Five Facts You Likely Never Knew About ‘Happy Days’

From the first episode, which aired in 1974, all the way through its impressive 11-season run, “Happy Days” captured the hearts of the American public with its nostalgic portrayal of an ideal 1950s and 1960s. The legendary sitcom centered on the family of teenager Richie Cunningham (Ron Howard) and his slate of high school friends in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, including the show-stealing Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli (Henry Winkler), a high school dropout.

The series spawned several spinoffs, some successful and others not so much. While it only occasionally took itself seriously, “Happy Days” struck a chord with television viewers and to this day remains an important part of American pop culture.

Whether one is a relative newbie to the program or has seen every episode two or three times — here are a few fun facts worth knowing about “Happy Days.”

1.) Weezer made a mini-episode decades after the finale. When the band Weezer released its now-famous single “Buddy Holly” in 1994, it was quite ambitious with the music video. Shot on the actual set of Arnold’s Drive-In from “Happy Days,” the video very convincingly put itself into the world of the show. Using contemporary footage of the band intercut with original show footage, director Spike Jonze effectively created a miniature episode of the classic series, 20 years after its original airing.

Even Al Molinaro, who played diner owner Al Delvecchio, made a cameo appearance to give the band its intro. Both the video and the song enjoyed enormous popularity — the video even pulled in several MTV awards.

2.) “The Fonz” actually couldn’t ride a motorcycle. Arthur Fonzarelli was and still is the most memorable single member of the “Happy Days” gang — and nothing is more emblematic of that character than his motorcycle.

This might lead one to believe that Henry Winkler was a motorcycle enthusiast himself — but that would be wrong. “I can’t ride a motorcycle,” Winkler revealed in an interview with the Archive of American Television, adding that this was his first and only experience actually controlling one.

“I gunned it and rammed into the sound truck. Nearly killed the director of photography, put the bike down, slid under the truck — and they took the bike out first because they rented that, and then they said, ‘Are you OK?’ And they said, ‘Probably, we’re never going to let you do that again.’ And so for the next 10 years they put me on a board on wheels and pulled it.”

Winkler to this day says questions about his motorcycle skills are the most frequent fan inquiries he gets.

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3.) Robin Williams was not the first choice for Mork. Many TV viewers recall the late Robin Williams appearing on “Happy Days” — after all, it’s a classic late-season episode that gave rise to a later spinoff, “Mork and Mindy.” The episode came about at the suggestion of creator Gary Marshall’s young son, who wanted his father to put “spacemen” in “Happy Days.”

Marshall took the suggestion — but Williams was not the first choice for the part. Initially the producers booked Dom DeLuise, who later backed out. Then they sought Roger Rees, another popular comic actor, but Rees rejected it as well. Robin Williams auditioned because an associate producer had seen him do a similar act at a comedy showcase.

When asked to sit during his audition, he buried his face in the chair, which sold Marshall on Williams instantly — the act would later show up as a gag in the final episode, not once but twice.

4.) Syndication rights were a mess. By the mid-1970s, after years of syndication success by shows like “I Love Lucy” and “Gilligan’s Island,” it would seem prudent for most actors to ask for royalties from syndication as part of their contracts. However, most of the cast of “Happy Days” neglected to do this, instead taking regular payment on a per-episode basis.

The one exception was the forward-thinking Winkler, who took a lower salary in exchange for a percentage of royalties. The rest of the cast saw little financial gain from the show’s runaway success, and in 2011 several original cast members sued Paramount and CBS for syndication revenue, interest, and punitive damages. While they sought about $10 million from the studios, the eventual payout was about a 30th of that number. They did, however, receive rights to future syndication revenue.

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5.) The phrase “jumping the shark” got its start on this show.  Season five of “Happy Days” began with a three-episode storyline in which the Cunninghams accompanied Fonzie on a trip to Hollywood. Fonzie went at the invitation of a talent scout who thought he might be the next James Dean — but after getting snubbed, the Fonz found bigger fish to fry. That’s right: the shark episode.

The jumping of the shark marks the most famously criticized episode of “Happy Days.” It deserves a mention here, though, for its contribution to pop culture and media criticism in the 41 years since it aired.

In the episode, Fonzie answered a dare to prove his bravery by jumping on water skis over a caged shark. Critics widely panned the episode, calling it ridiculous given the context of the original show — and many to this day consider the stunt a turning point in the quality of the series overall.

We’ll have these “happy days” as long as the film prints, the digital copies, and the memories last.

The phrase “jump the shark” is now a common expression used when a TV show or any pop culture phenomenon departs so significantly from its original premise that it starts to lose quality. The phrase has stayed in common parlance, perhaps because it’s just so true. And it’s applicable to a heap of troubling directorial choices in media — such as “Scooby Doo’s” addition of Scrappy Doo, “Roseanne’s” lottery-winning episode, or Indiana Jones’ nuclear bomb-fridge escape in the fourth film, which spawned the film-series equivalent expression, “Nuke the fridge.”

Still, for all its silliness and the show’s arguable downturn after the shark incident, “Happy Days” gave us six more seasons and remains to this day one of the strongest sitcoms around, for good reason. It filled a place in the hearts of its audience. It didn’t just show us an idealized ’50s — it allowed the audience to grow to love a group of people, the place where they lived, and the stories of their lives.

We’ll have these “happy days” as long as the film prints, the digital copies, and the memories last.

Garrin Bufo is a freelance writer based in Maine and an alumnus of the University of Iowa. 

(photo credit, homepage and article images: ABC)