Gary Coleman, who was born in Zion and soared to fame in the late 1970s as the pint-sized child star of the hit sitcom “Diff’rent Strokes” and whose post-TV-series life included a stint as a shopping mall security guard and an unlikely run for California governor, died Friday after suffering an intercranial hemorrhage. He was 42.
Coleman, whose adult height was 4 feet 8 inches, was a resident of Santaquin, Utah. He was admitted to Utah Valley Regional Medical Center in Provo on Wednesday, a hospital spokeswoman told the Associated Press. Utah Valley Regional Medical Center spokeswoman Janet Frank says life support was terminated and Coleman died at 1:05 central time.
On Feb. 26, of this year, Coleman reportedly suffered a seizure on the set of TV’s “The Insider” and was taken to a local hospital. The previous month, he reportedly was briefly hospitalized after experiencing what he termed “seizure activity.”
View pictures of Gary Coleman through the years.
Born Feb. 8, 1968, Coleman was the adopted son of W.G. (Willie) Coleman, a pharmaceutical supply inspector, and Edmonia Sue Coleman, who, according to a 1990 Los Angeles Times article, brought him home from a Chicago hospital when he was four days old but didn’t learn until 18 months later that Gary had been born with one atrophied kidney and that the other would soon fail.
He had surgery three times before he turned 5, the last a kidney transplant. He underwent another transplant by age 14, his growth permanently stunted by the side effects of dialysis medications. Even those trademark chubby cheeks were thought perhaps to have been a side effect to the steroids taken to ward off transplant rejection.
His appearance became a source of discomfort for him while growing up in Zion. “He doesn’t like it if other kids pick him up and hug him,” his mother told the Tribune in 1978. “He would come home furious when kids at school treated him like he was a baby.”
But his size and precociousness were seen as a winning combination as he began appearing in TV commercials. His resume included spots for Montgomery Ward’s, Hallmark cards, Bisquick, Betty Crocker, Cracker Jack and McDonald’s, but the ads that catapulted him to local icon status were for Harris Bank, as he instructed viewers, “You should have a Hubert doll” in reference to the bank’s stuffed lion mascot.
A 1978 Tribune story reported that a scout for TV producer Norman Lear spotted him in an audition for an ill-fated “Little Rascals” kids series and placed him on a $1,000-a-month retainer, with Coleman showing up on such Lear shows as “The Jeffersons” and “Good Times” before the 10-year-old was cast in “Diff’rent Strokes,” which debuted on NBC in 1978.
As the lovably outspoken 8-year-old Arnold Jackson, he was the comedic centerpiece of the series about two Harlem sons of a black housekeeper whose white boss, a wealthy widower, takes them into his Park Avenue penthouse after her death and later adopts them.
The cast of the sit-com, which ended its eight-season run in 1986 after switching to ABC, included Conrad Bain as the wealthy Philip Drummond; Todd Bridges as Arnold’s older brother, Willis; Dano Plato as Drummond’s daughter, Kimberly; and Charlotte Rae as Mrs. Garrett, Drummond’s new housekeeper.
“Its appeal rests chiefly on Gary, a black Pillsbury Doughboy, tiny and cuddly with a face like a pincushion,” The Times’ Howard Rosenberg wrote in 1979. “At 50 pounds and belt-buckle high, he’s small enough to be a Christmas tree ornament. But from his mouth come words … well, you just have to be there.”
In a 1979 TV Guide article headlined “Small Wonder,” Coleman was described as having “the comic delivery” of Jack Benny, Groucho Marx and Richard Pryor.
“When he walks onto a stage, something has happened, and you feel it,” Lear told TV Guide. “That’s called presence, and it’s rare. Many important actors, even stars, don’t have it. Gary does.”
The scene-stealing Coleman quickly became a pop-culture icon, whose recurring line
“Whatchoo talkin’ ’bout, Willis?”
became a national catchphrase.
Praised by comedy legends Bob Hope and Lucille Ball, Coleman was in big demand for TV talk shows.
He more than held his own during his first appearance on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” in 1978, which led Carson to jokingly ask his young guest, “What night are you available for guest host?”
At the height of his TV series success, Coleman reportedly earned $64,000 per week and is said to have made some $18 million during his TV heyday.
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That included income from movies such as “On the Right Track” and “Jimmy the Kid” and TV movies such as ” The Kid With the Broken Halo” and “The Kid With the 200 I.Q.” — as well as the animated series “The Gary Coleman Show.”
In 1989, Coleman sued his parents and his former business manager, Anita DeThomas,Ö for allegedly stealing more than $1 million from him. The Colemans and DeThomas counter-sued for defamation and breach of contract.
The legal battle ended in 1993 when, Variety reported, a Santa Monica Superior Court judge awarded Gary Coleman $1.28 million and ruled that his parents and manager had wrongfully profited as his guardians and managers during five years while he was a minor.
His mother, Sue Coleman, said she wanted to reconcile and had been patiently waiting for her son to be ready.
“One of the things that I had prayed for was that nothing like this would happen before we could sit with Gary and (wife) Shannon and say, ‘we’re here and we love you,”‘ Sue Coleman said. “We just didn’t want to push him.”
She would not discuss the cause of the estrangement.
Coleman’s acting career as an adult fell far short of his “Diff’rent Strokes” glory days. He made only occasional guest appearances and had mostly small roles in films and TV movies.
Coleman, who filed for bankruptcy in 1999, also worked as a commercial pitchman, was hired to have his likeness and voice used in a mature-rated video game and ran a video-game arcade in Marina del Rey, among other things.
The adult Coleman also had a few encounters with the law that put his face back in the news, including allegedly punching an aggressive and much-larger female autograph hunter in the late 1990s, for which he was fined and ordered to take anger-management classes.
In February 2010, he accepted a plea deal in Utah on domestic violence charges stemming from an incident the previous year between him and his wife, Shannon Price. Coleman was fined $595 and ordered to take classes on avoiding domestic violence.
Coleman’s profile as a “former child star” reached its peak in 2003, the year he gave permission to a Bay Area alternative weekly newspaper to jokingly nominate him for governor in California’s gubernatorial recall election.
He was among 135 candidates in the election, a colorful field that included L.A. billboardÖ queen Angelyne,Ö comedianÖ Gallagher,Ö Hustler magazine publisher LarryÖ Flynt and porn star Mary “Mary Carey”Ö Cook.
A New York Times writer wrote that Coleman “had become the poster child of the California freak show that is the governor’s recall election.”
Coleman, the Washington Post reported,in August, 2003, “has walked a line of believing in his own legitimacy and mocking it.”
“My slogan,” Coleman told the Post, “is I’m the least qualified guy for the job, but I’d probably do the best job.”
Coleman, an independent who later appeared on CNN to say he was endorsing fellow actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, received 12,683 votes, placing eighth in the race that saw Schwarzenegger elected.
“I want to escape that legacy of Arnold Jackson,” Coleman told the New York Times during his run. “I’m someone more. It would be nice if the world thought of me as something more.”
Tribune reporter Mark Caro and Tribune wire services contributed to this report.