It’s sad that the parents of the child stars on the show were apparently pretty rotten people (in the case of Gary Coleman’s, they stole his earnings). Conrad Bain didn’t really owe them anything, he was just a co-star (think of them all as co-workers at a company), but it was nice that he reached out. That Todd Bridges holds him in higher esteem than his own father is quite telling. At least Todd was able to get his life together.
I noticed the same thing of Charlotte Rae (Mrs. Garrett) that she kept a close watch out for the young actresses on her show, and none of them met with scandal or tragedy. One wonders if Dana Plato had gone over with her to “Facts”, if she might’ve made a difference in her life.
“One wonders if Dana Plato had gone over with her to “Facts”, if she might’ve made a difference in her life.”
Remember the final season of Facts of Life, in which Mrs. Garrett had closed down Edna’s Edibles and opened a weird store named “Over Our Heads”? The employees were the four girls (whose characters were in their mid-20s, yet still hung out with their old den mother instead of becoming professionals), some 14-year-old kid and a guy in his late 20s or early 30s who had no business working in some rinky-dink shop. That actor, probably the only adult male ever to be a credited regular on Facts of Life, was none other than George Clooney.