Happy Days captivated America 50 years ago. Then it jumped the shark.

August 11, 2024

When “Happy Days” creator Garry Marshall envisioned the role of Fonzie, he had in mind someone entirely different from Henry Winkler, who would steal the popular 1970s ABC sitcom that made its debut 50 years ago this month.

“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,” Marshall wrote in his memoir. “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 right in front of you. Henry wasn’t Fonzie, but he could ‘act’ like Fonzie.”

“Happy Days” was a nostalgic look back at 1950s America, featuring “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley & His Comets as its original opening song. It debuted on Jan. 15, 1974, at a time when many Americans were fearful about violence on the streets and disillusioned with the government over Vietnam and Watergate. The show seemed to hark back to a more innocent era, depicting teens congregating at the local malt shop, when the worst insult was telling someone to “sit on it.”

Today, it’s a source of nostalgia for Gen Xers who watched it as kids, when everyone tuned in on Tuesday night and talked about it on the playground the next day. It was the most-watched show in America, long before cable and streaming fragmented American TV viewing, a common frame of reference for a generation who all wanted to know what Fonzie and his friends would do next.

A circuitous route to stardom

“Happy Days” had its origin in a pilot two years earlier on the ABC anthology series “Love, American Style.” Ron Howard was already starring as teenager Richie Cunningham; Fonzie was not yet a character.

But the network chose not to pick up the pilot. “ABC didn’t feel that the ’50s would fly,” Howard recalled in a 1985 Washington Post interview.

Network executives changed their minds after the success of the 1973 George Lucas throwback movie “American Graffiti,” which took place in 1962 and also featured Howard. The play “Grease,” set in the ‘50s, was likewise a big hit at the time.

“These success stories, along with the continuing rock ‘n’ roll revival craze, have made ’50s nostalgia highly marketable — even to kids born too late in the ’50s to remember them,” Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales wrote in a review of “Happy Days” on Jan. 15, 1974.

Or as the New York Times mocked two days later: “All’s well obviously, at the duplication factory.”

Although “Happy Days” would become a huge commercial success, it wasn’t loved by critics.

“‘Happy Days, from the looks of tonight’s premiere, is not something new,” Shales wrote. “It is TV Traditional — the further adventures of the Cipher Family in Anytown USA.”

Even though “Happy Days” is seen as a look back at a more wholesome era, some viewers were initially scandalized by Richie’s ill-fated romantic moves on a girl. The ABC affiliate in Chicago, WLS-TV, received 200 calls complaining about the debut episode within 40 minutes after it ended, the Chicago Tribune reported at the time.

“It may be that all those years of Father Knows Best, Ozzie and Harriet, My Three Sons, Leave It to Beaver and The Life of Riley has anesthetized a lot of people into believing that such test-tube families really existed, and that anything to the contrary is abnormal at best and subversive at worst,” wrote the paper’s TV critic, Gary Deeb.

Despite the lukewarm reviews, “Happy Days” was wildly successful, becoming America’s most-watched TV show in its fourth season. The next season, ABC broadcast the show’s infamous “Jump the Shark” episode, in which Fonzie water-skis over a shark in a scene that would become synonymous with an absurd storyline of a TV series that had passed its sell-by date. Still, the legacy of “Happy Days” persisted, spawning a host of spinoffs, such as “Laverne & Shirley,” “Joanie Loves Chachi” and “Mork & Mindy,” and dominating popular culture with Fonzie lunchboxes, T-shirts and action figures. In 1980, Winkler donated one of Fonzie’s leather jackets to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. (It is currently not on display).

Fonziemania

As Winkler got more lines, he became a celebrity. Fonzie (full name, Arthur Fonzarelli) was the epitome of cool and had almost magical powers — a soft fist bump on the jukebox would make it play without any money; a snap of his fingers would prompt girls to flock to him. Marshall, the show’s creator, recalled that the character was so popular that the network wanted to change the name of the show to “Fonzie.”

But doing so “would be insulting to Ron, our kind and steady star,” Marshall wrote. “Henry agreed with me and wouldn’t support any change in title. So Henry proved to be not only a talented actor but a sensitive gentleman as well.”

In her autobiography, “My Days: Happy and Otherwise,” Marion Ross, who played Richie’s mom, Marion Cunningham, compared Winkler’s fan reception to “Beatlemania, with all these young girls screaming and going wild. Fonziemania had swept the nation.”

She wrote, “His fame was, of course, great for all of us, but along with being human beings, we were still those actors with healthy egos, and at one time or another each of us went through ‘Fonzie overload.’”

Fonzie’s catchphrases included “whoa,” “correctamundo” and “exactamundo.” (Some of those were Winkler’s ad-libs: When he thought Fonzie’s lines were too long, he’d condense them to a simple “aayyy.”)

When Fonzie jumps the shark, looking ridiculous in a bathing suit, leather jacket and yellow life preserver, even his pal Richie seems to sense that the plot has gone off the rails, saying beforehand, “A shark? That is the stupidest thing I ever heard!” Fonzie, of course, pulls off the jump unharmed. But the show’s reputation wasn’t as lucky.

Marshall wrote that it wasn’t one of the episodes he was 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,” he added.

In a later episode that same season, the plot gets even more outlandish when an alien named Mork (played by a young Robin Williams) visits the “Happy Days” gang. (Watch Fonzie school Mork on how to kiss an earthling and try not to cringe.) The show ended its run six years later.

‘I think I really am prejudiced’

“Happy Days” is often described as depicting an idealized vision of the 1950s, but the show did occasionally tackle social issues. In the first season, the Cunninghams use their home to host the wedding of a Black friend of family patriarch Howard Cunningham (Tom Bosley). The plot has all the subtlety of a 1970s anti-prejudice PSA: Early in the episode, Marion gets flustered when she meets the friend, Fred Washington (Robert DoQui), and a White neighbor rushes out of the house after a brief and uncomfortable exchange.

That night, Fred joins the family for dinner, sitting opposite daughter Joanie Cunningham (Erin Moran), who is cluelessly wearing a white napkin over her face in an “Invisible Man” imitation.

“Joanie, please take it off,” Fred pleads. “It's cute, but white hoods make me nervous.”

Later, during one of the most awkward pillow talk scenes in TV history, Howard calls his wife a racist: “Your prejudice is coming through loud and clear.” Marion admits, “I think I really am prejudiced. Thank you, Howard.” The next day, she suggests offering their home for the ceremony, and at the wedding, all of the guests are Black except the Cunninghams. Some neighbors are furious. “Sarah told me her mother wouldn’t let me play with her,” Joanie says.

“If that’s the way her parents feel, you’re better off,” Howard replies.

correction

The photo captions in an earlier version of this article incorrectly ordered the names of the people pictured from right to left, rather than left to right. The captions have been corrected.

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