also: http://www.runningwithscissors.com/gary-coleman-is-dead
I think the “broken halo” was another movie. It was a TV film (that looked like a pilot for a series.). Coleman played a trainee angel who was assigned to visit random earthlings and help them through difficult problems. Robert Guillame was his partner / advisor. (Coincidentally, Guillame also died of a stroke.)
Robert Guilliame isn’t dead, though he did suffer a stroke in 1999.
Yes, he suffered it whole he was in the ABC show “Sports Night” and recovered enough to return to the show. He later appeared in “8 Simple Rules.” He is still very much among the living.
Damn it, Johnny L.A.! That made me laugh. Save me a seat on the bus to Hell.
:mad:
Don’t do that to me!
Before you report that Robert Guillame is dead, make sure of your facts, damn it!
Robert Guillaume was one of the celebrities who paid tribute to Coleman today.
“Gary was a dear friend. He was so enormously talented. His death saddens me beyond my ability to express. I can only hope that he finds the peace he so earnestly sought. I will miss him.” -Robert Guillaume, who co-starred with Coleman in The Kid With the Broken Halo
Interesting. I work with some people who worked with him pretty extensively years ago, and their unanimous opinion was that he was narcissistic and abusive. (He also tried, and failed, to get a guy who used to work for my company fired for ridiculous reasons.)
My one non-Strokes exposure to Coleman was an episode of A&E Biography that I had on as background noise once. I quickly realized that instead of the usual Biography format, this episode seemed to consist solely of following Coleman around LA for an hour as he went to auditions and made commercials for payday lenders. He came across as extraordinarily self-absorbed and entirely detached from reality.
He was funny when he was a kid, though. Nobody deserves to be treated as he has been, especially by their own parents. A pretty sad life for the most part.
Todd Bridges has been sober for many years and seems to have his life together. He’s been on several talk shows recently promoting his book, and one thing that makes me believe his recovery and back-on-track life is legit is that he doesn’t blame everything on the studios like Corey Haim did. He said that he and Coleman have not spoken in some time due to Gary’s demons where the show is concerned, but he obviously has brotherly concern for him. (Bridges says he is in constant contact with Conrad Bain, who’s very old and retired but in good health.)
Bridges couldn’t stand Gary’s parents and actually blames his own problems and those of Plato and Coleman on parenting more than being child stars (and in the case of Plato he said she’d have had issues if she’d never been in front of a camera- she had mental problems that were unrelated to her career). Bridges said, and I believe him, that Gary was working on DIFF’RENT STROKES episode when he was rejecting a kidney and vomiting between scenes and, per Bridges, his parents and the producers were all giving him pep talks about how the show must go on even while the cast and some studio audience members were saying “FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP!!!” He said Bain threatened to quit unless they wrote some no-Arnold episodes while he recovered but was threatened with lawsuit if he did or if he talked about it, and since Gary kept coming to work he didn’t have much leg to stand on.
I remember watching him in an episode of Good Times where he played a kid named Gary.
I’ve gotten so used to seeing Gary Oldman and thinking Gary Coleman, that I got them mixed up.
Man, this sucks. I do also wonder about the circumstances, though.
warning: tasteless joke in spoiler box:
At least Gary’s casket will have his name on it.
That’s as bad as the one I made up! 
Yes, I just saw yours. Both very funny.
Mine just plays on the name. Your link has the name and his size.
Hell is going to be crowded.
I thought yours linked the size too, just not directly, as a Coleman stove is nohwere near the size of a cremation oven.
RIP Gary. The Gooch won’t bully you anymore.
LH
The first time I ever saw him was on the fictional talk show “America 2night” on network UBS (“we put U before the BS”). I thought he was great and I usually detest kid actors. Never watched “Different Strokes” too much because the premise was too sickening sweet stupid. An exception was made when Nancy Davis resumed her brilliant acting career in such classic’s as “Donovan’s Brain” and “The Next Voice You Hear” to play The First Lady who just happens to visit his school to teach “Just Say No”. Next episode: visit a mental hospital to say “Just Cheer Up!”
But I will never understand how his parents, manager and himself could earn $19 million in an era of a booming stock market and end up with virtually nothing? You can’t put $1 million in municipal bonds and $1 million in a index or decent mutual fund and live off the interest/ withdraw 4% a year? But you get this all the time with actors, athletes and lottery winners.
The 911 calldoesn’t speak well for his wife. She calls to tell them her husband has fallen, his head is bleeding, and he might not even be alive when they come… AND IT’S STILL ALL ABOUT HER!
The 911 call has been big news here in Utah today, and I am not sure I am believing Mrs. Coleman’s account of what happened.
She was certainly quick to tell the 911 operator that there was a very good chance that her dear Gary would not be alive by the time the ambulance arrived and also was very clear (I think she mentions this more than once) to the emergency dispatcher that she had been lovingly fixing Gary lunch when he fell (which of course tells EVERYONE that this HAD to be a terrible accident—nothing to see here, now where’s that will of his???)…
It has an odd smell about it, but it may just be the Great Salt Lake.
I kept wanting the 911 operator to morph from Nice Mormon Girl to Samuel L. Jackson.
“BITCH BE COOL! Be like Fonzie…”.
She actually says she doesn’t want to put pressure on her mortally injured husband’s head because “I’ll puke”. Holy Juniper Bush- you’d rather your husband die than for yourself to throw up? Sheez. I know he must have been lonely but still he could have done better than that; if Chang and Eng found wives he could have found somebody else. My uncle Petewas 2 feet tall (not counting his legs) and found a wife who was 5’10 and had two kids- Gary didn’t have to aim that low.
Whatever happened to that girl in the wheelchair on the show? Or Geri Jewell- another disabled '80s sitcom star- instead he gets Miss Utah Skank 2005.)
ETA: The girl in the wheelchair was Melanie Bernhardt- scroll down. Still alive, doing well apparently, same condition as my father’s cousin Pete and his daughter- osteogenesis imperfecta.