Conrad Bain Graduated with Don Rickles and Founded a Credit Union Before He Was Mr. Drummond

TLDR: Conrad Bain was born on February 4, 1923, in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada.

He trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts alongside Don Rickles and Charles Durning, spent three decades on Broadway and off-Broadway, co-founded the Actors Federal Credit Union in 1962, and became Philip Drummond on Diff’rent Strokes at age 55.

He died on January 14, 2013, in Livermore, California, at age 89.

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When Diff’rent Strokes premiered in 1978, Conrad Bain was 55 years old, had spent thirty years on stage, and had already built a financial institution that provided banking services to thousands of working actors.

Philip Drummond was not where his story started. It was where most people picked it up.

The Twin Who Chose the Stage

Conrad Stafford Bain was born on February 4, 1923, in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, to Jean and Stafford Bain, a wholesale merchant. He had an identical twin brother, Bonar Bain, who also pursued acting. In 1981, Bonar appeared on the Canadian sketch comedy series SCTV playing a fictionalized evil twin version of Conrad.

The two brothers were athletic growing up, but Conrad discovered theater in high school when he played the Stage Manager in a production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town in Calgary. That was the decision that set everything else in motion.

He trained at the Banff School of Fine Arts before World War II interrupted his education. He served in the Canadian Army, then relocated to New York City in 1946, becoming a naturalized American citizen the same year.

He enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and graduated in 1948 in a class that included Don Rickles and Charles Durning.

Three Decades on Stage Before Television Found Him

Bain’s Broadway breakthrough came in 1956 when he was cast as Larry Slade in the landmark off-Broadway revival of Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh at the Circle in the Square Theatre, directed by Jose Quintero and starring Jason Robards.

The New York Times drama critic Brooks Atkinson specifically singled out Bain’s performance as “especially well acted.” That same year he made his Broadway debut in Sixth Finger in a Five Finger Glove and appeared in multiple roles in the original Broadway run of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide.

He appeared at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in 1958, in Advise and Consent on Broadway in 1961, and in a series of notable off-Broadway productions through the 1960s and early 1970s.

He also made his television debut in a 1952 episode of Studio One in Hollywood and built a parallel screen career that included supporting roles in Clint Eastwood’s Coogan’s Bluff (1968) and Woody Allen’s Bananas (1971).

The Credit Union He Started Because an Actor Was Denied a Department Store Card

In late 1962, a member of Actors Equity was denied credit at a New York department store because his profession was listed as “actor.” He raised the issue at a union meeting and asked for volunteers to do something about it. Bain was the first to raise his hand.

On December 5, 1962, alongside six fellow actors and organizers including Theodore Bikel, Bain co-founded the Actors Federal Credit Union, a member-owned not-for-profit financial cooperative providing fair credit and banking services to entertainment professionals.

He served as its first president from 1962 to 1963 and returned for a nearly decade-long second term from 1966 to 1975. The institution later created Coogan Trust accounts, legally mandated to lock 15 percent of child performers’ gross earnings until they turn 18.

The irony of Bain building that institution and then watching Gary Coleman lose his entire childhood fortune to his parents and manager is not subtle.

The Show That Was Almost a Detective Story

Norman Lear first noticed Bain during an audition for the 1971 film Cold Turkey. Bain did not get the part, but Lear remembered him.

When Lear began developing Maude in 1972, he cast Bain as Dr. Arthur Harmon, the stuffy conservative neighbor who served as a foil to Beatrice Arthur’s liberal protagonist. Bain appeared in 121 episodes across the show’s six seasons.

Lear later said Bain possessed a “very rare comedic spine” that allowed him to play the straight man while remaining quietly funny on his own terms.

When Beatrice Arthur decided to leave Maude in 1978, Lear wanted to keep Bain. The producers also had Gary Coleman under contract. Several concepts were pitched to pair them.

One cast Bain as a hard-boiled detective with Coleman as his young informant, essentially a show built around the fictional detective Bulldog Drummond; that premise was discarded but the surname Drummond was retained.

Another concept cast Bain as a cynical real estate developer who could only acquire a Harlem housing block if he agreed to adopt Coleman’s character. That was discarded in favor of something warmer.

Diff’rent Strokes premiered on NBC on November 3, 1978, with Bain as Philip Drummond, a wealthy Park Avenue widower who honors a deathbed promise to his late housekeeper by adopting her two sons from Harlem.

Mr. Drummond and His Television Children

The show ran for eight seasons and 189 episodes, moving from NBC to ABC for its final season in 1985-1986. Bain’s role was the moral anchor of the household.

The show quickly became dominated by Gary Coleman’s breakout popularity, and Bain embraced his role as the straight man without resentment, publicly praising his younger co-stars throughout the run.

His relationship with Todd Bridges was particularly close. After the show ended and Bridges fell into addiction and legal trouble, he would call Bain for advice. In a 1990s interview Bridges said Bain “treated me better than my own father.” When Bridges had his own son, he brought him to Bain’s home. Bain played chess with the boy and called him his grandson.

He found it painful to discuss what happened to his television children in the years after the show. Dana Plato died of a drug overdose in 1999 at 34. Gary Coleman died of a brain hemorrhage in 2010 at 42. Bain chose to focus on their talents and the genuine family dynamic they had shared rather than the tragedy that followed.

64 Years of Marriage and a Quiet Exit

In 1945, Bain married Monica Sloan, an accomplished artist. They were together for 64 years until her death in 2009. After Diff’rent Strokes he continued to work occasionally, appearing in the Fox sitcom Mr. President alongside George C. Scott, in the film Postcards from the Edge (1990), and as Philip Drummond in a crossover episode of The Facts of Life and in the series finale of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in 1996 alongside Gary Coleman.

His final television appearance was a guest role as a priest in a 2011 CBS drama.

He died on January 14, 2013, at a retirement home in Livermore, California. He was 89 years old.

His daughter said he died of natural causes. Some sources list the cause as a stroke. Todd Bridges issued a statement to the Hollywood Reporter: “This is probably one of the most heart-wrenching days I’ve had in a long time. Whenever I needed advice, I’d call Conrad. He was a really good man. Just an all-around nice guy.”

For the full story of the show and the cast he spent eight seasons with, see the Diff’rent Strokes cast hub.