The Detroit Jewish News reported in its obituary of him on 12 July 1991 that he had identified as Jewish all his life and had become associated with a Reconstructionist congregation in Malibu about five years earlier. Reconstructionism is a liberal movement within Judaism. Landon asked that his two youngest children, Jennifer and Sean, be given Hebrew names. Cindy took part in the ceremony and, “although retaining her Mormon faith,” accepted the name Ziona.
Landon’s death in 1991
On 8 April 1991, at a press conference, Landon announced his pancreatic cancer diagnosis. He died on 1 July at 54, and People magazine reported that he asked the children gathered in his bedroom to go downstairs and give him time with Cindy, and that the two were alone when he died. Cindy was 34, Jennifer was 7 and Sean was 4. Soon afterwards she had an accident on a horse that scared her off riding, which Jennifer has called horrible timing.
All of Landon’s children made him a “goodbye book” while he was ill, his daughter Leslie Landon Matthews told Fox News in 2024. Each child had a couple of pages, and the cover spelled out “Dad” with their heads.
“Michael was my gift. Michael wrote me a wish book before he passed.”
Cindy Landon, in a 2021 tribute from the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network
On 1 July 2026, the 35th anniversary of his death, she wrote on Instagram that grief has changed shape over the years but has never left her. No second marriage has been reported, and Variety describes her as Landon’s widow in its coverage of the Fox order.
Advocacy and documentaries
In the years since, she has campaigned for pancreatic cancer research and animal welfare.
- In 2009 she lobbied Congress with Jennifer and Sean for more research funding, at the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network’s Advocacy Day.
- In 2016 Last Chance for Animals named her its philanthropist of the year, and the Malibu Times described her as president of the Michael and Cindy Landon Foundation.
- On Instagram she calls herself an ethical vegan and animal activist and posts about events for Eastwood Ranch Foundation, an animal rescue group.
Her first producing credit came in 2006, and her list now includes two Highway to Heaven projects.
| Year | Title | Her credit | About |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | Whaledreamers | Co-producer | Documentary about whales and the Mirning people of Australia, directed by Kim Kindersley |
| 2011 | After Kony: Staging Hope | Executive producer | Documentary about American actors and playwrights who used theatre to help Ugandan teenagers, many of them former child soldiers, tell their stories; won the People’s Choice Award at the Starz Denver Film Festival |
| 2016 | Sanctuary | Producer | Documentary about rescued monkeys, directed by Shannon Keith |
| 2018 | The Game Changers | Executive producer, one of about two dozen | Documentary about vegan athletes; debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2018 |
| 2021 | Highway to Heaven (Lifetime) | Executive producer for the Landon estate | TV movie with Jill Scott and Barry Watson; premiered 6 November 2021 |
| 2027-28 | Highway to Heaven (Fox) | Executive producer | Revival from Jason Katims and Amblin Television |
A restaurant investment and a house sale
She also invested in Plant Food + Wine, chef Matthew Kenney’s restaurant in Venice, California. The New York Times reported in April 2024 that she put money in when it opened in 2015, even though her business manager and others warned her not to trust Kenney because of his earlier failed ventures. She was one of seven investors who told the paper they felt he had taken advantage of their commitment to veganism and who now assume their money is gone.
Cindy Landon told the Times she decided to speak out after investors and former employees shared their own stories and said Kenney had to be stopped. Kenney called the reporting “not based in reality.” Plant Food + Wine closed in January 2024.
In 2015 she paid $7.5 million for a beachside house in Malibu, renovated it and listed it for $18 million in 2018. She told Forbes she had meant to move into it but was not ready to leave the home she and Michael built, where their children were raised. The house sold in 2019 for $15.7 million, The Real Deal reported.
Bringing Highway to Heaven back
Jason Katims, who created Parenthood, is showrunner, with Amblin Television and Michael Landon Productions, the company that made the original, as partners. Variety lists Cindy Landon, whom it describes as the widow of the original series’ creator, and Wayne Lepoff as the Michael Landon Productions executive producers.
The original ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989, with Landon as Jonathan Smith, a probationary angel sent to earth to help people. Landon told People in 1985 that he had promised to make something that helped others after his daughter Cheryl survived a car crash in 1973, and that the idea for the show came to him later while he sat in traffic.
Katims has said he wants to tell a story about “someone trying to do better as an angel than he did as a man.” Fox describes the new series as built on compassion, humanity and second chances.
Casting had not begun when Fox announced the order. Cindy Landon said she was “proud to help carry Michael’s legacy forward,” and on Instagram on 7 May 2026 she wrote that the series “was always more than a television show.”
