Category Archives: Events

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 wife, the former Shannon Price, appeared on the reality show “Divorce Court” in 2008 but remained together.

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.”



Actress Brittany Murphy’s widower Simon Monjack was found dead late last night (Sun. May 23) at his home in the Hollywood Hills, the same exact home where his late wife died five months ago. Monjack was 39 years old. TMZ reports:

Law enforcement sources say Brittany’s mother, Sharon Murphy, found Monjack unconscious in the master bedroom around 9:30PM, and then called 911. Monjack was pronounced dead sometime after paramedics arrived … when resuscitation efforts failed. Monjack reportedly died from cardiac arrest, though nothing officially has been determined.

The similarities are remarkable. Murphy was found unconscious by her mother Sharon. Sharon found Simon unconscious as well. Murphy was found in the master bathroom. Simon was found in the master bedroom of the same home. Paramedics administered CPR to Simon. Simon administered CPR to Brittany. And they may have both died from cardiac arrest … five months apart.

Law enforcement sources tell us prescription bottles were found in the house (as they were when Brittany died), but there were no illegal drugs. There is no sign of suicide or foul play … as a result LAPD has closed their investigation. It’s all in the coroner’s hands now.

Read more: http://gossiponthis.com/2010/05/24/brittany-murphy-husband-dead/#more-62771#ixzz0osSXMiR6