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Diff'rent Strokes Kid Dana Plato Dead
The obituary by Joal Ryan for E! Online (May 9, 1999)
Actress Dana Plato, who as a kid costarred on the wholesome sitcom Diff'rent Strokes and as an adult seemed bedeviled by its reputed curse, died of an accidental prescription-drug overdose Saturday in Oklahoma, just one day after declaring on nationwide radio, "I've never been happier." She was 34.
Police said Plato apparently OD'd on Valium and the painkiller Loritab. Autopsy results today showed no sign of illness. Toxicology tests are pending.
On Howard Stern's radio show on Friday, the ex-sitcom star proclaimed herself drug-free, save for painkillers she'd been on since a wisdom-teeth extraction some 18 weeks ago. "My life is so good now," Plato said. "I've never been happier."
Plato, Gary Coleman and Todd Bridges were the TV kids (adopted and otherwise) of wealthy Phillip Drummond, the patriarch of Diff'rent Strokes, played by Conrad Bain. Plato was Kimberly, the dutiful daughter. She appeared on the show from 1978-84, her run ending when she became pregnant in real life--the condition deemed unsuitable for the virginal Drummond lass.
Costar Bridges was "pretty down" Sunday from the news of his TV sibling's death, his mother, actress Betty Bridges, told E! Online. "More than anything, Todd and Dana were good friends," Betty Bridges said. "He says he can't believe it." In their adult years Plato, Bridges and Coleman each had run-ins with the law, fueling talk of the Diff'rent Strokes "curse." Plato's police-blotter woes began in 1991 when she was arrested for robbing a Las Vegas video store. And in 1992, she received five years' probation for forging prescriptions to score Valium.
In 1997, Plato told a reporter she didn't blame her years as a kid star for her adult troubles, including alcoholism. "I would have crashed and burned no matter what," she said. But former child star advocate Paul Petersen, of the group A Minor Consideration, said Sunday such talk was "nonsense". "Unless you've been down this road, you can't possibly comprehend the complications of being a former kid star," said Petersen, who as a teen costarred on The Donna Reed Show. "Of course, she was a product of her life on a television show."
Petersen said he saw Plato's death coming--"It was coming nine years ago"--when he bumped into her coming out of a bathroom on the set of the Sally Jessy Raphael talk show, with a substance he said looked like cocaine dripping out her nose. "We tried and we tried and we tried and we tried," Petersen said. In the end, Petersen said, intervention efforts were stymied by people who sold the young woman on the idea of the next, great comeback vehicle that never was.
Fellow former child star Johnny Whitaker (Family Affair), who works with A Minor Consideration, stepped in last September to help manage Plato's career--and be a friend. "She was supposed to be contacting me every day," Whitaker said. "But she hadn't for a couple of weeks." Whitaker said he'd been unaware of Plato's Stern appearance. On the shock jock's show, Plato said she wanted to clear up a tabloid report that said she was a drug-addicted lesbian. "It's a total misunderstanding," Plato said.
The ex-kid star said she was engaged to be married--and clean. "I have been sober for the longest time," she said. "Oh, it's a decade now. No joke." After a caller suggested Plato sounded a "little wired," she offered to take a urine test. She later changed her mind and opted to give the Stern crew a strand of hair for analysis. After the show, she changed her mind again--and asked for the hair back. (She got it.) Today Stern said he, for one, didn't think she was "on" drugs. He described Plato as seeming in "pretty good spirits." "It's really kind of sad," Stern said of her death. "It's a little freaky."
Buzz has it the Plato interview--her final one--will not be featured on either Stern's CBS or E! television shows. The host's spokesman could not be reached for comment today. Whitaker said Plato recently had purchased a motor home with plans to travel the country this summer with her teenage son. "She told me that she had been working on her life, like we all do, one day at a time," Whitaker said.
Plato died at her fiancé's parents' house in Moore, Oklahoma. The couple stopped there during a drive back from New York, en route to Los Angeles. Police say Plato complained of being tired on Saturday afternoon and retired to take a nap. At 9:40 p.m. fiancé Robert Menchaca, 28, found Plato "unresponsive and cold to the touch," police said. Menchaca's mother--a nurse--and brother attempted to revive the actress, but couldn't. Plato was pronounced dead on arrival at nearby Southwestern Medical Center.
"She's a beautiful girl," Whitaker said. "She was really planning on getting everything together."
Plato was born November 7, 1964, in Maywood, California. She broke into commercials as a preteen. In 1973 she was offered the possessed child lead in The Exorcist. Her mother vetoed the job, the demonic horror film deemed an unsuitable work environment. Diff'rent Strokes, however, was okayed. The family sitcom rode Gary Coleman's preternatural comic timing to the top of the Nielsens, making young stars of all its kid actors. After a stint in rehab, Plato struggled to revive her career in the 1990s (a 1989 Playboy spread failed to do the trick). She did manage on-camera work--in would-be steamy B-movies such as Different Strokes: The Story of Jack & Jill...and Jill (1997).
Survivors include her son, Tyler.
Said Petersen, ticking off names of ex-kid actors who met premature ends: "Dana Plato is now part of legacy that includes Anissa Jones [Family Affair], Alfalfa [Carl Switzer], Bobby Driscoll...It's a long list." c. 1999 E! Online
As for the principals?
Coleman, 30, due to be arraigned Tuesday on charges he beat up a bus driver who asked for his autograph, isn't doing interviews right now.
Bridges, 33, once accused--and acquitted--of the attempted murder of an alleged drug dealer, isn't focusing on the past, says his mother/manager Betty Bridges. He's got a new baby (born last month) and a new pet project (his directing debut, The Cleaner, an indie action drama to roll next month).
Plato, 33, once bailed out of a Las Vegas jail by Wayne Newton (she was in on charges of holding up a video store), couldn't be reached for comment. But she previously has discounted the notion of a "curse."
Said the onetime Playboy pinup: "I would have crashed and burned no matter what."
What a long, strange trip it's been since Diff'rent Strokes left the air. From 1978-86, the aforementioned trio made for cheery TV siblings in the sitcom about a widowed, white millionaire (Conrad Bain), his daughter Kimberly (Plato) and the two black brothers he adopted, Willis (Bridges) and Arnold (Coleman).
Coleman was the blandly amusing comedy's chief distinguishing characteristic. He was the short kid with that crowd-pleasing oneliner: Whatchoo talkin' 'bout? It was funnier if you forgot he was short because he had kidney problems (he is totally bereft of the organs today) or that he was only 10 and shouldering the burden of pressure-cooker TV job. But during the show's run, anyway, it all seemed okay--they all seemed okay. And then the show ended, and nothing seemed okay. To former child star advocate Paul Petersen, the post-TV problems of the Diff'rent Strokes kids aren't unique--they're endemic to ex-kid actors. "There is nothing that you can do that satisfies people," says Petersen, who himself grew up on the tube as Donna Reed's TV son on The Donna Reed Show and later founded the support group, A Minor Consideration. "They think you're a failure if you do not [continue to be] a television star." Wayne State University assistant psychology professor Lisa Rapport also doesn't subscribe to anything as easy or kitschy as a "curse." In a two-year study of 75 former child actors, the Detroit-based Rapport says she found kid stars weren't that removed from kid civilians--ones from strong families turned out to be happier, better-adjusted adults than ones who weren't.
"I think that perhaps our perspective is distorted by the fact that...every time somebody gets arrested we hear about it," Rapport says. To whit, even before Coleman's July 30 headline-making reputed punch out, the actor-turned-security-guard was the subject of the same monologue punchlines as the once-chronically troubled Bridges and Plato--even if his only previous courtroom time came in a civil case against his parents over allegedly stolen earnings. (And for the record, the judge ruled in his favor.) "Gary has always been the person helping others," says Petersen. "...[But] when people bump into Gary, they think they've got Todd and Dana." Petersen, who intends to back up the once top-paid kid star at his court hearing next week, asks what buttons must have been pushed for the under-five-foot Coleman to allegedly strike the well-over-five-foot bus driver. (The woman, Tracy Fields, is now suing Coleman for $1.25 million-plus.) According to one reputed eyewitness, the red-hot button was a jibe about Coleman's acting career, or lack thereof. "She told him, 'No wonder you're a washed-up star,' or something like that," the owner of the uniform store where the alleged attack occurred told reporters. "He's ashamed of himself," Petersen says of Coleman. "We're supposed to be impervious to abusive fans."
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.
