Diff'rent Strokes aired from November 1978 until August 1986 on NBC and ABC.
For more on Diff'rent Strokes go to Diff'rent Strokes Online right here at Sitcoms Online.
An Article from The New York Times
Mrs. Reagan Will Act In Antidrug TV Role
AP
Published: January 15, 1983
Nancy Reagan will appear in an antidrug cameo role on the NBC-TV comedy ''Diff'rent Strokes,'' her press secretary said Thursday.
It will be Mrs. Reagan's first professional role since she appeared with Ronald Reagan in the movie ''Hellcats of the Navy'' in 1957 and only the first television acting appearance by a President's wife since Betty Ford retrieved her husband's pipe from Lou Grant on the ''Mary Tyler Moore Show'' in 1975.
Dana Plato's Obituary From CNN
Child star Dana Plato's life ends with overdose
May 9, 1999
MOORE, Oklahoma (CNN) -- After childhood fame and a troubled adulthood that included brushes with the law and battles with substance abuse, "Diff'rent Strokes" star Dana Plato died Saturday of a drug overdose.
She was 34 and leaves behind a 14-year-old son.
Plato was discovered unconscious at the home of her fiance's parents after failing to wake up from a nap. Efforts to resuscitate her were unsuccessful, and she was pronounced dead on arrival at Southwest Medical Center in Oklahoma City.
She apparently took the painkiller Loritab along with the tranquilizer Valium before napping.
"The death appears to be an accidental overdose. We don't suspect suicide," said police Sgt. Scott Singer. Final toxicology results could take as long as six weeks.
Plato and her fiance, Robert Menchaca, had stopped at his parents' home in Moore -- an Oklahoma City suburb hit by tornadoes earlier in the week -- for Mother's Day after she made an appearance on Howard Stern's radio show in New York.
Plato denied drug use on Stern show
Ironically, she had gone on Stern's show to rebut comments by a former roommate that she was taking drugs. Plato insisted she had been sober for years, although she said she was taking painkillers because she had her wisdom teeth removed four months ago.
From 1978 to 1984, Plato starred as Kimberly Drummond, the daughter of a wealthy man who took in two disadvantaged boys, on the NBC sitcom "Diff'rent Stokes." The popular series also starred Todd Bridges and Gary Coleman.
By 1991, battling alcohol and drug problems, Plato was arrested after robbing a video store in Las Vegas. She was given five years probation. But in 1992, she was arrested again for forging prescriptions for Valium.
"If I hadn't gotten caught, it could have been the worst thing that happened to me because I could have died of a drug overdose," she told reporters in 1992.
In recent years, Plato's career had included mainly low-budget films, including "Bikini Beach Race" and "Different Strokes: A Story of Jack and Jill ... and Jill." She also posed for Playboy magazine.
Other cast members ran into trouble
Plato is not the only "Diff'rent Strokes" cast member to run into trouble after the series went off the air.
Bridges also struggled with drug addiction and in 1990 was acquitted on charges of shooting a drug dealer. Three years later, he pleaded guilty to charges of drug possession and carrying a loaded weapon.
Coleman endured a bitter legal battle with his parents over his television earnings, which he ultimately won. In February, he received a 90-day suspended sentence after pleading no contest to charges that he hit an autograph seeker.
Correspondent Sherri Sylvester and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Here is Nedra Volz's Obituary from the LA Times
Nedra Volz -- character actress
January 29, 2003|By Myrna Oliver, Los Angeles Times
Nedra Volz, a character actress remembered for her early 1980s roles as housekeeper Adelaide Brubaker on the popular television comedy "Diff'rent Strokes" and postmistress Miz Emma Tisdale on "The Dukes of Hazzard," has died.
She was 94.
Ms. Volz, who played her customary "old lady" role in her final film, "The Great White Hype," which was released in 1996, died Jan. 20 in Mesa, Ariz., of complications of Alzheimer's disease.
Born in Montrose, Iowa, to vaudeville parents, she hit the boards as "Baby Nedra" and sang with a band as a young woman. But she did little acting until she became a senior citizen, making her film debut in the 1973 comedy "Your Three Minutes Are Up," starring Beau Bridges and Ron Leibman.
Ms. Volz gained more attention when she concentrated on roles as elderly women for television sitcoms beginning in a 1975 episode of "Good Times."
That put her in great demand for grandmother and old-lady parts, especially after she appeared in regular roles in two of producer Norman Lear's summer television series -- in "A Year at the Top" in 1977 and "Hanging In" in 1979.
By the 1980s, the diminutive, white-haired woman had arrived. She appeared on television almost weekly, sometimes more frequently, from 1980 through 1986.
First came "Diff'rent Strokes" when she stepped in to care for Conrad Bain's mixed Drummond family household featuring Gary Coleman. She remained on the show through 1982, although she also became the postmistress of Hazzard from 1981 through 1983.
Ms. Volz ended her regular sitcom series run as the bail bondswoman giving assignments to Lee Majors' stunt-man detective character on "The Fall Guy" from 1985 until the series ended in 1986.
But she remained a popular guest for almost 20 years on series such as "Alice," "Maude," "One Day at a Time," "Night Court," "Coach," "The Commish" and "Babes." She also appeared in films such as "Moving Violations" and "Earth Girls Are Easy."
Here is Gary Coleman's Obituary from The New York Times
Gary Coleman, ‘Diff’rent Strokes’ Star, Dies at 42
By ANITA GATES
Published: May 28, 2010
Gary Coleman, the former child star of the hit television series “Diff’rent Strokes,” who dealt with a well-publicized string of financial and personal difficulties after the show ended, died on Friday in Provo, Utah. He was 42 and lived in Santaquin, a small town near Provo.
Mr. Coleman was taken to Utah Valley Regional Medical Center on Wednesday as a result of a head injury caused by a fall. He suffered a brain hemorrhage and died after being removed from life support, a hospital spokeswoman, Janet Frank, said.
Mr. Coleman had been hospitalized twice this year with seizure-related problems and had been in and out of hospitals all his life, receiving treatment for congenital kidney disease. The treatment was said to have stunted his growth.
Mr. Coleman, who was 4 feet 8 inches tall, had a kidney transplant at 5 and a second one when he was 16.
“Diff’rent Strokes,” seen on NBC from 1978 to 1985 and on ABC from 1985 to 1986, was a comedy about a wealthy white New Yorker (Conrad Bain) who adopts two underprivileged black brothers, Arnold (played by Mr. Coleman) and Willis (Todd Bridges). Mr. Coleman made his character the little-boy version of America’s sweetheart.
“When he first strutted into our living rooms in 1978,” Bella Stumbo wrote in The Los Angeles Times Magazine in 1990, Mr. Coleman “looked like a lovable, smart-mouthed 6-year-old thrilled to be playing some new game.”
Viewers loved watching him make short work of bigotry and pretension, Ms. Stumbo continued. “He was sunshine, contagious joy,” she wrote, and “such was his natural comedic gift that he was hailed as a child genius by veterans like Lucille Ball and Bob Hope.”
But there was an undercurrent to the show’s portrayals.
“At the time, Arnold struck audiences as an endlessly endearing trickster figure, whose Harlem-based sensitivity to being hustled had been reduced to a sweetie-pie affectation: ‘What you talkin’ about, Willis?’ ” Virginia Heffernan wrote in The New York Times in 2006, quoting Mr. Coleman’s signature line. “Arnold was supposed to be shrewd and nobody’s fool, but also misguided; after learning his lessons, he was easily tamed and cuddled.” Ms. Heffernan called the characterization a form of latter-day minstrelsy.
Looking back at his childhood, Mr. Coleman saw himself as having been used. He sued his parents and his former manager in 1989, accusing them of misappropriating his trust fund. In 1999 he filed for bankruptcy protection. (During the same period, his young “Diff’rent Strokes” co-stars were having problems of their own. Mr. Bridges was tried on charges of attempted murder in 1990 but acquitted. Dana Plato, who played the daughter of Conrad Bain’s character, was arrested at least twice and died of a drug overdose in 1999.)
Beginning in the 1990s, Mr. Coleman was arrested several times and charged with assault and disorderly conduct. A year ago he was arrested on domestic violence charges. He and his former wife, the former Shannon Price, appeared on the reality show “Divorce Court” in 2008.
Gary Wayne Coleman was born on Feb. 8, 1968, in Zion, Ill., a small city in the state’s northeastern corner. He was adopted as an infant by W. G. Coleman, a forklift operator, and his wife, Edmonia Sue, a nurse practitioner.
As a young boy, he was cast in a commercial for a Chicago bank, offering a toy lion as a promotion. “You should have a Hubert doll,” the boy told viewers. Years later, Bob Greene, the Chicago Tribune columnist, recalled Mr. Coleman’s impact in that local ad campaign: “If there is chemistry with the camera, six words can make you a star.”
He was spotted by an agent for the television producer Norman Lear and brought to Hollywood for a project that never came to fruition, a new version of the “Our Gang” comedies. Instead he was cast in “Diff’rent Strokes” and was soon earning thousands of dollars per episode. At his peak he earned $3 million a year.
But after the series ended, his career spiraled downward. He made 20 or so television appearances over the next the two decades, as well as a handful of feature films. (His last was the 2009 “Midgets vs. Mascots,” a broad comedy.) But he also tried earning a living outside show business, even working as a security guard at one point. In 2003 he was one of 135 candidates in the carnival-like California gubernatorial recall election; he came in eighth, right after Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler.
Mr. Coleman’s difficulties are parodied in the Tony Award-winning musical “Avenue Q,” in which a character named Gary Coleman is the superintendent of a run-down building in an undesirable neighborhood. Mr. Coleman talked about suing the show’s producers but never did.
His survivors include his wife and his parents, who were estranged from their son. His mother told The Associated Press that she had prayed that “nothing like this would happen before we could sit with Gary and Shannon and say, ‘We’re here and we love you.’ ”
“We just didn’t want to push him,” she added.
Mr. Coleman readily talked to interviewers about how unhappy his television success and its trappings had made him. “I would not give my first 15 years to my worst enemy,” he said in an A.P. interview in 2001. “And I don’t even have a worst enemy.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: June 9, 2010
An obituary on May 29 about the actor Gary Coleman referred incorrectly to one of his survivors. Shannon Price is his former wife. (She was identified as his wife at the time of Mr. Coleman’s death, but she later confirmed that they divorced in 2008.)
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