'80s Superstar Molly Ringwald Got Her Start On This Classic Sitcom Spin-Off

"Diff'rent Strokes" might not have been a top 10 Nielsen ratings smash, but if you were the target demographic for the sitcom (i.e. a grade schooler or teenager) early in its eight season run, it felt like the biggest show on television. Being on the younger end of the viewership scale, I identified with Gary Coleman's Arnold Jackson ... which, as a white kid growing up in a small, very white Ohio town, turned out to be a good, enlightening thing. Arnold was a troublemaker and a frequent pain in his older brother Willis' (Todd Bridges) tuchus, but he was also street-smart, inquisitive, and quick with a quip. 

The show itself began on a tragic note, with the wealthy widower Phillip Drummond (Conrad Bain) taking the Jacksons in after the death of their mother. However, its writers were quick to turn the comedy series into a lap-of-luxury fantasy. Reality intruded here and there (like the time Arnold got appendicitis or had a run-in with a kindly pedophile), but the appeal for me was to live vicariously through the Jacksons' good fortune.

"Diff'rent Strokes" was a rock-solid component of NBC's primetime lineup throughout its first season, so the network wasted little time spinning it off with "The Facts of Life." And like the show that inspired it, that series was never a ratings juggernaut. But after a rocky first season, the boarding school sitcom built around former Drummond housekeeper Edna Garrett (Charlotte Rae) cut down its too big cast to focus on four very different students: Blair (Lisa Welchel), Jo (Nancy McKeon), Natalie (Mindy Cohn) and Tootie (Kim Fields). The jettisoned characters weren't missed, and, in the long run, getting let go from the cast of "The Facts of Life" worked out incredibly well for a very young Molly Ringwald.

"The Facts of Life" season 1 found eight young actors jockeying for screen time, which, in retrospect, felt uncomfortably competitive. There was simply no way that the show's writers could do justice to all their characters along with Edna Garrett and John Lawler as Headmaster Bradley. So, they halved the main cast by losing four students and Lawler.

Of the sitcom's, let's face it, fired actors, Molly Ringwald showed the most promise. She appeared in "The Facts of Life" as Molly Parker, a precocious rich kid who's into social and political causes. Had she stuck around, Ms. Parker could've been the reverse Alex P. Keaton, i.e. the zealous Young Republican played by Ringwald's fellow '80s superstar, Michael J. Fox, in his own career-launching sitcom, "Family Ties." Ringwald, however, was destined for greater things. 

Four years after leaving "The Facts of Life," Ringwald became a Gen X icon by portraying Samantha Baker, an awkward high school sophomore whose parents have forgotten the biggest birthday of her young life, in "Sixteen Candles." From there, she would famously achieve Brat Pack immortality via her turns in "The Breakfast Club" and "Pretty in Pink." Now, all she needs to do is show up in a teen project like the "Kissing Booth" movies, and we immediately grasp the significance.

Funnily enough, Ringwald wasn't the only up-and-comer dropped from "The Facts of Life." The show was in the throes of yet another revamp (after Mrs. Garrett's gourmet food store, Edna's Edibles, burned down) when a ridiculously handsome George Clooney popped in as handyman George Burnett. From there, it took Clooney seven years to break through on "ER," but the point still stands: Getting fired from "The Facts of Life" was a terrific career move.