Over time my son got better, but I never forgot how conflicted I felt that night as a father and a playwright. When I should have been on top of the world about my play, I was worried sick about my son. I wanted to stay with him. I realized then how short and unpredictable life is. I had been a sick and fragile kid, and I had a sick and fragile kid that night. I realized you have to make the most of life while you can. So right after I returned home from Chicago, I went back to the safety of Happy Days. (Years later I did the play again at my Falcon Theatre and retitled it Everybody Say “Cheese!”)
When my writing partner Jerry Belson’s dad died, Jerry wrote a beautiful letter saying how much his father had meant to him. But his father never had the chance to hear Jerry’s thoughts because he was already gone. Around this time I decided to write letters to my parents while they were still alive. I wanted them to know how much I appreciated and loved them. I thanked my mother for always giving me aspirin, soaking my stitches, cooking for me, and bringing me sports magazines when I was sick. I thanked my father for taking me to professional football games. My dad also taught me how to be a boss, and took me to see live radio shows. In my neighborhood no other dads were taking their kids to radio shows, and that made me feel extraspecial. And finally, I thanked him for helping me get into Northwestern and carve out a new life for myself. Many years later I saw my dad still carried my letter in his wallet, and he would show it to bartenders whether he was drinking at a local bar or at his favorite golf club, Lakeside.
Back to the topic of Happy Days. People come up and ask me all the time about the phrase jumping the shark and if I find it offensive. The expression comes from a late episode of Happy Days in which Fonzie uses water skis to literally jump over a shark in the ocean. It was certainly not one of the shows I am most proud of. But I love the phrase jumping the shark and the way people use it today to signify a TV series nearing the end of its run. In 2009 I did a full stage tour of the Happy Days musical, which I wrote with Paul Williams and produced with Happy Days executive producers Bob Boyett and Tom Miller. One of the big jokes in the musical is when someone notices Fonzie is in a bad mood and says, “He hasn’t been the same since he jumped the shark.”
Happy Days was a hit television series for eleven seasons, and then we all knew it was time to say goodbye. The last season people were getting tired and wanted to move on to other things. We had gotten so efficient that sometimes we even shot the show in three or four days instead of five. We decided that to end the show we would do something we had never done before: Tom Bosley turned directly to the camera and thanked the audience for their support. Now that Tom has passed away, that decision seems even more appropriate. We were a family show, Tom was the dad, and it was his opportunity to say goodbye for all of us.
Knowing that Happy Days appealed to people from eight years old to eighty makes me smile even today. I always wanted to be remembered as the Norman Rockwell of television, and Happy Days represented the part of me that wanted to make mainstream America laugh. If television was the education of the American public, then Happy Days was recess. And I always loved recess best.
“Is it true that Fonzie’s leather jacket is in a museum?” asked my grandson, Sam, one day.
“Yes. It is in the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.,” I said.
“But what good does it do there? Fonzie can’t wear it and say ‘Aaaay!’ ” he said.
“Fonzie has other jackets now,” I said.
“But can he still say ‘Aaaay’ ”? he asked.
“Yes, sometimes on occasion, he still says it,” I said with a smile.
Sam wasn’t born when Happy Days went off the air, in 1984, and his parents, Elissa and Scott weren’t married yet. But to think that Sam knows who Fonzie was and that he was a cool guy with a motorcycle makes me realize just how happy those days on the show were.
My grandpa Willy Ward lived in the apartment next door to us. He used to make me laugh a lot, and he was the first person to ever tell me I was funny. He had a great sense of humor, so I believed him.
This is one of my first official baby pictures. Around this time, I won a contest in a local newspaper for being a cute child. My mother was very proud.
My dad, Tony, taught me how to be a good boss. He invented his middle name, Wallace, because he thought it gave him more dignity.
My mother, Marjorie, thought the biggest sin in life was to bore people. She thought entertainers were the best kind of people on the planet.
Most of the men on my Falcon basketball team remain my closest friends and confidants to this day.
When I wasn’t sneezing or wheezing in bed due to ailments or allergies, I loved to play sports of any kind.
I enjoyed growing up with two little sisters. My mom always said I was the sick kid. Ronny was the pretty child. And Penny was the one always getting into trouble.
I honed my writing skills as a soldier at the AFKN radio station in Korea in the 1950s.
Throughout college at Northwestern, I was always a drummer in a band of some kind to earn extra money so I wouldn’t have to take out a student loan.
Danny Thomas and Joey Bishop were two of my earliest employers and mentors. One minute I was a struggling comic in New York, and almost overnight I was working in Hollywood as a comedy writer. These two men changed my life forever.
Producing The Odd Couple was my first chance to be a boss of a prime-time situation comedy. The experience was a dream come true for me, including the night we celebrated our 100th episode. (Courtesy of CBS Television Studios)
It seems almost a cliché to say that the cast of Happy Days was very happy, but they honestly were. They had careers, families, and children. They appreciated the fact they were on a top-rated sitcom surrounded by friends. (Courtesy of CBS Television Studios)
The hours spent on a movie set can be very long. You have to grab a nap where you can. My son, Scott, and I worked and napped together on the set of Overboard, which I shot in Mendocino and Los Angeles.
I don’t like to dwell on success, but this picture made a lot of people successful. When Robin Williams appeared on Happy Days as Mork from Ork, we created a spinoff the same week. (Courtesy of CBS Television Studios)
Penny, Ronny, and I have taught our children and grandchildren that the only thing you can really count on is family.
The first time my wife ever appeared on the big screen was as a nurse in my first movie, Young Doctors in Love. For a hypochondriac to marry a nurse is like a marriage made in heaven. (Courtesy of Paramount Pictures Corporation)
Acting alongside Tom Hanks in my sister’s movie A League of Their Own was a treat. We had not worked together since I directed him in Nothing in Common. (A League of Their Own © 1992 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All rights reserved)
Directing Matt Dillon in The Flamingo Kid was like taking a trip down memory lane. Like Matt’s character Jeffrey, I spent many summers working at resorts on the eastern seashore when I was growing up. (Photo by Kevin O’Callaghan)
When Bette Midler first sang the song “Wind Beneath My Wings” to me I literally got tears in my eyes. (© Touchstone Pictures)
In Mystic Pizza, Julia wowed audiences with her wild mane of hair. In Pretty Woman, however, we purposely concealed her hair in the beginning of the film with a short, blonde wig. Then we revealed her beautiful hair to the audience and Richard Gere when they were finally alone in his hotel suite. (Photo by Ron Batzdorff, © Touchstone Pictures)
I was so lucky to work with Michelle Pfeiffer not only once but twice: first in Frankie and Johnny and then again in New Year’s Eve. (Courtesy of Berliner)
8. SCHLEMIEL! SCHLIMAZEL!
Laverne and Shirley Are Driving the Writers Crazy
ILIKED TO BRING my three kids to Paramount Studios when they had days off from school during the mid-1970s. They were in elementary school at the time, and I wanted them to see where their dad’s office was. When I said, “Dad’s going to work,” I wanted them to know what it meant. I
was never really sure what it was my own father did day in and day out, so I was determined to show my children exactly what a television writer-producer did. For a while they thought I spent a lot of time sleeping because I would work late at night and still be in bed when they went to school in the morning. But eventually I brought them to the set and gave them a tour. They were rarely allowed to visit The Odd Couple because they were too young. But after I created Happy Days, cast and crew members brought their kids to work regularly.
One day I was walking along the lot with Lori (eleven), Kathleen (seven), and Scott (six), and I pointed out the Happy Days soundstage.
“Happy Days is one of my favorite shows,” I said.
“Where do they do Laverne & Shirley?” asked Lori.
“Over there,” I said and pointed to the soundstage adjacent to Happy Days.
“Let’s go! Schlemiel! Schlimazel! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!” said Kathleen, dancing the sequence from the show’s opening credits.
“We can’t,” I said. “You don’t want to go in there. It’s not fun.”
“Why not?” asked Scott. “It looks fun on TV.”
“On the set they argue and fight a lot. Cursing happens,” I explained.
“Does Aunt Penny curse, too?” asked Lori.
“I’m afraid so,” I said.
“Lenny and Squiggy curse?” asked Scott.
“Yep,” I said.
“Are you joking, Daddy? Is that true?” asked Kathleen.
“I’m serious. Happy Days is Daddy’s happiest show, and Laverne & Shirley is Daddy’s toughest show. So I don’t take a lot of visitors to that set.”
“I overheard someone say that the cast of Happy Days puts cups up to the wall so they can hear Penny and Cindy screaming at the writers. Is that true?” asked Lori.
“I wanna hear that!” said Scott.
“No. No. Laverne & Shirley is too chaotic. Let’s go get some pizza.”
“At the Pizza Bowl?” asked Kathleen.
“No. The commissary. Less cursing goes on there.”
Laverne & Shirley did not begin as a tough show at all but rather a dream come true. I was attending a conference on Marco Island off the coast of Florida with the ABC brass, and executive Fred Silverman asked me to create more shows. Happy Days was a big hit, and he felt that to make ABC a powerhouse on Tuesday night, we needed another half-hour sitcom to pair with it. Every other word out of Fred’s mouth seemed to be spinoff.
“So what else do you have?” asked Fred. “Any spinoffs?”
“Not a lot. I’m too busy working on Happy Days,” I said.
“Come on. You must have something else,” he said. “A spinoff?”
The truth was I did have one idea I had been mulling over. My sister Penny and actress Cindy Williams had appeared a few months earlier on Happy Days playing romantic dates for Fonzie and Richie. Their characters were girls from the wrong side of the tracks set against the supersmart Richie and cooler-than-ice Fonzie. The studio audience seemed to love Penny and Cindy, and I wondered if I could build a new show around them. Cindy was an adorable, rubber-faced actress who could also sing. Together the girls were unpredictably funny. To create a popular show, however, I knew I needed to find a niche that wasn’t currently being filled on television. So I brought up my idea with Fred.
“I was thinking that there are no blue-collar women on television,” I said.
“What do you mean? Tell me more,” he asked.
“There are all these middle-class or these fancy wealthy women on television like Lucy and Mary Tyler Moore—well-dressed women with perfect hair and good diction. But no women who do factory work or talk like regular working-class single people from the neighborhood,” I said.
“I love the idea. Make it a show,” he said. “I love a spinoff.”
Affable Fred Silverman had written his college thesis on how to schedule network shows. He got an A.
And just like that I was handed the green light for another sitcom deal. Actually, Fred liked Penny when he was at CBS and Penny was on Paul Sands in Lovers and Friends. When that series was canceled, Penny and her friend Cindy were a struggling writing team. They were not really sure they wanted to be actresses.
Coincidentally, that same week my mother called and told me to get my little sister another acting job. Penny had done a great job on The Odd Couple as Oscar’s secretary, Myrna Turner. But when The Odd Couple ended, Penny was out of work again. So I thought if I could create a blue-collar show starring Penny, then I could make Fred Silverman and my mother happy at the same time.
To create the characters of Laverne DeFazio and Shirley Feeney, I took pieces from their Happy Days appearance and then borrowed material from two characters I had once seen in Brooklyn. The year was around 1958, and we were all out of the army. My friend Jimmy, who had served in Korea with me, and I went out one night after playing in a nightclub. We met some girls and took them to a coffee shop around 2:00 A.M. Suddenly another girl said something rude to my date. My girl turned to me and said, “Garry, would you hold my coat?” And then my date beat up the other girl. I had never seen two girls fistfight before, and it fascinated me. The tough-as-nails quality of Laverne & Shirley was based on that single night fight in Brooklyn.
I cast Penny, and I was able to hire Cindy as the other lead. I knew Cindy well because she had once dated Fred Roos, who was now a producer for Francis Coppola. We also adopted our family dog from Cindy, and named her Cindy. I wanted the new show to involve a lot of physical comedy, and Penny and Cindy were both willing and able to tackle stunts. Penny was athletic and had once dreamed of being a stunt girl. Cindy was athletic as well and once told me, “I’m so little I better be brave.” They also had the look that I wanted. I could put them in smocks and place them in a bottle-capping factory and they would be believable as regular, hardworking girls from Milwaukee. Casting for me is key, so to get one of my comic mentors, Phil Foster, to join the cast as Laverne’s father made me secure, too. Penny and Phil had New York accents, and the show took place in Milwaukee, so we made believe they had moved back to Wisconsin from New York to explain their New York accents.
We shot the ten-minute pilot for Laverne & Shirley one night after Happy Days and paid that crew overtime. The studio and network liked the ten minutes so much they gave us money to make a full pilot that aired. Cindy Williams, however, decided after making the ten-minute segment that she didn’t want to sign on for a sitcom. So we made another ten-minute presentation with Penny paired with an actress named Liberty Williams, who was no relation to Cindy. We gave both ten-minute segments to Michael Eisner. He decided he liked the one with Penny and Cindy best and said he would talk Cindy into signing a deal. And he did. Penny and Cindy went on to become television stars, and I don’t know what ever became of Liberty. I always wondered how Michael talked Cindy into signing the contract if she didn’t want to star in a sitcom. I imagine he probably told her it would run for one season, thirteen episodes, and then the show would be off the air. What happened, of course, is now television history, because Laverne & Shirley ran for eight years.
The day after Laverne & Shirley first aired I ran to check the ratings.
“Honey, I can’t find it,” I said to my wife at the breakfast table.
“What do you mean? It must be there,” she said. “They list all the shows.”
“No. Honestly. I don’t see it. I’m going crazy,” I said.
My wife took the ratings sheet, looked at it, and then smiled as she showed it to me.
“You weren’t looking high enough,” she said. “Laverne & Shirley debuted at number one!”
I couldn’t believe it. I had never seen anything like it before. It was a miracle. Suddenly Penny and Cindy were in a hit television series, and I was my sister’s new boss. My mom was happy, and Fred Silverman had his spinoff. We were all surprised at how quickly the show had found an audience.
Today, when I am feeling compassionate and kind, I think back sympatheticall
y toward Penny and Cindy and how hard it must have been for them to suddenly be stars of a top-rated sitcom. A television show is so demanding that few can live up to the challenges. The job paid well, but the hours and pressures of performing in front of a live studio audience, and carrying an entire show on their backs, were an awesome responsibility for two actresses with hardly any experience who weren’t even sure they wanted to become actresses. But when I’m not feeling compassionate toward them, I am saddened and disappointed that they were too immature to handle the job. If there was ever a show that was full of joy, it was Happy Days. If there was ever a show full of headaches and people taking aspirin, it was Laverne & Shirley.
Nobody knew exactly how big the show was until Penny and Cindy were in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade the first season. They were asked to ride on a float, and from the top of their float, they could see their success. Penny described the scene to me later. More than 100,000 fans were cheering their names. “Laverne and Shirley! Laverne and Shirley! Laverne and Shirley!” Not only were fans asking for their autographs, but most of the policemen running the parade asked for autographs, too. After that trip Penny and Cindy knew they were famous. What they did with that information and power became the problem. That moment made them feel in charge of the show. Fame can be a wonderful thing as well as a destructive force. It has ruined the lives of so many actors in Hollywood. Penny and Cindy weren’t able to balance their lives with the notoriety. To me they both always seemed anxious, never settled or content. Also, despite their fame Penny and Cindy didn’t think they deserved it. They thought it was a fluke and an accident, and in a few days or months it could all disappear.
My Happy Days in Hollywood Page 11
