The Facts of Life

The Facts of Life is an American television sitcom created by Dick Clair and Jenna McMahon and a spin-off of Diff'rent Strokes that originally aired on NBC from August 24, 1979, to May 7, 1988, making it one of the longest-running sitcoms of the 1980s. The series focuses on Edna Garrett (Charlotte Rae), as she becomes a housemother (and from the second season onward, a dietitian as well) at the fictional Eastland School, an all-girls boarding school in Peekskill, New York. Plot Season 1 A spin-off of Diff'rent Strokes, the series featured the Drummonds' former housekeeper Edna Garrett (Charlotte Rae) working in a new job as the housemother of a dormitory at Eastland School, a private all-girls school in Peekskill, New York. The girls in her care included spoiled rich girl Blair Warner (Lisa Whelchel); the youngest, gossipy Dorothy "Tootie" Ramsey (Kim Fields), and impressionable Natalie Green (Mindy Cohn). The pilot for the show was originally aired as the last episode of the first season of Different Strokes and was called "The Girls' School (a.k.a. Garrett's Girls)." The plot line for the pilot had Kimberly Drummond (Dana Plato) requesting that Mrs. Garrett help her sew costumes for a student play at East Lake School for Girls, the school Kimberly attended in Upstate New York, as her dorm's housemother had recently quit. Mrs. Garrett agrees to help, puts on a successful play and also solves a problem for the boyfriend-obsessed Nancy Olsen (Felice Schachter) as she also meets Blair; Tootie; Sue Ann Weaver (Julie Piekarski), a small-town girl from Kansas, and the budding social activist Molly Parker (Molly Ringwald). Mrs. Garrett is asked to stay on as the new housemother but says she would rather continue working for the Drummonds at the end of the pilot.