Conrad Bain, who played the stuffy-yet-kindly widower Philip Drummond for eight seasons on NBC's Diff'rent Strokes, died yesterday in Livermore, California. He was 89.

Born in Alberta, Canada, Bain was a prolific theater actor before he became a sitcom dad. He played Larry in the same 1956 Off Broadway production of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh that launched Jason Robards's career; a 29-year-old Peter Falk played Rocky the Bartender.