Happy Days (ABC tv show)

One reason I stopped watching Happy Days after season 2 was the diminishing lack of authenticity as the show progressed. The hair on male stars except for Fonzie, started growing longer and eventually matched the current hairstyles of the year the show was filmed, not the year it was supposed to take place in.
Also, Fonzie became a softer presence as the show progressed and lost his tough, rebel, cool style.

 

Yea the "long" hair bugged me as it did on MASH.

I think Fonzie was softened because he was very popular amongst us kids. ABC thus felt pressure to clean him up a bit (what would they have done with Tony Soprano?).

Looking back now, he does stand as a bit of a contradiction. Tough biker hood who is never seen drinking or hell raising. Has tons of girlfriends, yet none are ever angry or feeling jilted. And he was seemingly the most financially responsible person ever to grace TV.

 

Fonzie followed kinda the role of Wolfman in Am Graffiti. Problem gets batted around for 25 minutes. Fonzie comes in with sage advice or some butt kicking and we all go home happy.
Fonzie became a Zen teacher like the rat in Teenage Mutant Turtles and the butt kicking stopped.
B-o-r-i-n-g

 

I think your idea that he was "cleaned up" a bit is true enough... I remember seeing Garry Marshall on a show one time and he said how he had to fight to even get it okayed for Fonzie to wear a leather jacket because the network didn't think it'd be a good example for kids if he was in leather... He said it started out that they didn't want him in leather at all, then they said it'd be okay, as long as he only wore it while on his bike... That of course morphed into him wearing it all the time, but what he wore has almost a bomber type jacket look to it-It sure doesn't fit the Marlon Brando "Wild One" look... (Although in that episode that shows how he and Richie "met", he's shown wearing a motorcycle cap along with his "Falcons" jacket.)... It's funny, a secondary character on a spin-off series (Squiggy from "Laverne and Shirley") got to wear a "real" biker jacket and Fonzie never did... But, I suppose by that time the jacket he was wearing was so identified with his look that they probably didn't want to change it...

And yeah, you're right about him and all the girlfriends-How they never got catty with each other is beyond me... And when he says he's going out with twins: What sisters would want to not only date the same guy, but go on dates with him at the same time?

 

Well, that Miami Vice episode about alien abduction...wow.
But then again, it again became a fantastic show in the last season so that doesn't really count.

 

Remember when Fonz became a time traveler with his anthropomorphic dog Mr. Cool?



This makes the last few seasons of Happy Days seem watchable by comparison, doesn't it?

 

I recall all of them appearing on the Dinah Shore show. Henry described how they wanted him to wear the same shoes as the other guys and he said something like "a cool person would never wear such shows back then." So he went to a store in New York to get the engineer boots, probably the same place from The Lords of Flatbush.

And yes, in the first few episodes, Fonzie is wearing a windbreaker rather than leather.

 

Fonzie in a windbreaker is just so wrong.

 

Maybe windbreaker is the wrong term. It's not a bad jacket.

 

You should be friends with my brother! He's always pointing stuff like that out when we watch old shows.

After you notice it, it's hard to not notice it. lol

 

That's why he is "The Fonze" and you and I are not.

 

No, it's not a bad jacket but it just looks wrong on the character when he should be wearing the leather jacket, damnit.

 

LOL!

Maybe Gary Marshall should have kept him in it so as not to feel compelled to water him down later. Or rather than a hood, Fonzie could have been a beatnik rebel. But I guess most people then still remembered Maynard from Dobie Gillis.

 

Wait, wait, back up! I want to know who Mrs. Babbish saw snorting lines in the shape of a big, cursive "L"!

 

That was during an era when a number of Garry Marshall shows made the transition to animation. In addition to Fonzie & The Happy Days Gang there was:

• Laverne & Shirley In The Army
• Mork & Mindy (which contradicted the TV show by having them in High School together)

In all of the above shows the actors voiced their own characters.

This was not the first time this occurred. In the 1970s, many live-action shows made the transition to animation, although there were significant changes made when they were done in animation. Among the shows:

• My Favorite Martians
• I Dream Of Jeannie
• Partridge Family 2050
• Star Trek (later referred to as Star Trek - The Animated Series)
• The Oddball Couple
• The Barkleys (inspired by All In The Family)
• Baggy Pants And The Oddballs (featuring the characters played by Arte Johnson and Ruth Buzzi in Laugh-In)
• The Brady Kids

ABC also had a series called ABC Saturday Superstar Movie which featured many short (1 hour) movies based on live-action series. Among them were:

• Lost In Space
• Bewitched (if I remember correctly it featured the son and daughter of Samantha and Darren)
• Nanny & The Professor
• Lassie

(The above checked via Wikipedia)

 

The Fonz on Sesame Street

 

Yeah it's not a windbreaker.It looks like a Harrington or Bomber style jacket.

 

Three parts, but don't feel like posting the other two.

 

Regarding the engineer/"biker" boots: In actuality, I thought they put him in the boots so he'd be as tall as the other guys... I have a pair of those boots, and they add a good 2 inches to my height when I wear them... They work the same magic on Henry Winkler.

Regarding the early episodes "windbreaker": There's a toy company some here may have heard of called CTVT ("Classic TV Toys") and they released their own line of 8" figures based on "Happy Days": Anyway, they made Fonzie variant figures, so in addition to having a figure in the "leather jacket", they made one of him in his "Fearless Fonzarelli" suit, his "Falcons" gang jacket, and yes, a version of him in the windbreaker...

 

Obviously those boots had many advantages.

I am 6'3" and used to have a pair of those. Made me look like Sasquatch.

 

I have speculated whether this show could have been a success without Fonzie.

I know the ratings in Season 2 were not good. Hence some changes were made. I know they wanted access to the leather jacket side of the 1950s. A more subdued character, Milner from American Graffiti, would have given them that and have someone that could more believably pass in the straight world. As opposed to what the show did, making Fonzie a super savant at everything and everyone else cartoonish and without nuance. Hence complaints that the early shows were better.

The Wonder Years was a very similar show and kept the focus on the original lead. But I think Fred Savage was a stronger lead than Ron Howard. Howard was coasting on his Andy Griffith and American Graffiti rep. Not that he didn't give the show his best, he just wasn't that good an adult actor. Hence the switch to directing, which certainly worked out for him. But I don't think we missed much not seeing him act anymore.

 

We've got a good idea of who the supplier was, though.

 

I didnt think Ron Howard was bad at the start