My Happy Days in Hollywood

by Garry Marshall

  While I was the boss of the show, my dad could still teach me things because he had a better head for business. He taught me that each episode didn’t need to cost the same. If I wanted to spend more money producing an episode, I could do that. I simply had to make another episode in that season for less. The budget had to balance at the end of the season. So I started doing some shows that I called stuck-in shows, which I had first learned about on The Dick Van Dyke Show. The stars would get stuck in an elevator and we would save tons of money on building sets for that week. The episode called “Trapped” was the quintessential example of a stuck-in show. In that episode Felix and Oscar and a date were on their way to a costume party when they got trapped in the building’s basement. It was great to experiment with smaller-budget and bigger-budget script ideas.

  Most of the studio notes we got on The Odd Couple were about the lack of women in the show. The executives worried that people might think Oscar and Felix were gay because they didn’t have girlfriends or dates in every episode. We used to shoot extra gag footage of Jack and Tony hugging and kissing each other and send it to the network just to agitate them. We were a sophisticated show, but we loved to drive the network suits crazy. In the meantime, behind the scenes, the network and Paramount began to put pressure on me to create other sitcoms while The Odd Couple was still on the air. I wanted to bask in the excitement of being the producer of The Odd Couple, but they kept calling me and saying, “What’s next?”

  I finally gave in to the pressure and created another show, called The Little People, with Brian Keith. He played a doctor who worked with his daughter in Hawaii. My motivation for creating the show was twofold. I thought it would make an interesting series, and it would let me take my wife and kids on vacation to Hawaii. My wife supported me in working as hard as I wanted during the television season, but in the off-season she liked us to take family vacations to Carmel Valley, visit her parents in Ohio, or go someplace entirely new, such as Oregon or Canada. We would put the kids in the car, and I would sit in the front seat penciling up scripts of The Odd Couple and then The Little People. As much as we liked our family vacation to Hawaii, Little People was not a hit with television audiences. So the network pressured me to come up with another idea. Network and studio executives said they liked the way I worked. I took care of the stars and relied on diplomacy. I was not arrogant. I was basically sane, and I didn’t pick fights with anyone. Plus, I had no ambition to head up a studio or production company. I just wanted to produce a good sitcom every week and go home to my wife and kids.

  Another family man was Jerry Paris, whom Tony and Jack liked as a director for The Odd Couple. Jerry had directed some episodes of Hey Landlord! as well as How Sweet It Is! and The Grasshopper. I had known him since he was an actor on The Dick Van Dyke Show, where he played Jerry Helper, Dick’s neighbor and a dentist. He had three children, and his youngest son was the same age as my older daughter. I learned a lot from Jerry because, unlike some of the other people on the lot, he prided himself on being a good dad. It was on The Odd Couple that he taught me the basics of how to direct a weekly sitcom. He had a positive energy that seemed to mesmerize the actors. Also, he had a lovely wife, Ruth, who had gone to Northwestern. I used to sit in the stands of the show and watch Jerry direct, taking notes on his choices and on his relationship with the actors.

  Directing, however, was still not on my radar because I was so busy writing. I loved the creative excitement of producing The Odd Couple and from time to time writing scripts, too. Jerry and I wrote the first episode, “The Laundry Orgy,” together, as well as “Oscar the Model,” in which an executive insists Felix shoot Oscar’s face in a big cologne ad. We had a formula in which we would put Oscar and Felix in different situations to showcase their differences. By myself I wrote the episode “Hospital Mates,” in which Felix and Oscar shared a hospital room. Felix was in for nose surgery and Oscar had hurt his knee. Phil Foster, who gave me my start in the comedy writing business, played the doctor. The classic button on the plot was that when Felix and Oscar went home from the hospital, Felix couldn’t see because of his bandages and Oscar couldn’t walk because of his knee. But still Felix insisted he could hear Oscar flicking cigarette ashes on the carpeting.

  Many Odd Couple fans have their favorite episodes, whether they be “The New Car,” “Let’s Make a Deal,” “That Is the Army, Mrs. Madison,” “Password,” “The Ides of April,” “It’s All Over Now, Baby Bird,” or “The Rain in Spain.” My favorite is called “The Odd Monks” because I wrote it out of desperation. With my journalism training from Northwestern, I was not a fussy or picky writer, and on TV you need to be on deadline. But after spending so many years writing with Jerry Belson, I worried I might be too lazy to write alone. So sometimes I looked for opportunities to make sure I still could. This episode came at a point in the season when Jack and Tony said they were getting tired of the long, complicated scripts we were giving them. The truth was they didn’t want to memorize so many lines. So I offered a compromise. I said, “Everybody take the week off. I’m writing the script this week.” In the script Felix and Oscar go to a monastery and have to take a vow of silence. For nearly forty pages there was no dialogue, thus eliminating the need for the two stars to memorize anything. The entire script was based on physical and visual humor, which I had learned from the scripts I had written for Lucille Ball. I think it was not only a funny script but one that varied the rhythm of the show. Sometimes when I watch TV with my wife I’ll come across “Odd Monks” on cable, and I have to sit and watch it through to the end. Jack and Tony, in my opinion, knocked that episode out of the ballpark.

  Jack and Tony were excellent costars on The Odd Couple, but I don’t think they were true friends until years later. There was tremendous pressure on them, so there honestly wasn’t time for them to just hang out and chat. Even when they were at cocktail parties, they were constantly meeting people and asking them to be on our show. One night Tony went to a party and the next day he said he’d met Allen Ludden and Betty White. So we wrote an episode for them with Jack and Tony called “Password.” Aside from the show the only thing Jack and Tony shared back then was an agent named Abner “Abby” Greshler of the Diamond Artists talent agency. When we filmed the show in front of a live audience, we would throw bite-size candies into the bleachers during intermission. Abby was so cheap that at the end of the night he would collect the candy that had fallen through the bleachers and take it home and serve it to guests.

  The Odd Couple was never number one in the ratings, but it was always in the top twenty. It won awards and received critical acclaim but was not a ratings superstar. That didn’t bother us. After four years we looked toward the fifth season as our last because we just all felt it was time and wanted to do other things. Jack, Tony, and I made a pact at one of our Hungarian Monday lunches that we would leave after five years. Most shows today run much longer, but to us quality was superior to the number of years we wanted to be on the air. I knew it was time for The Odd Couple to come to an end, but I was not ready to leave television. Another producer on the lot, Tom Miller, and Michael Eisner, who ran Paramount, and I had an idea about a show that took place in the 1950s. They thought I should pursue it. It was about young people, and I thought that sounded like a good show to follow The Odd Couple. I had done a show about older men, now it was time to tackle youth.

  As it came time to film the final episode of The Odd Couple, in the spring of 1975, we performed a prank. Early on we all took an oath never to do any spitting in the show. Comedians on television shows often did “spit takes” to get an easy laugh. So we vowed to take the more sophisticated road. For 114 episodes no one on The Odd Couple spat. But the last show we shot a series of outtakes in which we did a salute to the spit take. It was a montage of Tony, Jack, and other cast and crew members spitting when a funny line was said. It was one of the funnier behind-the-scene things we did as a cast and crew.

  During The Odd Couple my daughter Lor
i attended the Westlake School for Girls, where Neil Simon’s daughter Nancy also went. One day, around the third season of the show, I received a letter from Neil. He said his daughter had told him to watch our show because she thought it was funny. He watched a few episodes, and much to his surprise, he liked it. He wrote that he thought we were doing a good job. So after I received his letter, I called him up and invited him to guest-star on the show, and he did, playing himself. We grew from Neil hating the show in the first season to his smiling upon us in the end. He and I have been friends ever since.

  The friendship of Jack and Tony grew beyond the final season of The Odd Couple, too. Years later when Jack was diagnosed with throat cancer, Tony rallied to his side at the hospital. When Jack got better Tony galvanized a group who with Jack performed a live version of The Odd Couple onstage. Then when Tony got sick Jack was right there supporting him in the hospital. Illness brought them closer to each other than the television show had. They talked on the phone every day when they were ill. They were there for each other until Tony passed away, in 2004. They were an odd couple, but in the end the portrait of a true and lasting friendship. And I am so lucky that I got to know and work with them both because they also changed my life. After running The Odd Couple, I had confidence for the first time. The insecure “what if we fail?” “How will I make a living?” guy had gone away. I was responsible. I could deal with big-time people like Tony and Jack, and the networks. I understood the “game.” After The Odd Couple I could play with whoever, wherever, whenever.

  Tony’s daughter Julia is now an actress and had a small role in my movie New Year’s Eve. With her dark hair and alabaster skin, she reminded me so much of her father the day we shot her scene. I smiled inside, and I hope Tony looked down on us working together and smiled, too.

  7. HAPPY DAYS

  Hanging Out with the Cunningham Family and Friends

  HAPPY DAYS was a rare show in that it stayed in the Tuesday night time slot all of its eleven seasons. That was a gift from the network gods because audiences always knew where to find us. The fourth, fifth, and sixth seasons Happy Days was at the top of the ratings, at 1, 2, or 3, gloriously floating on sitcom air. We remain one of ABC’s longest running sitcoms. The success of Happy Days gave me more confidence as a creator, writer, and producer. It is my favorite television show that I created because it rarely gave me a headache or a stomachache. Happy Days was for me the quintessential television success story. I had followed my instincts, and they had turned out to be right.

  Years earlier I had followed my instincts and they were wrong. Jerry Belson and I created a show called The Recruiters during the height of the protests against the war in Vietnam. We should have looked out the window and seen people protesting and burning draft cards, but we were too myopic with our idea. I was determined to strike a more successful chord with Happy Days. I wanted to write about youth, but our country was still at war. How could I create a comedy about teenagers with Vietnam as the backdrop? I decided to go in a different direction altogether.

  I would not create a modern show, thus avoiding the issues of war, sexual liberation, dangerous drugs, and the darker side of rock and roll. I went back to the 1950s, a time that at least in my own life and mind was much less complicated and politically charged. I based the entire show on the images of poodle skirts, hula hoops, malt shops, bubble gum, and squeaky clean music. The fact that Happy Days helped viewers travel to a different era caught people’s attention immediately. Only a few other shows, like The Waltons, had found success tapping into simpler times. People in the 1970s seemed happier with the past better than the present or future.

  People always ask me how Happy Days got on the air, and the truth is, it all started with a snowstorm. Snow, it turns out, is lucky for me that way. Snow coated my childhood memories in the Bronx. Snow lined the streets of Sheridan Road when I went to college at Northwestern. Snow fell on my helmet when I served in the army in Korea. And then a snowstorm on the East Coast brought about an idea that would change my life in television forever. During a snowstorm everyone has to take time to pause.

  Here’s what happened: The year was 1973, and Michael Eisner, then the head of Paramount, was delayed on the East Coast with the up-and-coming Paramount executive Tom Miller. Not sure when their flight would take off, the two men started pitching sitcom ideas that they could develop for ABC, their partner network at the time. Eisner brought up the idea for a family show with the feel of the old show I Remember Mama, which was about a Norwegian family. Tom mentioned my name to produce it because The Odd Couple was headed toward its final season. When they pitched the idea to me, I was not exactly rushing to do it.

  “I Remember Mama? The show about Swedish people?”

  “Norwegians,” said Miller.

  “Either way. Swedes or Norwegians, I don’t think I can create a show about guys named Lars and Hans in the 1930s,” I told them. “I don’t know families like that. But what about a family show about the 1950s? That I know. That’s when I grew up, and I can give you a nostalgic show about that.”

  Eisner and Miller liked my idea. So I wrote a pilot episode about a family in the 1950s who were the first in their neighborhood to get a television set. The story was a personal one for me. I remember when we got our first television set, and how special it made me feel. Mel Ferber directed the pilot, which starred Harold Gould, Marion Ross, and Ron Howard. We pitched it to ABC, and they didn’t buy it. They just didn’t see the demographic appeal of a show in the 1950s airing during the early 1970s. But I saw beyond their vision: I knew the show had a “dated” feel to begin with, so in the reruns it would never go out of style. ABC, however, was simply not ready for Happy Days. So in 1971 Paramount put it on the series Love, American Style, otherwise known as the graveyard for dead pilots. The episode was called “New Family in Town,” and after it aired we thought Happy Days was indeed dead.

  But then the tide suddenly turned: My friend from Korea Fred Roos was producing a film with George Lucas called American Graffiti about the 1950s. They wanted to see my 1950s pilot because they were thinking of casting Ron Howard as the lead of their movie. They liked Ron, cast him, and American Graffiti was a big hit. Then a play called Grease hit Broadway, and it further reinforced the popularity of the 1950s. The executives at ABC called Eisner, and he remembered my pilot about the 1950s. Happy Days was repitched as a midseason replacement and given a second life three years after it appeared on Love, American Style. Television is a derivative medium. If something is hot, television will copy it and frequently make it a success.

  Money became a big issue when I created Happy Days. I began working with a young agent named Joel Cohen, who worked for my previous agent, Frank Cooper. Joel was a serious man who told boring stories but that is what made him such a great agent. He would bore people to death so they would give in and make a deal. Together Joel and I crafted my deal memo for Happy Days. He asked me what I wanted. I said I would like a basketball court on the Paramount lot, and a malted milk machine in my office. I was serious. That’s what I knew would make me happy. I also said maybe a car. At first I said a Volkswagen, because it was the first name of a car that popped into my head. But then my clearheaded wife called Paramount herself and said, “Garry doesn’t know anything about cars. He meant to say a Mercedes.” As far as salary went, I thought I should ask for the same amount I got on the fourth season of The Odd Couple. But Joel had another idea up his sleeve.

  “This new show, Happy Days, do you believe in it?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. I would have given a more ambivalent answer about a show like Hey Landlord! but I knew Happy Days was good from the moment we sold the pilot. And for me the show also was important because I was writing about my own childhood, and I knew I would never run out of stories.

  “Well then, why don’t we shock them?” Joel said. “They are fighting about giving you a raise on The Odd Couple, so we will say fine to that. We won’t even put up a fight. They’ve
offered you average money per episode on Happy Days. So let’s shock them even more, and say you’ll take less per episode on Happy Days. In exchange for that, you will ask for a larger ownership piece of Happy Days.”

  It was a gamble for sure. We were betting on the fact that Happy Days would turn out to be a hit, and we were right. I never had a strong head for making deals, but Joel was brilliant at it. Jack and Tony owned most of The Odd Couple, and I owned very little. With Happy Days, however, I had much more to gain. We didn’t know the show would run eleven seasons, but I did have a feeling from the beginning that it was something worth betting on.

  I also loved the creativity involved in launching Happy Days. In Grease and American Graffiti, there were clearly identified bad guys. Eisner wanted me to have a gang element in Happy Days, but we couldn’t afford a whole gang. So I created a character who could be a one-man gang. I based him on a few guys I had known growing up, namely Peter Wagner, who had owned a motorcycle and had gone to YMCA Camp Greenkill with me. All the guys in my neighborhood thought Peter was cool. Even when he wasn’t riding his motorcycle we knew he had a bike, and that was cool enough. He could just be leaning against the bike and he was tough. While we were all fast-talking, wisecracking kids, Pete was a man who said few words, but each one packed a powerful punch. Also, he was from a mysterious land called Yonkers, where few of us had ever been.

  On Happy Days, I wanted to call my cool character Mash after my Italian name, Masciarelli, but Larry Gelbart already had an army hospital show called M*A*S*H, so that seemed too confusing. Bob Brunner, my writer friend from the Daily News, suggested we call him Arthur Fonzarelli, Fonzie for short. I liked the sound of that name. (I had brought Bob out to Hollywood earlier to help write on The Odd Couple. Bob went on to be the show runner and producer for two series called Webster and Diff ’rent Strokes and did quite well for himself.)