For eight seasons and 189 episodes, Americans tuned in to Diff'rent Strokes, a sitcom chronicling the family life of a wealthy white industrialist who adopts two African American children. The tepid comedy's lengthy television run made many cultural observers wonder if its creators had made a deal with the devil. Certainly the show's trinity of child stars seems to have spent the ensuing years in show business purgatory.

Developed by Norman Lear, the brains behind All in the Family, Diff'rent Strokes began as a well-meaning, if patronizing, look at America's racial and economic divides. Conrad Bain, a veteran of Lear's Maude, was cast as Philip Drummond, the white Daddy Warbucks to black ragamuffins Arnold and Willis Jackson, played by Gary Coleman and Todd Bridges. Stringy Dana Plato rounded out the main cast as Drummond's natural daughter, Kimberly. A succession of brassy housekeepers, vanguarded...