Singing to a Bulldog

by Anson Williams

  “Yeah, right,” Don said. “John Lennon wants to hang out with us.”

  It turned out it was John Lennon! He was with his ten-year-old son, Julian, and they did want to hang out with us! John was out in Los Angeles, and his son’s favorite show was Happy Days. They had come to the set totally unannounced to meet us. John was a huge fan of the fifties and said he also loved the show. I was speechless, but John turned out to be a real down-to-earth genius. He was kind and so damn funny. He said that Elvis Presley was a major influence on his music, and that Elvis was “everlasting.” Soon, we all felt like we’d known each other forever. When he told me that he liked my singing, I was floored. One of the greatest talents of all time actually heard me sing? Ahhhhhhhhh!

  John and Julian spent the entire day on the set, twelve hours, all the way to wrap. John was truly humble; he seemed to radiate light. Watching how he treated everyone on the set made me think of something Willie told me. “Da real great people is humble cause dey know dat dey God’s angels.” John drew ink caricatures for most of the crew but not for the cast. We were professionals and didn’t want to bother him by asking for one . . . Dumb! Today I bet crew members paid off their houses with their original Lennon doodles. I do have one remembrance of that magical day: We all took a photo with John and Julian that sits on my desk. I experienced greatness that day. None of us would ever see him again, but his light, the light of greatness, continues to shine.

  “Da real great people is humble cause dey know dat dey God’s angels.”

  Three-Camera Magic

  “Gotta drop to da bottom to find da way.”

  “Dey times things need to be so bad to be so good.” Willie told me this when I got caught cheating on a math test. “Gotta drop to da bottom to find da way.” My parents made my life hell, but it changed my study habits around and I never cheated again.

  It turns out changes were happening in the Happy Days camp. We had dropped to 48th place in the ratings by the end of the second season. It was looking like we might not get picked up. Then ABC hired a brilliant programmer, Fred Silverman, as its new president. He believed that, possibly, there was still hope for the show. He convinced Garry Marshall to make Fonzie the major character, and Garry convinced Fred to change Happy Days to a three-camera show with a live audience. He felt that the cast was good enough to handle it, and that the show would be funnier.

  There was one big hurdle: Garry hadn’t yet spoken to Ron about taking a back seat to “the Fonz,” and, contractually, Ron had to approve it. Ron had no qualms about taking a back seat; this is what made Ron so unique. In a crazy business, he never let ego interfere with what was best for the show. At a young age, he had the character and insight of a sage. I suggested to Garry that the cast use all of its resources to bring viewers back to the show: We should do television and radio interviews, newspaper stories, whatever we could get to keep the show in the public eye. We did and it worked. We went up slightly in the ratings and secured the pick-up for season three.

  Stage 19 became our new home, and we had the same camera crew as The Lucy Show. (Coincidentally, The Lucy Show had shot on the same stage. One of the show’s original crew members said to me that Lucy squeezed a good luck charm her mother had given her when she was a child into a crack located in one of the stage’s walls. Rumor has it that it’s still there, bringing luck to all who film on that stage.)

  * * *

  I’ll never forget the excitement of our first live show. We were all backstage and could feel the audience’s energy as they were taken to their grandstand-type seats. Tom, Marion, Don, Henry, and I all had stage experience and loved the thrill of going live. But Ron had never acted in front of an audience, and he was visibly nervous. About ten minutes before our director, Jerry Paris, made cast introductions, I looked around and didn’t see Ron anywhere. Then I checked the wardrobe room and saw him, a man alone, standing by some racks. He noticed me and then turned away without saying a word. Clearly he was scared. He stole a few more quiet moments before he took a deep breath, and then walked toward the group, giving me a nervous smile and nod as he passed, ready to face his greatest fear.

  It turned out he had nothing to worry about: Ron was terrific and so was the entire cast. It was a magical evening, and at the end of the show the entire studio audience was on their feet, cheering and applauding. The new format and the magic it created had the same effect on the television audience at home, and in a few short months Happy Days became the number one television show in the world. We enjoyed record-breaking ratings, and it was because of Happy Days that ABC became the number one network for the first time in its history.

  Willie was right, we had to fail to find our way and win. “Dey times things need to be so bad to be so good. Gotta drop to da bottom to find da way.”

  We were on that stage for a long time, and I looked for Lucy’s lucky charm for years. I thought I saw something twinkle once while we were shooting, but then couldn’t find it again. I don’t think that we’re supposed to . . . it gave us the luck to move forward.

  Playing Ball

  “Da game take me away.”

  The only bigger fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers than me was Willie. I’d spent my childhood rooting for them in the cheapest seats. So imagine what a high it was for me when I learned that the Happy Days softball team would play charity games in every major stadium in the United States. Our opponents would be professional football, hockey, or basketball teams—and occasionally, the casts of other television shows.

  “Baseball, ya’ play baseball?” What I didn’t know at the time of my first audition for the role of Potsie: Garry Marshall was a special boss. I thought he was asking weird questions for an acting role, but he wasn’t. He had a plan. Not only did he want to help nurture his cast’s creative possibilities, such as acting, writing, producing, and directing, to ensure that everyone he hired would have a chance at a long-term career in the volatile world of show biz; he also wanted to inspire us to be better people. This was the reason that he insisted we have a Happy Days softball team. He believed that traveling together as a team would have a positive effect on the show, since it was hard to be petty on set with a teammate who had sacrificed a hit so that you could score and win the game.

  When we played in Dodger Stadium, I could not believe I was actually standing on the field, mingling with my heroes. Willie told me he would spend hours on the bus just to see a game. He’d say to me, “Da game take me away. Whiles I sit dere and watch, everythin’s possible. It my damn Green Cathedral.”

  And here I was, playing a game in the stadium! If only Willie was still on this earth. I wanted him to be there. I could have taken him down to the green grass of his church. It was an incredible thrill to hear a full stadium roaring their approval as I ran the bases, my image fifty feet high on the video scoreboard. I wanted him to experience that and I wanted him hear me sing: I had the privilege of singing the “Star-Spangled Banner” before each main game, an honor that I’ll always cherish.

  One Saturday morning, after we’d played many charity games around the country, I received a call from a family friend. The commanding general of the U.S. Third Infantry Division in Germany wanted to know if we would fly over and play a series of games with his troops. He promised he would make sure that we had a great experience. I brought it up to Garry and the cast, and everyone wanted to go. The dates were planned and soon we were all in the air, beer and schnapps in hand, toasting our way to Frankfurt.

  We were all put up in an adorable gasthaus about an hour south of Frankfurt, in a town called Würzburg, on the Rhine River. Würzburg is over a thousand years old and still has the character and charm of a Grimm’s fairytale. Gasthauses are a mainstay throughout Germany, a quaint motel-type accommodation with a restaurant.

  The first night the general and his staff hosted a dinner for us in a restaurant created in a thousand-year-old castle that overlooked the entire city and t
he Rhine River. It still had its original stone walls and floors, authentic suits of armor, swords, and other weapons. Instead of water on the table, there were white and red wine dispensers. We could place our glass under either one and “fill ’er up.”

  It was a “Happy” night to say the least.

  After dinner Ron, Henry, Don, and I explored the historic fortress, ending up outside on a large balcony that overlooked the silent, twinkling city below. The only sound was the moving water of the Rhine. There we were, four ordinary young guys, sharing an unforgettable experience. Ron started quietly singing the words, “Splish splash I was taking a bath,” and soon we were all singing, four real friends, together, belting out Bobby Darren to a sleepy German village. It was a moment in time that I knew I’d treasure my entire life.

  We played five games against army troops of the Third Division based in different areas, and it became apparent that what we were really doing was much more important than playing games. We were the spirit of the United States to soldiers and their families who had been stationed in Germany for a long time and needed a shot of home, a few hours to escape to better times. At the end of the final game, an African American private walked up to me for an autograph and said, “I’ve been overseas for three years and before watching you guys play today, I was in a real funk. You got me out of it and I can’t thank you enough for that.” He gave me a hug and walked on.

  Years later, I was honored to represent small businesses at the first U.S. Trademark Exposition held at the headquarters of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Alexandria, Virginia. My business partner, JoAnna Connell, and I had created a company called StarMaker Products. After the opening ceremony and all of the speeches, a well-dressed man came up to me and said, “I don’t know if you remember, but when I was in the army, I met you in Germany at a Happy Days game. I want you to know how much you helped me that day. That was the start of getting out of a really bad place in my head.”

  It turned out that the young private was now a prominent patent attorney. He gave me another hug and walked away, with the head of the entire U.S. Patent Office.

  “Da game take me away. While I sit dere and watch, everythin’s possible. It’s my damn Green Cathedral.” No more cheap seats, Willie. You were on that field with us running the bases, making ‘everythin’s’ possible; giving hope and the American spirit to all who watched.

  All Shook Up

  “God talk thru dat boy. He gots da gift. He be forever.”

  Leonard’s had a “Fifties Sale,” when I worked there as an assistant janitor. All furniture was marked down to a price that would have been charged in the 1950s, and period-­appropriate music blared out of the store’s speakers. Whenever Elvis came on, Willie would start dancing while he was mopping, and I watched as hard years fell away from his face. “God talk thru dat boy,” he’d say with reverence. “He gots da gift. He be forever.”

  I loved watching Willie look and play like a kid, never dreaming that I’d meet his idol, Elvis Presley.

  Right at the start of Happy Days, I committed to doing cerebral palsy telethons around the country. I had a personal interest: My cousin, Annie, was born with cerebral palsy (CP). My aunt and uncle were amazing, selfless parents, but they struggled with the heavy financial burden of her care. It felt good to turn the popularity of the show into dollars for United Cerebral Palsy (a charity that truly cares; ninety percent of all monies donated go directly to those in need). In early May of 1975, one of the bookings was a telethon in Monroe, Louisiana. It didn’t sound like the most thrilling place to travel, but off I went. I was picked up at the airport by a hard-working single mom, Katie, and her ten-year-old son, Bobby, who had a moderate case of CP. Katie and Bobby’s dad had set a date to be married, but when Katie had an amniocentesis done and found out that their baby would be born disabled, her groom-to-be vanished, never to be heard from again. Katie had her baby and took on the mammoth responsibility of raising him alone. She told me she was the district manager of a national food franchise that consisted of eighty-nine stores—quite a major accomplishment for a single mom without a degree. She had convinced corporate to be one of the sponsors for the telethon, and then volunteered to help. Bobby was a huge fan of Happy Days, and he asked me to sing a song. All three of us sang “All Shook Up” until we reached my hotel.

  Looking back, it was prophetic.

  The telethon would be live from Saturday at noon until 6 p.m. Sunday: thirty hours of live broadcast. Katie told me that my pick-up for rehearsal was at 10 a.m. Bobby asked me for a hug before they left, and I could feel the overwhelming love inside of this child.

  As I walked into the lobby of the hotel, I noticed a local paper with an ad for an Elvis Presley concert on Saturday night at the Monroe Civic Auditorium. That turned out to be right across the parking lot from the building that would be airing the telethon. After singing “All Shook Up” in Katie’s car, this felt like more than a simple coincidence.

  On Saturday, rehearsal went well and the show was going great, taking in record contributions. There was a surprise call from Elvis’s representative, donating a generous $5,000 from the superstar. I learned about it in the green room, a place for performers to rest and get some food, and wondered if Elvis was actually watching the show. Katie and her son popped in. She had just finished work (she worked weekends, too) and Bobby wanted to say, “Hi.” We talked about the success of the telethon and made small talk, and then I mentioned the Elvis concert I’d read about, that was happening a few hundred yards away.

  Katie asked, “Would you like to meet him?”

  “Huh?” I answered, a worldly response.

  It turned out, a friend of Elvis’s named Red had come into a local restaurant where she and her son were eating and they struck up a conversation. Red connected with Bobby, and gave Katie a number to call if they wanted to see the concert and meet Elvis. Katie asked me again, “Do you want to meet Elvis?”

  “Sure,” I said, not believing that it was possible.

  Hours later, I had just finished singing “Splish Splash” when Katie rushed up to me backstage. “Elvis finished his concert and wants to meet you.”

  Again, my worldly response, “Huh?”

  “Red says that Elvis will be taking pictures and then going straight to his car through the backstage door.”

  Within moments, Katie, Bobby and I were heading across the enormous parking lot to the Civic Center. We reached the stage door and sure enough, parked right outside was a 1975 Lincoln limo. Katie talked to the security men and after a few walkie-talkie conversations, we were allowed to move Bobby’s wheelchair right next to the car. The three of us waited, and then the stage door opened and out walked a sequined Elvis, followed by his entourage.

  “Where’s Bobby?” he asked.

  He looked heavier than his golden days, but he still had tremendous charisma and something more, just like Willie had said years before. Elvis took off his scarf and tied it around Bobby’s neck. I could tell that he was a man with a kind and caring heart. He spent a few minutes talking with Bobby, and he made that little boy feel like a superstar. Then he walked over to me, put both hands on my shoulders, and said, “Very nice to meet you, Anson. I really like your show.”

  Huh? This time I caught myself and said, “Thanks.” I was in total awe.

  “I was in my room before the show and watched you on the telethon. You sing darn good.”

  Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God! Elvis saw me sing! “I’m just okay,” I said.

  “No, you got something special.”

  I instantly flashed back to when I first met Willie. I told Elvis about him, how he had said those same words to me when I was fifteen years old, and how much he had meant to me. I also told him how Willie had idolized him.

  “You know, I had someone like that in my life,” Elvis said and it looked like he was tearing up. “As soon as I graduated high sch
ool, I got a job on a factory line to help my family out. Working next to me was an older man named Frank. I was a young guy without a lot of confidence who wanted to sing, but I had no idea how a poor kid like me would even get a chance. I could have given up and become an electrician or something, but he heard me sing while working the line, and convinced me to stick with it, said that it would all work out. If it weren’t for him, I don’t think that I would be here today.”

  I stood there, next to The King, stunned silent. One of Elvis’s entourage signaled that they had to go.

  “It was nice talking with you, Anson. I hope we have a chance to do it again.”

  Elvis started to shake my hand, but I spontaneously hugged him. Laughing, he walked over to Bobby, bent down, and gave him a bear hug before getting into his limo.

  Katie, Bobby, and I watched as the limo drove off into the silent night, touched by his genuine kindness. I would never see him again, and Elvis died two years later, but like Willie and John Lennon said, his gift is everlasting.

  Kidnapped by the President’s Daughter

  “You listen, boy. In people’s heads, dey makes people bigger and better den dey are. Peoples dey never even met. Dey got to earn yer respect.”

  It was a frigid and rain-soaked Saturday afternoon. Willie and I were both married to our wide-aisle mops, cleaning the mud that was being generously dispersed by soggy customers. On this dreary day, Fred Ames, the owner of Leonard’s Department Store, decided to have his wife and daughter visit him at work. Fred was all over us, making sure that the store would be sparkling clean for their arrival, a definite challenge given the horrible weather. I was nervous about meeting Fred’s daughter. I’d seen pictures of her on his desk and I could see that she was beautiful and way out of my social level. I said as much to Willie.