‘Little House’ Melissa Gilbert’s Last Goodbye to Michael Landon: ‘He Was Doing Everything to Fight’
The ‘Little House on the Prairie’ star opens up about her last days with Michael Landon and his legacy
Melissa Gilbert is known by most for her portrayal of Laura Ingalls on the hit television series Little House on the Prairie, but these days, she’s keeping busy in a different way. The 60-year-old actress and former president of the Screen Actors Guild has found much success with her lifestyle brand, Modern Prairie, in which she sells everything from clothing and accessories to homeware. Many of her products pay homage to her character of Laura and the aesthetics of the iconic show, but this month, Gilbert is taking a different route. November is Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month, and in a recent conversation with Fox News, the actress got candid about her relationship with her on-screen father, played by Michael Landon, who tragically passed from pancreatic cancer.
The new line of goods from Modern Prairie is purple in honor of pancreatic cancer awareness and on top of that, all proceeds will go to PanCAN. In promoting this new line, Gilbert revealed that she was lucky enough to spend time with Landon a mere week before his passing—a moment in her life that she cherishes to this day. Here, see what she had to say about saying her goodbyes to Michael Landon.
Melissa Gilbert talks final moments with Michael Landon
The news of Landon’s diagnosis came to Gilbert before the news broke publicly. His real-life daughter, Leslie Landon Matthews, reached out with the devastating information so that Gilbert wouldn’t hear about it via a press conference, the way the public would. Gilbert had lost her own father to suicide at only 11 years old, so the prospect of losing another significant father figure in her life was crippling.
“Like everyone else, I sort of watched from a distance because I didn’t want to intrude,” she told Fox News. “But then a while later, I made the decision that I really had to go see him. And this was much later on in his pancreatic cancer journey. I ended up going and spending time with him. And it turned out to be just a week before he died,” she revealed.
Despite the weight of their last moments together, Gilbert said the beloved actor kept both his sense of humor and will up until the very end. “He was trying conventional treatments, he was trying holistic and Eastern treatments, he was doing everything he possibly could to fight it,” she shared.
She even recalled a funny memory in which her son was bitten by one of Landon’s horses. Though she kept it from him so as not to upset him, he eventually found out. When he asked her about it and she assured him her son was fine, he said, “‘Thank God it wasn’t worse. I would feel awful.’ And then he said, ‘Wait a minute, I’m dying from pancreatic cancer. How could I feel any worse?’”
Though the beloved actor is with us no longer, his charm, sense of humor and talent live on.
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