• Mort à Knots Landing.

     

    S13.21" Est-ce que tu m'aimes encore ?"

    S13.22"La petite fille et son secret fin" de la 13ème saison et dernier épisode dans lequel Larry Riley est apparu.

    Dans cet article du 22 juin 1992,l'auteur raconte à quel point les téléspectateurs furent choqués par la grande perte de poids de Larry Riley.Celui qui incarnait Franck Williams la justifia par un problème rénal et qu'il devrait faire des dialyses le reste de sa vie.Après son décès ,son épouse révéla qu'en fait il était atteint du sida,mais qu'ils ne l'avaient pas dit à leurs familles ni à personne.Larry Riley s’inquiétait et craignait que si la vérité venait à être découverte,il en serait fini de sa carrière.

    Nina Riley est reconnaissante envers David Jacobs qui n'a pas hésité à aménager les horaires de travail de son mari,et réécrit des scènes afin que ce dernier soit le moins fatigué possible.En effet la douleur dans ses jambes et ses bras était telle que Larry Riley avait du mal à rester debout.David Jacobs annonça donc qu'il pourrait tourner les nouvelles scènes en étant assis ,et que son contrat était renouvelé pour une autre saison.L'acteur fut très ému et sur le trajet de retour chez lui,il pleura .

    "Nous nous accommodions de sa maladie,mais n'y faisions pas face",explique David Jacobs qui ignorait alors la vraie maladie de Larry Riley.

    Joan Van Ark a les mêmes regrets,d'autant plus que l'équipe était une famille.Elle et d'autres membres du casting disent qu'ils supposaient que la version de l'insuffisance rénale était la vérité.  

     Kevin Dobson  conscient que la santé de son ami se détériorait, il dit avoir essayé d'appeler Larry Riley le jour où il est mort, dans l'intention d'un don de sang.

    Michele Lee, qui a dirigé Riley dans la saison cliff-hanger, dit: «Je savais qu'il n'était pas bien, mais je m' attendais à ce qu'il vive et aille mieux." Pendant le tournage finale, elle se souvient: «sa femme tenait une couverture autour de lui entre les prises."

    Riley a appris qu'il était séropositif en 1990, quatre ans après sa rencontre avec Nina, une ancienne actrice. «Il y avait de petits indices," dit-elle.
     Il avait eu des plaques quatre ou cinq ans plus tôt ,et avait attrapé froid."


    Quant à savoir comment Riley, qui fut une fois brièvement marié à une femme d'affaires et a un fils de 21 ans(donc 45 ans en 2016), Larry Jr., d'une autre relation, a contracté le SIDA, Nina dit: «Il n'était gay ni  bisexuel. Il n'a pas du tout utilisé d' aiguilles .                                                                                                      Il a supposé que cela lui avait été transmis par une femme ,car c'était un coureur de jupons ",bien que cependant on style de vie, ne pouvait guère renforcé son système immunitaire. "Il avait un très grave problème avec la drogue et l'abus d'alcool», dit-elle, "il était "clean et sobre depuis mai 1989," date à laquelle il fit une cure de désintoxication  à l'hôpital Las Encinas à Pasadena. Ses médecins, dit-elle, croient qu'il aurait pu être séropositif depuis une dizaine d'années (il a été traité par le Dr Michael Gottlieb, qui a également traité Rock Hudson et Elizabeth Glaser). Nina a jusqu'à présent éte testée négatif, et continue d'être testée tous les six mois.

    En avril 1992,Larry Riley était trop malade pour un dernier voyage à Memphis,même en avion,  afin d'aller voir  sa mère,Corine ,sa sœur  Géorgia et son frère, Joe(une autre soeur, Debra, vit à Houston, son père, George,  est décédé.)                          Par la suite, Nina dit, "il était déprimé et se recroquevilla  lui-même." Heureusement, son amour  pour  la musique, en particulier le blues et le jazz (on le vit d'ailleurs joué de la guitare et chanté dans Côte Ouest,dans un club ou passait également l'ex de Danny Waleska), l'aida à soulager sa douleur.

    Vers la fin,  son épouse utilisait un lecteur de cassettes et lui faisait écouter des du  blues .Larry Riley était le plus grand fan de blues, et se tournant vers le Dr Gottlieb ,il dit:" Avez-vous apporté la section de cuivres ?
    Le médecin a commencé à rire,ainsi que moi et Larry qui a gardé son sens de l'humour jusqu'à la dernière minute",raconte Nina Riley.

    Death in Knots Landing

    Amid the Storyline Secrets, Actor Larry Riley Kept His Own: Aids

     

    WHEN KNOTS LANDING RETURNED to the air in February after a five-month hiatus—during  which CBS's long-running (13 seasons) but sagging nighttime soap was being retooled—viewers were disturbed by a wholly unexpected development: They could barely recognize Larry Riley, who had been with the show for five seasons as cop turned attorney Frank Williams. The 6' actor had dropped 80 lbs. from his once-powerful 220-lb. frame and suddenly looked much older than his 39 years.

    Riley attributed the drastic change to "a complete shutdown of my kidneys" brought on by high blood pressure; he would, he explained, be on dialysis the rest of his life. When he died only four months later—on June 6, at the St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank—his widow and his doctor revealed that the kidney ailment was the result of AIDS.

    "I didn't tell my family," says his second wife, Nina, 37, whom he married in December after a six-year relationship. "He didn't tell his family. We didn't tell a soul. Larry was very concerned that the word would have gotten out and ruined his career."

    When Riley learned he had the disease, says Nina, he asked his doctor not, "How long can I live?" but "All right—how long can I work?" "To Larry Riley," Nina explains, "life equaled work and work equaled life."

    Riley's career began in his hometown of Memphis. He appeared in school shows at Melrose High, then studied drama at Memphis State before graduating to stage roles in Pippin, Dreamgirls and A Soldier's Play (plus the 1984 movie version, A Soldier's Story). In 1988, Riley arrived in Knots Landing; along with Lynne Moody, who played his wife, he was the series' first black regular.

    Nina praises Knots executive producer and head writer David Jacobs for making life easier for her ailing husband—though neither Jacobs nor anyone else on the show knew Riley had AIDS. Jacobs rearranged shooting schedules and rewrote scenes so that the actor, no longer able to stand because of exhaustion and pain in his arms and legs, could be filmed sitting. After Jacobs informed Riley that he would be re-signed for another season, despite his failing health, "Larry cried all the way home," Nina says. But Jacobs wishes Riley had given him the chance to show even greater understanding. "We accommodated his disease," says Jacobs, "but we didn't deal with it."

    Costar Joan Van Ark harbors similar regrets. "This cast is such a family," says Van Ark, "and we are wondering now: Did the family fail?" She and other cast members say they assumed his story of kidney failure was the truth. Landing's Kevin Dobson, aware only that his friend's health was deteriorating, says he tried to call Riley the day he died, planning to offer to donate blood. And Michele Lee, who directed Riley in the season cliff-hanger, says, "I knew he was not well, but I expected him to live, to get better." During the final shoot, she recalls, "his wife was holding a blanket around him between takes."

    Riley learned that he was HIV positive in 1990, four years after he met Nina, a former actress. "There were tiny clues," she says. "He had shingles four or five years ago. And he would catch cold."

    As to how Riley, who was once briefly married to a businesswoman and has a 21-year-old son, Larry Jr., from another relationship, contracted AIDS, Nina says, "He was not gay. He was not bisexual. He did not use needles at all. He speculated it was from a woman. Because he was quite the womanizer." His lifestyle, though, could scarcely have bolstered his immune system. "He had a very severe problem with drug and alcohol abuse," she says, "and he had gotten clean and sober in May '89," detoxing at Las Encinas Hospital in Pasadena. His doctors, she says, believe he could have been HIV positive for a decade (he was treated by Dr. Michael Gottlieb, who has also treated Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Glaser). Nina has so far tested negative, and continues to be tested every six months.

    Riley was too sick to even get on the plane for one last trip to Memphis in April to visit his mother, Corine, his sister Georgia and his brother, Joe. (Another sister, Debra, lives in Houston; his father, George, a contractor and minister, is deceased.) Afterward, Nina says, "he was depressed and withdrew into himself." Fortunately, Riley's love of music, especially blues and jazz (he had done the score for several Knots episodes), helped ease his pain.

    "Near the end, I finally brought in his boom box," says Nina, "and played some blues tapes. He was the biggest fan of the blues, and he turned to Dr. Gottlieb and said, 'Did you bring the horn section?' The doctor started laughing. I did. Larry did. He kept his sense of humor up to the very last moment."

    Source:http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20112961,00.html


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