I created the characters for the new sitcom and we launched a major casting search for likable actors, but one of the keys to the success of Happy Days was director Jerry Paris, who directed for us on The Odd Couple. During the first year we shot Happy Days with one camera and he directed some of the thirteen episodes. In the second year, when we went to three cameras and a live audience, he became our series director, a job he held for the next ten seasons. To have a nurturing father figure like Jerry Paris as director on a series that starred so many young people was invaluable. It allowed Jerry to form close working relationships with all of the actors. This is not to say that Jerry couldn’t drive us all crazy. Whenever his daughter was selling Girl Scout cookies, he would bug every single cast and crew member until all the boxes were sold. But most of the time Jerry was everything we wanted him to be as a director: sensible, stable, reliable, and funny. Wearing his famous red V-neck pullover sweater, Jerry was at the helm every Friday night. He had more energy than any person I had ever worked with. We filmed in front of a live audience. Unlike The Odd Couple, which had primarily an adult audience, Happy Days had an audience filled with little kids, teenagers, and adults. The energy was exciting, festive, and always fun.
I was forty years old when I started producing Happy Days, and I reached a defining point in my relationship with my writing partner Jerry Belson. We decided to go in different directions. After The Odd Couple, Jerry didn’t want to produce Happy Days with me. He wanted to write movies, and to be honest, he viewed the true Happy Days as too optimistic for him. His own humor skewed darker, more esoteric. When Penny bought a new house I said, “Isn’t her house great?” And Jerry said without missing a beat, “It’s a lovely house to live in if life were worth living.” A ninety-three-year-old actress we both knew died, and when I asked how he said simply, “Skiing.” Funny things were always coming out of Jerry’s mouth, and together we laughed all the time while working. The friendship and the laughter we shared would outlast even our writing partnership.
I wanted to continue to work in television because I thought it would allow me to be a better dad, too. Belson, though a good father, didn’t have that same ideal. Jerry and I once took our kids to the zoo together and he was bored to death, while I loved it. I liked seeing things through children’s eyes, especially those of little kids. And I loved television for the flexibility it offered me as a parent. If my son had a T-ball game on a Tuesday, I could be there. If my daughter Lori needed help with her tennis tryouts or her homework, I could be there. If my daughter Kathleen had a swim meet, I could be there, too. (To be honest, swim meets can be a little boring and long. You watch your kid swim the butterfly for five minutes and then wait another hour for the backstroke. I would sometimes bring my typewriter and write or read scripts in between races. Occasionally I talked to other dads. One said to me, “You think this is boring. My other daughter does twirling.”) Being a dad meant showing up. I could be there for my kids and work on a hit TV series. I’d always dreamed of being the kind of hands-on dad my own dad had not been. Happy Days would allow me to do that.
Another difference between Belson and me was our attitude toward young actors and writers. Jerry knew his sense of humor was superior, while I was more interested in sharing my experience with the up-and-coming writers. Jerry thought they would steal material from him and eventually take his job.
One of the most influential men in my career was Tom Miller, the producer of Happy Days. Tom had grown up in Milwaukee, and that’s one of the reasons the series was set there. His parents owned a dry cleaning business, and we figured we could get free dry cleaning when we shot on location. Tom was always promoting my career. He would say things in network meetings that I would never say myself, like “Garry is a major talent.” Tom loved making entertainment, and before he went into television he had worked as director Billy Wilder’s assistant. Tom wore the creative producer hat on Happy Days, and our other producer, Eddie Milkis, wore the technical one. Together the three of us made a great television producing team because we each brought our own talents to the table without too much ego to complicate things.
As with The Odd Couple, I put together a writers’ table with faces new and old. Some got overwhelmed by the pace and we had to let them go. One writer locked himself in his office, started playing his guitar, and wouldn’t come out. He didn’t last long. But when writers left we replaced them the next day. When Lowell Ganz finished up on The Odd Couple, I moved him over to Happy Days to write and produce. Lowell broke up with writer Mark Rothman, and we brought in new writers such as Brian Levant and Babaloo Mandel. I also hired older writers, like Walter Kempley and Bob Howard, who had worked in New York with me on Jack Paar’s Tonight Show. We even had a very young writer who had just gotten out of Chino State Prison for juveniles, and another one who lived out of his car until he saved enough money to rent an apartment. Again, you didn’t need the perfect education to write for Happy Days. It didn’t matter what background you had as a writer, you just needed to be funny and be able to stay up late. Stamina and quickness counted for a lot back then, and I was not afraid to fire those who didn’t have both.
Happy Days will always be remembered most for the cast. Within the first season we all went from new friends to old friends. I didn’t know Henry Winkler before he auditioned for the part of Fonzie. And I remember he was not at all the type of actor I was looking for. I thought I wanted a tall, handsome blond, and in walked a short, dark-haired actor from Emerson College and the Yale School of Drama. But before I could dismiss him, I hired him. His audition taught me something. Casting isn’t always about what you’re looking for. Sometimes it is about recognizing potential and what is standing in front of you. Henry wasn’t Fonzie, but he could “act” like Fonzie.
We had no idea at the time that Henry’s portrayal of Fonzie would become so popular with the television audience. In fact, Fonzie began as a secondary character with very few lines. When he started drawing so much focus, we had to adjust the scripts. Henry was very energetic and was becoming a more important force on the show. At one point Fonzie was so wildly popular that I got a call from ABC saying that they wanted to change the name of the show from Happy Days to Fonzie. Ron Howard, who played Richie Cunningham, and Henry both knew about this suggestion, but we didn’t have to spend much time to decide what to do. Changing the name of the show would be insulting to Ron, our kind and steady star. Henry agreed with me and wouldn’t support any change in the title. So Henry proved to be not only a talented actor but a sensitive gentleman as well. Another actor might have taken the new title and run with it, but that wasn’t Henry’s style, and it still isn’t.
My relationship with Ron Howard began before Happy Days. I had known him since he was a little kid on The Andy Griffith Show at Desilu Studios. Sometimes I would throw a baseball with him during rehearsal breaks. From the time he first appeared on television, he had the dream temperament of an actor. His parents, Jean and Rance Howard, raised him far from a life of hysteria and drama. So his personality was on an even keel, and not subject to the slightest high or low. If I had to pick the perfect actor to work with on a sitcom, Ron was it. He reminded me of a professional basketball player. He had the ability to shoot the ball and score but also the strength and focus to pass the ball to others to let them score, too. Near the end of the show we would have quiet talks about directing, and I knew he would probably go on to another career. But to have him on Happy Days for as long as we did was a gift not only to the show but also to me and the other actors.
Before I met Tom Bosley, who played Howard Cunningham, he was a talented Broadway actor; Marion Ross, who played Marion Cunningham, was an eccentric actress, and a Scorpio, like me. On the show Tom and Marion could make scenes funny even when they weren’t quite funny enough on the written page. Erin Moran graduated high school from the studio school while doing the series, and she was the only one in her class. She supported her entire family, and in exchange her Happy Days family
tried to support her and watch over her on the lot. Anson Williams, Donny Most, Scott Baio, and other supporting cast members were as happy as the stars.
When some stars left we replaced them with others, for instance, when Al Molinaro took over Arnold’s from Pat Morita. When we went to cast Ron Howard’s onscreen girlfriend, we let his real-life girlfriend Cheryl approve the actress Lynda Goodfriend. Late in the run of the series we were still bringing in great additions, such as Cathy Silvers and Ted McGinley. To be on a hit show was something you always dreamed of as an up-and-coming actor, and these kids were living the dream, but they weren’t destructive with their money or their talent. I can’t say this for the sitcoms I would create later on, but the cast of Happy Days was as kind, nice, and humorous as the characters they played.
Despite the fact that our cast was nice, our scripts were not always simple. We could tackle complex subjects, like nuclear war. The first season we aired an episode called “Be the First on Your Block” about Howard’s decision to buy a bomb shelter. For many families in America the first time their kids heard the term bomb shelter was on Happy Days. I remember receiving letters from college professors saying they mentioned the episode in their history classes because some students didn’t know what a bomb shelter was. They watched the Cunningham family grapple with the dilemma of which of their friends to invite into the shelter should a nuclear attack happen. That episode made me realize something: Having a hit show was powerful, and we had to learn to wield that power wisely.
Some of our episodes reflected the direction of the show. For example, as Fonzie rose in popularity during the third season, we moved him into the spare room above the Cunningham garage in an episode called “Fonzie Moves In.” Other episodes reflected my own life. I had gone through painful knee surgery, so I had Fonzie do the same in the two-part episode “Fearless Fonzarelli” when he crashed his motorcycle. There are a few episodes that I look back on as gold because they changed so many actors’ lives forever and were remembered by audiences as being extraspecial. One of those was “A Date with the Fonz,” when my sister and Cindy Williams first appeared as Laverne DeFazio and Shirley Feeney.
America loved the episodes with Pinky Tuscadero and Fonzie as well as Fonzie’s special friendship with Mrs. Cunningham. When Pinky, a girlfriend from Fonzie’s past, was reunited with Fonzie, it was talked about in the sports pages. Before a tennis match a reporter asked Arthur Ashe who was going to win and Arthur said, “I don’t know but we are going to do it fast so we can go home and watch Pinky Tuscadero.” With her pink leather outfit and matching motorcycle gear, Roz Kelly as Pinky was someone special to watch every time she appeared on Happy Days.
Another gold episode for me was in the fifth season, when Robin Williams first appeared as Mork in “My Favorite Orkan.” When Robin walked into the Cunningham living room and launched into his Orkan voice, everyone on the set got goose bumps because we could see immediately that he had the potential to be a big star. The episode in which Fonzie got a library card made library card requests jump 500 percent in one month across the United States. Fonzie had a lonely Christmas. Joanie got kissed. Richie almost died. Marion went to jail. Fonzie lost his sight. We tackled every scenario we could think of in eleven seasons.
We constantly had to battle the network censors because they wanted a superclean show and took us to task if we tried anything they thought was too provocative. The coveted Happy Days time slot on Tuesdays at 8:00 P.M. was considered family hour. In an early episode the censors told us that we could not use the word virgin to describe a girl. Instead Fonzie had to use the line “she was pure as the driven snow but she drifted.” There was no way for us to get around the censors, so we just had to please them as best we could. As a producer I had to make everyone happy, from the censors to the actors and the catering people. Some episodes were funnier than others, but I tried always to make sure they had heart. Families were inviting us into their living rooms every Tuesday, and I felt we had an obligation to be not only entertaining but also kind.
I was very clear, though, on what kind of help I could offer. I would stay up all night to fix a scene or a moment in a script. However, if someone wanted a better lamp in a dressing room or didn’t have a ride to the studio, I would point toward someone else to help. I would be fibbing if I didn’t say that some of the actors on Happy Days complained about things or made demands that were unreasonable. When that happened the person I pointed them toward was my levelheaded middle sister and associate producer, Ronny. In so many ways Happy Days was an easier show to produce than The Odd Couple because I had more experience managing television actors. Happy Days allowed me to take what I had learned from Tony and Jack and practice my skills on a new group of younger actors. Every single actor on Happy Days was easier to deal with than Tony and Jack. If actors came to me and whined, “I haven’t been featured in an episode lately. I want a show all about my character,” I would say, “Wait your turn,” and they would. The supporting characters on The Odd Couple rarely asked for bigger parts because it was so clear Tony and Jack were the stars of the show. In fact, Tony and Jack were often the generous ones, saying, “Why don’t you give Al Molinaro or Elinor Donahue a bigger part this week?”
The cast and crew of Happy Days were content most of the time because they were so grateful to be working. I was so thrilled to have a show on the air that was a success, and they were so happy to have jobs and paychecks. The biggest star we had was Ron Howard, and he was the most amiable one of the entire group. Ron’s personality and upbeat nature set the example for the entire show. To have a temper tantrum when Ron was such an exemplary leader seemed crazy to the others, so they never acted up in front of Ron.
The first few seasons the cast was young and dating. The next few they were getting married and having babies. The last few they were having their second babies and settling into their lives as parents and grown-ups. These were not cocaine-snorting, Porsche-driving, wild nightclub-dancing people. Sure in the later years when Ted McGinley joined the cast and Scott Baio started dating Erin Moran and then Heather Locklear, we had our fair share of tabloid stories. But for the most part the press looked at our cast and said, “Those people are too happy.” We didn’t offer the dirt or the gossip they wanted to sell newspapers.
Part of the fun of Happy Days was that we were a hit show. We didn’t have to think of new ways to save the show but rather ways to keep it fresh by bringing in new characters. I once auditioned Nathan Lane for a part and he wasn’t quite right. Nathan went on to become a big star on Broadway. When I go to see him he will always see me backstage and say with a smile, “There’s Garry Marshall, who turned me down for a part on Happy Days.”
While the Happy Days cast and crew became my family, I surrounded myself with my real family, too. My sister Ronny worked in the casting department as an associate producer, and my dad was on the producing staff. My mother and three kids acted in several episodes, my favorite being one in the second season called “Haunted,” in which my kids each played a trick or treater. While my wife didn’t appear on-screen until I directed movies a few years later, her job in the 1970s was to help me not forget I had a life off the lot. We continued to vacation in Carmel, California, every spring and go to Hawaii with the kids many Christmases. My wife remains one of the great road trip drivers of all time. On a dime she can be packed and ready to drive to San Francisco or Newport Beach for the weekend, even at midnight. So whenever there was a window, Barbara helped me make time for my kids and family. I was never a good driver, and in fact didn’t get my license until I was twenty-eight years old. It took me three tries to get my license, and I rarely make left turns, even today.
The ratings triumph of Happy Days was great, but something was nagging inside me. As much as I loved television, I still longed to be a part of live theater. It might sound crazy, but the success of Happy Days spurred me to keep dreaming of other kinds of creative outlets. So twice during Happy Days I took theater breaks. The fi
rst time was in the winter of 1974 to work as a script doctor on a big Broadway musical called Good News starring the great Alice Faye. It was exciting to be in New York City in the winter and see my credit in the program, which read “written by Abe Burrows with additional dialogue by Garry Marshall.” But the downside was that I had to be away from my family during Christmastime. For the first time in our marriage, my wife had to put up the Christmas tree and decorate it by herself.
The second time I left Happy Days was 1978, when I went to produce a play in Illinois called Shelves. It was the play I had written years earlier when my wife and Lori and I moved to Palm Springs for several months. I took it out of my drawer and cast the most likable mother I knew—Marion Ross from Happy Days—as the lead. We opened at a dinner theater called the Pheasant Run Playhouse in St. Charles, Illinois. The play was a tribute to my mother, who could have been a star but was born at a time when women were not encouraged to work.
My family and Marion’s family had flown out for the opening, which would mark my debut as a playwright, something my mother had dreamed of since I was a boy. But this mood changed as my ten-year-old son, Scott, was rushed to the emergency room with pneumonia. They put him in an oxygen tent. On opening night I stood in the hospital room in my tuxedo with my two daughters wearing fancy new department store dresses. My wife said I had to attend opening night. I lifted up the plastic on the oxygen tent to kiss my son goodbye, but I was having trouble walking out the door. My wife encouraged me to go and take the girls to the theater. She would stay behind with Scott. So I went, weighed down by my own reluctance.
My Happy Days in Hollywood Page 10
