Mrs. Landingham

Character role

Mrs. Dolores Landingham served as the personal secretary to President Josiah Bartlet on The West Wing. Her connection to him began long before his presidency; she was the school secretary for Bartlet’s father, who was the headmaster of a private high school in New Hampshire. Because of this, she knew Jed Bartlet from the time he was a student there. She later worked as his secretary when he was governor of New Hampshire, which gave her a level of familiarity with him that few other characters had. Bartlet always called her “Mrs. Landingham,” as he had when he first knew her, and the rest of the White House staff followed his lead.

In the second-season episode “18th and Potomac,” Mrs. Landingham was killed in a car crash at an intersection. She had just bought a new car and was driving it back to the White House so Bartlet could “kick the tires,” but a drunk driver hit her. The following episode, “Two Cathedrals,” showed flashbacks of her first meeting a teenage Jed Bartlet in the late 1950s, and she also appeared in the Oval Office to speak with him one last time during a crisis of faith. The character appeared in 30 of the series’ 154 episodes, with her final appearance in a season-four flashback in “Debate Camp.”

A significant moment for Mrs. Landingham came in the first-season episode “In Excelsis Deo,” set at Christmas. Charlie Young noticed she seemed sad despite the holiday cheer. She explained that she always felt this way during the season because her two sons, Andrew and Simon, were drafted into the Vietnam War. She and their father tried to convince them to take a deferment and finish medical school, but they refused. Both sons were killed by enemy fire on December 24, 1970. She said it was hard knowing they were far away and scared, and that they needed their mother. Later in the episode, she went with Toby Ziegler to a military funeral for a homeless veteran.

Development

Mrs. Landingham was played by Kathryn Joosten, with Kirsten Nelson playing a younger version in the flashback scenes of "Two Cathedrals." Joosten drew from previous experience spending time with an executive assistant at a technology company in Pasadena, noting that the assistant was efficient and proven but called her boss by her first name, which Joosten could not do. Joosten also recalled a scene where her character was to remind secretaries who were gossiping that they "work for some very important men here." Joosten, who said the line "pissed [her] off," persuaded the writers to change "men" to "people." While at a charity dinner with the cast and crew, Joosten told series creator Aaron Sorkin she had been approached for a regular role in a TV series shooting its pilot. This inadvertently inspired Sorkin to create serious drama for the Bartlet character by suddenly killing off his lifelong family friend and secretary, in a scene described as "perfectly gut-wrenching." The showrunner planned it as a dramatic penultimate twist for the second season, leading the President to rail against his god in "Two Cathedrals," a season finale for which Sheen was "the overwhelming favorite to win an Emmy [Award]."

Reception

Mrs. Landingham, the no-nonsense presidential secretary on The West Wing, was praised by the Los Angeles Times for grounding the show's idealized world, letting viewers see themselves or their mothers in the character. Scholar Shawn Parry-Giles described her as a "republican mother" who sacrifices her own children for the nation while steering Jed Bartlet toward leadership. In a 2020 Entertainment Weekly reunion, creator Aaron Sorkin highlighted the compassion actress Kathryn Joosten brought to the role, and cast members Rob Lowe and Richard Schiff called her performance in the episode "In Excelsis Deo" the best in the series. Showbiz Cheat Sheet that same year called her a beloved part of the show, and in 2021 the Waco Tribune-Herald named her a sentimental favorite. When the character was killed off in 2001, the California State Assembly held a moment of silence, with Democratic Assemblyman Kevin Shelley adjourning in memory of "a great American" whose contributions were "too numerous to count." The New York Times noted this showed the legislature wasn't entirely focused on the energy crisis. In 2014, The Atlantic ranked her 13th out of 114 West Wing characters, noting her few but meaningful interactions with Leo McGarry, Charlie Young, and the President. In 2015, the U.S. General Services Administration released a Slack bot named "Mrs. Landingham" to help onboard new hires, with fans at 18F wanting to bring back the beloved character. In 2021, British Member of Parliament Sir Robert Buckland, then Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary, adopted a grey tabby cat from Cats Protection and named her Mrs. Landingham.