Dana Plato was a child actress who played Kimberly on Diff’rent Strokes from 1978 to 1986. Like so many child stars of that era, her later adult life was plagued with tragedy—she struggled with drugs, robbed a video store at gunpoint in 1991, and performed in soft-core lesbian porn videos. Dana died of a prescription painkiller overdose in 1999; her death was eventually ruled a suicide.
In an an attempt to revitalize her career in the late ’80s, Dana got breast implants and posed for a pictorial in the June 1989 issue of Playboy magazine. I was running the promotion art department there at the time, and one day we were alerted that she was visiting the office. The staff was told that it was mandatory for each of us to stop into the conference room, fawn over her, and ask for her autograph. Here it is.
