WHAT A CRAZY EIGHT CAST! TRUE TALES FROM 70S HIT RICH ON EXCESS

Publish date: 2024-05-17

“E! True Hollywood Story:

Eight Is Enough”

Sunday on E! at 9 p.m.

I have a startling announcement to make: Ron Howard is an alien from outer space.

I know this for a fact because he is one of the only living “beings” who has survived being both a child TV star and teen TV star without morphing into an out-of-control drug addict, thief and/or televangelist.

As we all know from watching “E! True Hollywood Story,” real humans are genetically pre-programmed to self-destruct if fame and fortune hit at any point before the onset of the legal voting age.

Think Lauren Chapin, (Kitten in “Father Knows Best”) who ended up trying to cut off her own arm rather than stick another needle in it, after spending her teen years as a hooker. She’s now a televangelist.

Think the cast of “Diff’rent Strokes”: Drugs, suicide, jail, gig as angry mall guard!

So, if you’re into it, Sunday kicks off “E! True Hollywood Story’s” TV-Theme Month, which will dig the dirt on the casts of “Dallas,” “Good Times,” “All In The Family,” “Gilligan’s Island,” “Three’s Company,” “Bewitched,” “Roseanne,” “Diff’rent Strokes,” (I always bristled

at the cheesy spelling), and yes, “Dennis the Menace.”

Usually, I can’t get enough “E! True Hollywood Story,” but Sunday’s show feels kinda tired.

The show stoops for the lowdown on the cast of “Eight Is Enough.” True to TV tradition, most of the kids in that five-season-long show ended up in trouble.

In fact, they, were so self-destructive and troubled that they could have been in the Kennedy family.

But what do you expect? The Bradford kids lost their mother, early on. Yes, before the show even premiered, the actress who was cast as the original mother, Diana Hyland, died of cancer. Clearly, this was a sign of the trouble to come.

It seems that the more perfect and beloved a TV family is, the worse the ends to which they come.

Most tragic of all is Susan Richardson, the sweet-faced teen on the show who (in real life) blew up to monumental proportions, then became a coke addict and got too thin, then had an unexpected pregnancy. And this was all in the first two seasons!

After the show went off the air, she went off the deep end, and in 1999, ended up in restraints on her way to the crazy house. (Her words, not mine, so don’t call me.)

Her TV brother, Willie Aames, briefly a teen idol, had a three-gram-a-day coke habit; Loni O’Grady had an 18-year drug habit; and little Adam Rich, the cute little brother, was smoking pot and watching porno at 10.

Rich then dropped out of high school, cracked up cars and was arrested for drugs. One day after he was released for a pot arrest, he got arrested for shoplifting.

Rich has since cleaned up his act but still can’t get an acting job.

Aames – who went on to “Charles in Charge” – found God and now produces and stars in “Bible Man,” a Christian TV show about a bible-quoting super hero in a leotard. No, I’m not making it up.

Richardson works as a caretaker in a senior-citizen home.

So, why didn’t I love this opening episode of “E! True Hollywood Story”?

For one thing, I’m getting weary of the constant happy-spin they put on everything.

I mean, how happy can you really be if you’ve had a 20-year drug addiction, tried cutting off your own arm, been a hooker and been in restraints in a mental institution?

No matter how many superhero leotards you put on, sometimes you just can’t get past being a perfect TV child.

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