Trivia / Happy Days

• Ability over Appearance: Garry Marshall admitted that when he envisioned Fonzie he was thinking of "someone who is cut" like Sylvester Stallone or Perry King, not physically someone like Henry Winkler, i.e. short and Jewish. But he said Winkler nailed it in the audition, he had the attitude of Fonzie down, if not the look, so he got the part. Ironically, Winkler based his portrayal of The Fonz on Stallone, his co-star from The Lords of Flatbush.
• Acting for Two: Al Molinaro, as Arnold's proprietor Al Devecchio and (less frequently) his priest twin brother, Father Anthony Delvecchio.
• Billing Displacement: Averted when the producers wanted to change the name of the show to Fonzie's Happy Days to reflect The Fonz's growing popularity. Both Ron Howard and creator Garry Marshall threatened to leave the show if the producers did so, and even Henry Winkler himself objected to this proposal, feeling that Howard was the real star of the show, and it just would be plain disrespectful to his co-stars.
• The Cast Showoff:
  • Anson Williams as Potsie was given the chance to sing on a number of occasions (with footage of him singing incorporated into the opening credits eventually). One episode even stops in its tracks so Potsie can sing "Deeply," an original song Williams recorded, even though it's a '70s pop song out of place in the '50s setting.
  • When actress Jane Lynch was on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, she said she wrote a fan letter to Anson Williams when she was a teenager in the '70s and she got a written response back from him. Kimmel showed the letter and in it Williams asked Lynch if she and her friends would write to the show asking for more Potsie singing! Lynch didn't but if Williams responded to every fan letter the same way and most of them complied, it explains why Potsie sang so much on the show!
  • Scott Baio and Erin Moran would become this later on, mainly due to the teen idol status of the former (who released back-to-back albums in the early-'80s).
• Cast the Runner-Up: Don Most originally auditioned for both Richie and Potsie, and was almost considered to play the latter. Since they liked Don Most's audition, they eventually decided to create the character of Ralph Malph just for him. While a minor character in the first episode, he eventually became a regular.
• Corpsing: Noticeably after the switch to a Studio Audience in the third season, some of the regular cast members seemed to be having a tough time holding in their laughter or keeping a straight face when the audience erupted, most notably Henry Winkler, Fonzie himself.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Even Donny Most thought the infamous "Jumping the Shark" episode was stupid, right as he was filming it, and has indicated that the perceived downhill slide in quality of later episodes and seasons was a factor in his leaving the show after season seven.
  • Two years after the shark jump, early in the seventh season, the cast was so vocally unhappy with the quality of the stories that Garry Marshall sought out the show's well-liked former producer Lowell Ganz and asked him to come back as Showrunner. His work was generally seen as successful in paring back some of the wackiness of seasons 5 and 6, though it wasn't enough to stop Ron Howard and Most from leaving at the end of the season.
• The Danza: Marion Ross as Marion Cunningham, Al Molinaro as Al Delvecchio, and Heather O'Rourke as Heather Pfister.
• Dawson Casting: Which became increasingly obvious as the series progressed and the actors aged well into their twenties (or, in the case of Henry Winkler and Anson Williams, their thirties). Even from the start, Winkler looked older than the age Fonzie was supposed to be.
• Descended Creator: Both Garry Marshall and series director Jerry Paris made occasional cameo appearances on the show; in "Fonzie Loves Pinky," Paris is the photographer who offends Fonzie by calling him "Mr. Tuscadero," while Marshall is the drummer playing at the school dance in "The Graduation."
• Edited for Syndication:
  • The ending of "My Favorite Orkan" was reshot when Mork & Mindy became a spinoff.
  • A new ending was given to "Shotgun Wedding" to remove the cliffhanger ending that was to have been continued in the same-named episode of Laverne & Shirley.
• Enforced Method Acting: When doing the episode about Arnold's burning down, the cast was not allowed to see the destroyed set until filming the reaction scene so that the emotions would pack more of a punch.
• Executive Meddling: The reason why Fonzie wore a windbreaker instead of a leather jacket for a while. The executives feared he'd come off as a hoodlum to viewers. Garry Marshall got around this by convincing network executives that a leather jacket would function as motorcycle safety gear. Marshall then instructed the writers to include the motorcycle in all of Fonzie's scenes until the network finally relented. Interestingly, once Fonzie's popularity became well established, those same executives later demanded that the producers rename the show to Fonzie's Happy Days, or simply, Fonzie. Threatened resignations from the cast members, including Henry Winkler himself, nixed this idea.
• Hostility on the Set:
  • Roz Kelly (Pinky Tuscadero) was evidently disliked by everyone on the show. Henry Winkler, her onscreen boyfriend, thought she was brash and trashy, which upset his family-friendly image, and she supposedly openly mocked him and the Fonzie character in front of everyone. As Kelly later put it, "I was from the wrong side of the tracks and (Winkler) was a rich kid. That rubbed me the wrong way."
  • Otherwise averted, as the Happy Days regular cast was known for getting along unusually well. Even after Henry Winkler supplanted Ron Howard as the show's most famous cast member, the two actors continued to be good friends. Winkler starred in the first major studio movie Howard directed and is the godfather of all four of Howard's children including his daughter, Bryce.
• I Am Not Spock: A good number of fans actually believed Henry Winkler actually possessed Fonzie's Rule of Cool powers, begging him to do things for them that ranged from banging on a car's hood to make it work to quieting all the animals in a zoo. However, unlike most who are blessed/cursed with this trope, however, Henry embraces his Fonzarelli past, so much so that his daughter went to the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Although Fonzie loved motorcycles, Henry Winkler was terrified of them. Most of the scenes of Fonzie riding the motorcycle were shot with the bike attached to a platform, and being pulled by a truck. (The shot of Winkler riding a bike without apparent aid in the opening credits was an exception.)
• Only Barely Renewed The show's ratings were so low at the end of the second season (and first full season) that it came close to being cancelled. Then Fonzie started to catch on with viewers, the ratings took a turn for the better and the show wound up running another nine years.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Chuck Cunningham was played by two different actors before being written out of the show.
  • The initial Love, American Style episode featured yet another actor, Ric Carrott, as Chuck, alongside Harold Gould as Howard and Susan Neher as Joanie.
  • The original "test" version of the first aired Happy Days episode, "All the Way", featured yet another actress, uncredited, as Joanie.
• The Pete Best: Before Chachi, Fonzie had another, younger cousin named Spike, who took a lot of mannerisms — acting "cool" and rebellious, wearing a leather jacket — from the Fonz. After Chachi was introduced, the character just up and vanished.
• Playing Their Own Twin: Al Molinaro as Al and (Father) Anthony Delvecchio.
• Real-Life Relative:
  • As with most (if not all) of Ron Howard's works, his younger brother Clint appeared in a two different episodes, both times as a different character.
  • In the episode "I Drink, Therefore I Am", Heather O'Rourke's actual sister Tammy O'Rourke plays a neighbor girl, also named Tammy.
  • Scott Baio's older brother Steven appeared as Joey, a student at Patton High, during the final season.
• Real Song Theme Tune: A re-recorded version of Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" was used for the first two seasons...
  • Replaced the Theme Tune: ... after which came a new recording of an eponymous Thematic Theme Tune that had originally been used for the show's closing credits. This theme, performed by Pratt & McClain, was issued as a single in 1976 and became a Top 5 Billboard hit...
    • Rearrange the Song: ...and was later re-recorded by Bobby Arvon for the final season in 1983.
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor: Pinky Tuscadero was slated to become a Recurring Character, but infighting between Roz Kelly and Henry Winkler and other cast members got her written out. Fans have requested to see her at conventions and reunions, but Kelly's co-stars are adamant that they don't want her there. She was fairly well-received by the viewers, though, despite appearing in only a single 3-part episode. They supposedly considered giving her a show, but decided that the on-set drama would be more trouble than it was worth. She's kept a very low profile the last few decades apart her arrests. She allegedly hit a man with her cane once.
• Trolling Creator: Chuck's sudden disappearance from the series was justified by his original actor, Gavin O'Herlihy, quitting the show out of dissatisfaction for his role, and his replacement, Randolph Roberts, not sufficing for the role. Out of nowhere, Gary Marshall decided to write Chuck out of the show to see how many angry backlash fan letters he'd receive. Luckily for him, he didn't receive many. More info here.
• Troubled Production: The episode, "My Favorite Orkan," got to a rocky start when the actor cast to play Mork, John Byner, abruptly quit because he thought the script was ridiculous. The crew had to scramble to recast, and that happily gave Robin Williams his big break to show the world his comedic genius.
• Uncredited Role: Tony Randall appears as a character in the movie Richie, Carol, Joanie, and Spike see on their double date in season two's "Not With My Sister, You Don't". At the time, Randall was in the middle of filming the final season of Garry Marshall's other sitcom The Odd Couple.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Harold Gould originally signed on to reprise the role of Howard when Happy Days went to series, but had to back out due to prior commitments.
  • Both Micky Dolenz and Michael Nesmith of The Monkees auditioned for Fonzie. However, both were considerably taller than the other main cast members and the producers decided that the Fonzie character should be more at an eye level with his peers.
  • Arnold's was originally named "Arthur's", and Fonzie's first name was originally Arnold. Both ideas lived long enough to make it into the original "test" version of "All the Way" (the former also remains in reruns), but the names themselves were switched soon after.
  • As the character of the Fonz became increasingly popular, ABC considered giving Henry Winkler his own Spinoff. Another consideration was keeping Winkler on Happy Days (renaming it "Fonzie's Happy Days"), but either giving him top billing or the "and starring" credit. Winkler, not wanting to upstage his costars, turned down all offers. However, he eventually settled for taking second billings (under Ron Howard, whom Winkler felt was the series' real star, eventually accepting top billing when Howard left to pursue directing).
  • Ralph and Potsie, a spin-off for Ralph Malph and Potsie Weber was planned. "The Apartment," a fifth season episode, acted as the proposed series' backdoor pilot.
  • Following the cancellation of the series' animated spin-off The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang, a second cartoon that would have teamed Fonzie with Scooby and Scrappy-Doo was proposed. Animated Fonzie was eventually placed on Laverne and Shirley in the Army, an animated version of Laverne & Shirley.
• Working Title: New Family in Town for the original pilot (aired as "Love and the Television Set" for Love, American Style). Cool for the series.

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