Remembering Dana Plato, Kimberley from ‘Diff’rent Strokes’
Dana Plato, who played big sister Kimberly Drummond on Diff’rent Strokes, was perfectly cast. She was pretty, but in a girl-next-door-who-was-your-friend’s-sister kind of way, and you really believed that she cared about her two adopted brothers.
Maybe she was a natural in the role because she knew about adoption firsthand. Dana was born in California in 1964 to a teenage unwed mother who already had another child. Before she was one, the young mother made the difficult decision to give Dana up to a young couple, Dean and Kay Plato. When Dana was three, that couple divorced, and Dana lived with her mother from that point on.
Let’s fast forward to Diff’rent Strokes which ran from 1978 to 1986. While Dana was a constant presence throughout most of the series’ run, she became pregnant during season six and her character was written out of the show in such a way that she was able to depart from the series and then return to make guest appearances after the birth of her son. This wasn’t optimal for Dana, but the show’s producers felt like it would have been a huge challenge to incorporate Dana’s pregnancy into the series storyline. I don’t know, though. It seems like Diff’rent Strokes had a bunch of those “very special episodes.” Maybe Dana’s baby bump could have been another one of those.
After the show was finally canceled by ABC, things kind of went south for Dana. Hard times, for sure. While the other actors from the show seemed to be finding opportunities to act and stay in the public limelight, Dana just kind of slipped away. She divorced her husband, lost custody of her child, and to make ends meet, started working in a laundromat in Las Vegas. People that saw her there were surprised by her humility, her easygoing nature, her willingness to work hard, and do whatever it took to make ends meet.
Sadly, things took a turn when Dana made the absolutely bizarre decision to rob a Vegas video store in 1991. Most people agree that this wasn’t about the money; if I remember correctly, she left the store with less than 200 dollars cash. This was definitely a cry for help, and a desperate one at that. At the end of the day, I can only kind of understand what she was going through. She felt like she lost everything: Her fame was gone, her family ties were crumbling around her, and because of that, she made a really dumb decision that landed her in jail.
Enter Wayne Newton. I’ve never been a fan of his music, but I am a fan of the man. Why? Because from out of nowhere, according to this article from the Orlando Sentinel, Mr. Las Vegas himself swooped in and saved the day, providing the bail necessary to get Dana out of jail. I don’t know what else he did, but I do suspect that he had a heart-to-heart with Dana and did what he could to help her turn things around.
And turn things around she did. While there are those who would have you believe that she continued to struggle, here’s what I know: Dana found work. She worked in B-movies. She appeared in a really cool and somewhat controversial video game called Night Trap. And yes, she appeared in Playboy. While some may look at that decision as a bad one and others can argue that it moved her career in the wrong direction, it was, at the very least, an honest day’s work. Much like the laundromat, Dana worked hard at whatever she could. One could say she was in survival mode.
As Dana continued to try and piece her life back together, time marched on for everyone connected to Diff’rent Strokes. It’s strange to realize that both she and Gary are gone now. In fact, her TV father, Conrad Bain, and Mrs. Garrett, Charlotte Rae, are gone as well, which leaves only Todd Bridges as the sole survivor of the original cast. While it’s hard to accept that the show’s core family is nearly all gone, it’s equally difficult to accept that Dana’s own struggles came to an end the way they did.
Dana’s been gone since May 8, 1999, when she passed away the day after a highly emotionally charged appearance on The Howard Stern Show. While People initially reported that her cause of death appeared to be an accidental overdose, it was later determined to be a probable suicide.
I don’t know how you determine things like that, all I know is that Dana was a fighter. She wasn’t always strong, but she found ways time and time again to pick herself back up after she fell. It wasn’t always pretty, but her determination, her desire to plow forward, to exist in a world, a show business world, that tends to chew people up and eat them for lunch, that took real courage. That resilience, even in the darkest times, remains the most truly admirable part of her story.
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