Information about Happy Days

Happy Days
Happy Days
Created by	Garry Marshall
Starring	Ron Howard Henry Winkler Tom Bosley Marion Ross Anson Williams Donny Most (1-7) Gavan O'Herlihy (1) Erin Moran (1-9, 11) Al Molinaro Scott Baio (4-9, 11) Cathy Silvers (8-10) Ted McGinley(8-11) Ellen Travolta Roz Kelly Linda Purl Pat Morita Lynda Goodfriend Billy Warlock (10) Heather O' Rourke (10) Crystal Bernard (10).
Opening theme	Bill Haley & His Comets (1-2) Norman Gimble with Charlie Fox (3-10) Bobby Avron (11)
Ending theme	Pratt and McClain (1-2) Norman Gimble with Charlie Fox (3-10) Bobby Avron (11)
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	255 (List of episodes)
Production
Running time	approx. 0:22 (per episode)
Broadcast
Original channel	ABC
Original run	January 15, 1974 – May 26, 1984
External links
IMDb profile

Happy Days was an American television sitcom that originally aired between 1974 and 1984 on the ABC television network. The show presents an idealized vision of American life in the 1950s and early 1960s America.

Happy Days centers on the life of a middle-class family, the Cunninghams of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The family consists of Howard, a hardware store owner, Marion, his homemaker wife, and the couple's teenage children, Richie (who has an optimistic if somewhat naïve outlook on life), Richie's sweet but feisty younger sister Joanie, and Richie's older brother Chuck (a character who abruptly disappeared during the second season). Most of the early episodes revolve around Richie (often with his best friend Potsie); as the series progressed, more and more stories were written to revolve around ex–New Yorker Arthur "Fonzie" Fonzarelli, who was originally portrayed as a local dropout but soon befriended Richie and family, and became a huge hit with viewers. The focus would also occasionally shift to other additional characters, such as Fonzie's cousin Chachi, who became a love interest for Joanie Cunningham. The long-running show also spawned several spinoff shows, many of which were highly successful in their own right, including Laverne & Shirley, Mork and Mindy, and Joanie Loves Chachi.

The second season episode "The Not Making of the President" revolves around the 1956 presidential election, while the sixth season episode "Christmas Time" ends with a photo dated Christmas 1960. Despite some inconsistencies, it is generally indicated that the events of the series begin in 1955 and, after eleven seasons, end in 1965.

Cast

• Cunningham family

* Howard (Tom Bosley) - Husband and hardware store owner. Most often seen reading the daily newspaper in his easy chair.

* Marion (Marion Ross) - Wife and homemaker. The only character to call Fonzie by his real first name, Arthur.

* Richie (Ron Howard) - Son and high school student. The protagonist for the first six years of the series. The character was written out of the show, leaving to join the United States Army, after Ron Howard decided to leave the show to pursue his desired (and ultimately highly successful) career as a director, rather than an actor, although he returned to make guest appearances as Richie on several occasions. (1974-1980)

* Joanie (Erin Moran) - Daughter.

* Chuck (Gavan O'Herlihy, Randolph Roberts) - Elder son written out of series with no explanation.

* Roger Phillips (Ted McGinley) - Marion's nephew and teacher at Jefferson High. Introduced after Richie left the show (1980-1983)

* Flip Phillips (Billy Warlock) - Roger's brother. Seen only during 10th season

* KC (Crystal Bernard) - Howard's niece.

• Others

* Arthur "Fonzie" / "the Fonz" Fonzarelli (Henry Winkler) - First written in as a minor character, but became a hugely popular breakout character and was made a series regular.

* Charles "Chachi" Arcola (Scott Baio) - Fonzie's younger cousin; he eventually married Joanie.

* Warren "Potsie" Weber (Anson Williams) - Richie's friend.

* Ralph Malph (Donny Most) - Richie's friend; left with Richie to join the army.

* Matsumoto "Arnold" Takahashi (Pat Morita) - First owner of the drive-in (1975-1976). Returned after Al Molinaro departed (1982-1983).

* Al Delvecchio (Al Molinaro) - Drive-in owner/cook (1976-1982). Married Chachi's mother.

* Marsha Simms (Beatrice Colen) - Carhop in first two seasons.

* Leather Tuscadero (Suzi Quatro) - Musician. Sister of Pinky Tuscadero.

* Pinky Tuscadero (Roz Kelly) - Former girlfriend of Fonzie.

* Jenny Piccolo (Cathy Silvers) - Joanie's best friend (1980-1983). Mentioned often in early episodes, but never appeared in person until the 1980 season. Jenny's father appeared in one episode, played by Silvers' real-life father Phil Silvers.

* Lori Beth Cunningham (Lynda Goodfriend) - Richie's wife (1977-1982).

* Louisa Arcola (Ellen Travolta) - Mother of Chachi Arcola. Wife of Al Delvecchio.

* Melvin Belvin (Scott Bernstein) - nerdy classmate of Joanie and Chachi.

* Eugene Belvin (Denis Mandel) - twin brother of Melvin Belvin. Also a nerd.

* Bobby (Harris Kal) - friend of Chachi and Joanie seen in episodes after Richie and Ralph left the show.

* Ashley Pfister (Linda Purl) - Divorced mother who becomes Fonzie's steady girlfriend (1982-1983).

* Heather Pfister (Heather O'Rourke) - Ashley Pfister's daughter (1982-1983).

Cast stats

• Another television dad, Harold Gould (of Rhoda) was cast as Howard Cunningham in the Love, American Style episode sub-titled "Love and the Happy Days".
• Donny Most was originally cast to play Potsie Weber. The Ralph Malph character was added to the show after producers decided to cast Anson Williams as Potsie.
• Marion Ross and Anson Williams are the only castmembers who stayed with the show from its pilot, an episode of Love, American Style, to its conclusion. Not including the pilot, Henry Winkler and Tom Bosley are the only two actors to appear in every episode of the series.

History

Happy Days originated during a time of 1950s nostalgic interest evident in film, television, and music. The show began as an unsold pilot called New Family in Town, with Harold Gould in the role of Howard Cunningham, Marion Ross as Marion, Ron Howard as Richie, Anson Williams as Potsie, Ric Carrott as Charles "Chuck" Cunningham, and Susan Neher as Joanie. While Paramount passed on making it into a weekly series, the pilot was recycled with the title "Love and the Happy Days", for presentation on the television anthology series Love, American Style. In 1972, George Lucas asked to view the pilot to determine if Ron Howard would be suitable to play a teenager in American Graffiti, then in preproduction. Lucas immediately cast Howard in the film, which became one of the top-grossing films of 1973. Show creator Garry Marshall and ABC recast the unsold pilot to turn Happy Days into a series.

Production styles

The first two seasons of Happy Days were filmed using a single-camera setup and laugh track.

One episode of Season 2 ("Fonzie Gets Married") was filmed in front of a studio audience with three cameras as a test run.

From the third season on, the show was a three-camera production in front of a live audience (with the announcement "Happy Days is filmed before a studio audience" at the start of most episodes), giving these later seasons a markedly different style.

Sets

The show had two main sets: the Cunningham home, and Arnold's Drive-In.

In season 1 & 2, the Cunningham house was arranged with the front door on the left and the kitchen on the right, in a sort of triangle. Beginning with season 3, the house was radically rearranged to accommodate multiple cameras and a studio audience. However, the second season episode (mentioned above) in which Fonzie gets engaged was shot on the old set, but with multiple cameras.

The Cunningham's official address is 565 North Clinton Drive, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.^[1] The address, although ficticious, suggests that the Cunninghams lived on the city's east side.

The house that served as the exterior of the Cunningham residence is actually located at 565 North Cahuenga Avenue (south of Melrose Avenue) in Los Angeles, just a few blocks from the Paramount lot on Melrose Avenue. It is part of Zillow.com's Famous Homes series and can be seen here.

Leon's Frozen Custard in Milwaukee was the inspiration for the original Arnold's Drive-In. The exterior of Arnold's was a 'dressed' area on the Paramount Studios lot, that has since been demolished, very close to the soundstage that the set of the Diner interior, and all other sets were located.

The set of the diner in the first series was a room with the same vague details of the later set, such as the panelling, and the college pennants. When the show was changed to a studio based taping, the set was redesigned and became the Arnold's that is most remembered. The set was largely opened to show the audience the scenes that took place within it. The Diner entrance was hidden, but allowed an upstage, central entrance for cast members. The barely seen kitchen was also upstage and seen only through a pass through window. The diner had orange booths, downstage center for closeup conversation, as well as camera left. There were two bathroom doors camera right, labelled 'Guys' and 'Dolls'. A Seeburg jukebox was positioned camera right, and a pinball machine was positioned far camera right, (anachronistically a 1973 'Nip It' machine, contrary to the show's '50s setting).

College pennants adorned the walls including Marquette and Wisconsin, along with a blue and white sign reading 'Jefferson High School'.

Storylines dictated that the set would be destroyed by fire, and so in later seasons, a different Arnold's Drive-in emerged and lasted through the later years of the show. Differing in design, with wood panelling and stained glass, the set was not popular amongst viewers, and was not how Arnold's was remembered.

In 2004, two decades after the first set was destroyed, the Happy Days 30th Anniversary Reunion requested that the reunion take place in Arnold's. The familiar set was rebuilt by Production Designer James Yarnell. Built from the original ground plan, this was the first time that the Happy Days cast had been in this set since the 1970s.

The "Fonzie Effect"

The early Happy Days episodes centered on Richie and teenage friends Ralph Malph and Warren "Potsie" Weber, dealing with typical adolescent woes in the 1950s and early/mid 1960s Milwaukee. During the first season, the character Arthur "Fonzie"/"The Fonz" Fonzarelli was becoming a fan favorite, though he was originally intended to be a local high school dropout who was only occasionally seen. The Fonz character was given progressively more screen time by the writers, becoming a permanent castmember displayed in the second season opening credits. The Fonz quickly became the show's most popular character, and many episodes came to revolve around him. When the ABC management considered changing the name of the show to "Fonzie's Happy Days", the cast, including Fonzie player Henry Winkler, protested along with producer/creator Garry Marshall, and the show's title remained unchanged.

"Chuck Cunningham Syndrome"

The first two seasons of the series also featured Chuck, the Cunninghams' eldest child and Richie's older brother. The character was little more than a superfluous one, as he was usually in scenes where he was "on his way to basketball practice." In fact, Chuck was originally a student at Marquette University on a basketball scholarship.

Chuck was written out during the series' second season with no explanation. Chuck was rarely referred to again, and scripts from later seasons suggested the Cunninghams had two, not three children. However, in the fourth-season recap version of the Christmas episode, "Guess Who's Coming To Christmas", Fonzie - recalling his first Christmas with the Cunninghams - tells Al that Chuck was "away at college." The unexplained removal of a character in a TV series has come to be known as "Chuck Cunningham Syndrome".

In a Happy Days reunion show from 2005, the cast mentioned that Chuck had won a scholarship to the "University of Outer Mongolia" to play basketball, as a sort of an inside joke.

An officially circulated outtake from the final episode has Mr Cunningham raising a glass to the entire cast and saying "to Happy Days." After taking a sip, he blurts out in mock surprise "Wait, where's Chuck?!"

New characters

Later seasons saw the addition of other characters. Introduced in the second season episode 'Not With My Sister, You Don't', Danny Butch played Fonzie's similar dressed and mannered young cousin Raymond "Spike" Fonzerelli. Although he went on to make several more appearances, the character was felt to never completely catch on, and was reworked into that of Chachi at the start of the fourth season (see below).

At the start of the fourth season, Roz Kelly was brought in as Pinky Tuscadero, Fonzie's long-term girlfriend. Commercials for the subsequent season even began promoting Kelly's new character, but when discord occurred between her and the cast and producers, her character was dropped; the character was briefly mentioned in two subsequent episodes, one where her sister Leather Tuscadero came to town to start anew out of reform school, and when Fonzie was out of town at a demolition derby with Pinky.

Bill "Sticks" Downey, played by John-Anthony Bailey, was supposed to be added to the cast as a new member of Richie's band, on drums, and the gang at Arnold's but the character never caught on and only stayed for a few episodes.

During the first two seasons, a few actresses were brought in as potential long-term girlfriends for Richie. Laurette Spang was Richie's girlfriend Arlene in a couple of first season episodes. Later in the second season Linda Purl was brought in as Richie's girlfriend Gloria. Neither caught on storywise and Richie did not have a steady girlfriend until going to college and meeting Lori-Beth Allan (Lynda Goodfriend), a former classmate from Jefferson High. Linda Purl returned to the Happy Days fold in Season 10 as Fonzie's girlfriend Ashley Pfister (a divorced socialite of the wealthy Milwaukee Pfister family). The Pfisters were often also referenced on Laverne & Shirley as owners of many Milwaukee establishments, ie, Chez Pfister, The Hotel Pfister, Pfister Fong's.

Season 4

The most major character changes occurred after Season 4 with the addition of Scott Baio as Fonzie's cousin, Chachi Arcola. Originally the character Spike, mentioned as Fonzie's nephew (who's actually his cousin as he made it clear in one episode) was supposed to be the character who became Chachi.

Al Molinaro was added as Al Delvecchio the new owner of Arnold's after Pat Morita's character of Arnold moved on (after his character got married; Pat Morita left the program to star in a short-lived sitcom of his own, Mr. T. and Tina). Al Molinaro also played Al's twin brother Father Anthony Delvecchio, a Catholic priest. Al eventually married Chachi's mother (played by Ellen Travolta) and Father Delvecchio served in the wedding of Joanie to Chachi in the series finale.

Seasons 8 onward

Lynda Goodfriend joined the cast as semi-regular character Lori-Beth Allen, Richie's steady girlfriend, in season 5, and became a permanent member of the cast between Seasons 8 and 10, after Lori-Beth married Richie.

After Ron Howard (Richie) left the series, Ted McGinley joined the cast as Roger Phillips the new Physical Education teacher at Jefferson High and nephew to Howard and Marion. He took over from the departed Richie Cunningham character, acting as counterpoint to Fonzie.

Billy Warlock joined the cast in season 10 as Roger's brother Flip, along with Crystal Bernard as Howard's and Marion's niece K.C. They were intended as replacements for Erin Moran and Scott Baio (who departed for their own show, Joanie Loves Chachi). Both characters left with the return of Moran and Baio, following the cancellation of Joanie Loves Chachi.

Guest stars

• Tom Hanks appeared in an episode as a character seeking revenge on Fonzie for pushing him off a swing when the two of them were in the 3rd grade. The confrontation occurs just as Fonzie was about to be given a community leader award. Years later in 1987, Hanks asked Winkler to direct his comedy Turner and Hooch, but creative differences between the two stars led to Winkler being fired from the job.
• Milwaukee Braves home-run king Hank Aaron appeared in one episode.
• Ralph's father was an optometrist, played by Jack Dodson, who also played Howard Sprague on Ron Howard's previous sitcom, The Andy Griffith Show.
• Lorne Greene made a brief walk-on cameo during the first episode of Season 5, which took place in Hollywood.

Anachronisms

• Various pinball machines manufactured in the early 1970s were seen in Arnold's, including a 1972 Bally produced machine called Nip-It. It is possible that the show's producers may have overlooked this, as pinball machines from the 1950s commonly known as "woodrails", have a more wooden look, compared to the machines used in the show.
• The show, along with its spin off Laverne & Shirley, took progressively more liberties in terms of hair and clothing styles, which began to look more contemporary with the show's 1970s and 1980s production years. Moreover, later episodes became more outlandish in terms of plot and tone.

"Jumping the Shark"

Main article: Jumping the shark

The most famous of these plots involved Fonzie performing a water ski jump over a shark in an episode aired on September 20, 1977, during the show's fifth season. In later years, this episode has often been cited as the point where the series had passed its peak of quality and popularity. The phrase jumping the shark was later applied to popular culture phenomena in general. While the Fonz's literal shark jump gave rise to the phrase, some fans consider Happy Days to have had more than one such moment, occurring both before and after the stunt in question. Of particular note are the fire that destroyed the original Arnold's Drive-In and the departure of leading man Ron Howard, both of which happened after the notorious stunt involving the shark.

Theme music

Seasons 1 and 2 of the series used a newly recorded version of "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley & His Comets (recorded in the fall of 1973) as the opening theme song. This recording was not commercially released at the time, although the original 1954 recording returned to the American Billboard charts in 1974 as a result of its use on the show. The "Happy Days" recording had its initial commercial release in 2005 by the German label Hydra Records. (When Happy Days entered syndication in 1979, the series was retitled Happy Days Again and used an edited version of the 1954 recording instead of the new version).

The show's closing theme song in season 1 & 2 was "Happy Days," written by Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel. According to SAG, this version was performed by Jimmy Haas (lead vocal), Ron Hicklin, Stan Farber, Jerry Whitman and Gary Garrett (backing vocals), plus studio musicians.

From seasons 3-10, this replaced "Rock Around the Clock" at the beginning of the show. Released as a single in 1976 by Pratt & McClain, "Happy Days" cracked the Top 5. The show itself finished the 1976-77 television season #1, ending the five-year Nielsen reign of All in the Family.

For the show's 11th and final season (1983-84), the theme was redone in a more modern style. Featuring Bobby Arvon on lead vocals, with several back-up vocalists, this version of the theme song is not as popular with Happy Days fans as versions from the 3rd-10th seasons (among which there were several slightly different versions and edits). To accompany this new version, new opening credits were filmed, and the flashing "Happy Days" logo was reanimated.

Production & scheduling

• Jerry Paris, who co-starred on The Dick Van Dyke Show and directed several episodes of that series, directed every episode of Happy Days from the third season on.
• Happy Days became one of the first series to have early seasons in syndication while the series itself was still producing new episodes (a common practice with long-running shows today). Until the show went out of production, most syndicated versions carried the title Happy Days Again.
• CBS programming head Fred Silverman scheduled Good Times directly against Happy Days during their respective second seasons in an attempt to kill the ABC show's growing popularity. However, he was named president of ABC in 1975, and so was given the task of saving Happy Days during its third season (which saw a rapid increase in ratings). This explains Happy Days appearing in the Top 20 for the 1973-74 and 1975-76 seasons, but being completely absent from the Top 30 in 1974-75.
• Happy Days still remains one of ABC's longest-running sitcoms (11 seasons), and one of the longest-running prime time programs in the network's history. It is also unique in that it remained in the Tuesday at 8:00 p.m. time slot for the series' first ten seasons. The network has not had an entertainment series that has running consistently in the same slot since.
• Happy Days also proved to be quite popular in daytime reruns; they joined the ABC daytime schedule in 1975, airing reruns at 11:30 a.m. (ET), being moved to 11 a.m. in 1977, paired with Family Feud following at 11:30 a.m. It was replaced on the daytime schedule by reruns of its spin-off, Laverne & Shirley, in April 1979.
• Happy Days also reruns on Five US in the U.K. between 4pm and 5pm GMT

DVD releases

CBS DVD has released the first two seasons of Happy Days on DVD in Region 1. The third season is scheduled for release on November 27, 2007.

DVD Name	Release Date	Ep #	Additional Information
The First Season	August 17 2004	16	No extras included Music alterations exist
The Second Season	April 17 2007	23	Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley & His Comets is replaced with Happy Days (used beginning in Season 3) in the opening credits and end credits. With the exception of four original songs, all other music is replaced with generic music.
The Third Season	November 27 2007	24
The Fourth Season	TBA	24
The Fifth Season	TBA	26
The Sixth Season	TBA	22
The Seventh Season	TBA	22
The Eighth Season	TBA	22
The Ninth Season	TBA	21
The Tenth Season	TBA	21
The Final Season	TBA	21

Episodes

Further information: List of Happy Days episodes

Spinoffs

Happy Days, itself considered a spin-off from Love, American Style, spun off more than four different series; Laverne & Shirley, Blansky's Beauties, Mork and Mindy, and Joanie Loves Chachi are the most notable.

• The most successful of these spinoffs, Laverne & Shirley (starring Cindy Williams and Penny Marshall), also took place in early/mid 1960s Milwaukee, though the two starring characters eventually moved to Los Angeles in the show’s latter years. Penny Marshall is the sister of producer Garry Marshall.
• Robin Williams made his first appearance as “Mork” on Happy Days. In his own sitcom, Mork and Mindy, Mork the alien from planet Ork landed in 1970s Boulder, Colorado, to study humans.
• Joanie Loves Chachi was a short-lived show about Richie’s younger sister Joanie and Fonzie’s younger cousin Chachi’s relationship during their years as musicians in Chicago. Two myths arose around the series in recent years. The first involves the show's popularity in Korea, as "Chachi" is slang for “penis”. The other rumor suggests that the show was cancelled due to low ratings. Actually, the program finished in the Top 20 its first season, but ABC determined that the show was losing too much of its lead-in, suggesting low appeal if the show were moved. This type of cancellation seemed strange in the early 1980s, but soon became a commonplace part of TV audience research.
• There was also an animated series produced by Hanna-Barbera entitled Fonz and the Happy Days Gang which ran from 1980-1982. Animated spin-offs of Laverne & Shirley and Mork and Mindy soon followed.
• Other spin-offs include Blansky's Beauties (1977) and the animated The Mork & Mindy/Laverne & Shirley/Fonz Hour (1982).^[2] The 1979 series Out of the Blue is not a spin-off of Happy Days; Out of the Blue’s first episode premiered around a week before the Happy Days crossover episode aired.

Legacy

• The show demonstrated the powerful influence of television. In an episode filmed in the late 1970s, Fonzie (as part of his ongoing rehabilitation, so to speak) obtains a library card and declares, “Reading is cool.” In the Happy Days 30th Anniversary Reunion, Henry Winkler suggested that there was an immediate surge in library card registration by school children. The American Library Association's FAQ states that there is no way to prove or disprove Winkler’s assertion, since records of that sort are not consistently collected.
• Family Guy creator and former Hanna-Barbera cartoonist Seth MacFarlane proclaimed on the late night talk show Too Late With Adam Carolla that The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang was the worst cartoon ever made. The show’s tenuous connection to the Happy Days sitcom (Fonz, Richie, and Ralph were time-traveling with the time machine’s owner, Cupcake, who, in Fonz’ words, was a “future chick”), along with one of Hanna-Barbera’s most grating animal characters (a scruffy Fonz-like named “Mr Cool”) certainly puts it in the running for this dubious honor.
• The Fonz was a big fan of his “veggies” when he ate dinner at the Cunningham house. Many said this was an attempt by the show’s producers to get kids to eat their vegetables using the Fonz as an advocate.
• Happy Days is one of seven successful sitcoms to carry the tradition of being produced two decades later than the setting of the show. Happy Days takes place in the 1950s but began production in the 1970s, as did M*A*S*H. Others shows include Hogan's Heroes and McHale's Navy, both of which began production in the 1960s but depict the 1940s, The Wonder Years which began production in the 1980s but depicts the 1960s, That '70s Show which began production in the 1990s but depicts the 1970s and Everybody Hates Chris which began production in the 2000s but depicts the 1980s. The short-lived sitcom Do Over was also made in the 2000s and set in the 1980s. The same goes for the also short-lived That '80s Show (2002), by the same producers as That '70s Show, which took place nearly twenty years earlier.

References

• In 1993, the band Weezer recorded a music video for their song Buddy Holly, which featured the band playing on the original Arnold’s Drive-In set mixed with footage from the series. The video begins with the band being introduced by Al Molinaro as Al Delvecchio, who announces: “Arnold’s is proud to present Kenosha, Wisconsin’s own Weezer!” The video featured footage from Happy Days episode #42 ("Fearless Fonzarelli" Part 1), #53 ("They Call It Potsie Love") and #70 ("They Shoot Fonzies, Don't They?"), as well as several other episodes. This video was included on the Microsoft Windows 95 installation CD-ROM as a demonstration of the new OS's multimedia capabilities. It also boosted the career of highly-acclaimed Academy-Award nominated director Spike Jonze.
• In the hit Disney show That's So Raven, a show called Better Days is featured in an episode. This is a reference to Happy Days. On The Suite Life of Zack and Cody several references are made to the show as well. For example in Going for the Gold Arwin says he should have used a Fonzarelli 5000 instead of a Cunningham 360. In another episode, Moseby asks a guest "Mr. Cunningham, how's your son Richie?"
• Numerous references to the show were made on the popular sitcom Friends. In "The Pilot", the character of Rachel Green watches the wedding of Joanie and Chachie. The episode "The One at the Beach", features Joey Tribbiani convincing his friends to play Strip Poker; unable to locate a deck of cards, the friends wind up engaged in a strip version of the Happy Days Game. During Phoebe Buffay’s labor in "The One Hundredth", she is administed by a doctor with rabid appreciation for “The Fonz”.
• The long running animated comedy The Simpsons has also produced numerous offhand references to the series, many of them coming from Homer Simpson. Homer has confused his high school memories with those of Happy Days, severely injured himself attempting to imitate Fonzie’s ability to start a jukebox, and once even had a personal chance to view Fonzie’s jacket (commenting, “He freed the squares!”). Ron Howard and Henry Winkler have guest starred on the series with allusions made to their Happy Days characters.
• The animated comedy Family Guy makes frequent references to Happy Days, such as when pudgy patriarch Peter Griffin disguises himself as a high school student, then punches a jukebox in the hopes of turning it on to impress the other students. Instead, he shatters the jukebox's glass display case and badly injures himself. Other episodes call Richie Cunningham's sexuality into question and portray the Fonz as the messiah of a religion devoted to Happy Days.
• In the sitcom Arrested Development, playing the family lawyer Barry, Henry Winkler reprises the opening clip where Fonzie, intending to comb his hair, decides that his hair is fine just as is.
• The soap opera As the World Turns did a mini-spoof of Happy Days titled "Oakdale Happy Days" as a part of their 50th Anniversary celebration on March 30, 2006. Tom Hughes played Howard, Margo Hughes played Marion, Casey Hughes played Richie, Will Munson played Fonzie, Gwen Munson played Laverne, and Maddie Coleman played Shirley.
• In the episode "Trading Spaces" during Season 6 of Reba, originally aired on November 26, 2006, Van Montgomery (played by Steve Howey), while working in the garage office whose completion is a theme of the episode, tells Kyra Hart (played by Scarlett Pomers), in an effort to get her to get out of his office, "Now why don't you go to the malt shop and hang out with Potsie and Ralph?"
• The song "White and Nerdy" by Weird Al Yankovic makes a reference to the Happy Days theme song as being a favorite among stereotypical nerds.
• The film Pulp Fiction features references to Happy Days in the dialogue of Samuel L. Jackson's character Jules.
• The third series of vulgar British comedy show Bo' Selecta! features a sketch entitled Crappy Days, in which the cast of Happy Days suffer from extremely loud and painfully violent incontinence which requires them all to wear diapers. The family are typically optimistic about their condition, laughing whenever each other has an accident and enjoying the humour of the situation. Fonzie (played by Craig Phillips) is the only character who seems less than happy; complaining about the smell and doubling over in agony as he fills his diaper while still trying to maintain his "cool." The diapers became a running gag on the show; they reappeared in a later episode worn by the cast of Teen Wolf.
• In 2006 Citroën used the theme tune and characters (with some special effects) in the UK advertisements for their C3 model.

Trivia

• Arthur Fonzarelli was affiliated with a motorcycle gang "The Falcons" although in a Season 1 episode it was mentioned that Fonzie was a former member of "The Demons."
• Creative differences between Happy Days' producers and ABC helped boost the Fonz's popularity. ABC executives did not want a sympathetic character such as the Fonz to appear in a leather jacket, which they thought would make him appear to be a thug (The Fonz can be seen wearing a white or blue jacket in early episodes). The compromise reached with the producers was to decree that Fonzie could only wear it if his motorcycle was in the scene, as a leather jacket is legitimate safety apparel for someone riding a motorcycle. The show's producers responded by placing the motorcycle in all of his scenes, even indoor ones. The leather jacket soon became trademark attire for Fonzie, leading to ABC to relax the Fonz's dress code. The jacket is now on display at the Smithsonian Institution.
• Ron Howard guest-starred on an episode of M*A*S*H. Both Happy Days and M*A*S*H are 1970s sitcoms set in the 1950s. Although Howard wanted to concentrate on films, and was wary of working on another television show, this appearance changed his mind and led to his accepting the Richie Cunningham role in the Happy Days pilot.
• The cast was well known for playing practical jokes on one another. In one famous outtake, Fonzie is with Richie in Al's Diner. The script called for him to turn around, snap his fingers, and all the women in the Diner are supposed to get up and follow him out. Instead, in a joke on Henry Winkler, when he turns around and snaps his fingers, all the men in the Diner get up and follow him out.
• Micky Dolenz of the Monkees auditioned for the role of Fonzie.
• Former Paramount Parks, Kings Dominion and Paramount's Carowinds, opened a Happy Day's Diner to replace the Stan Mikita's Diner, a part of the Wayne's World section of the parks.

References

External links

• International Happy Days Fan Club
• Happy Days Online
• Encyclopedia of Television
• Happy Days @ TV.com
• Bobby Arvon, Sang Happy Days Theme Song
• Citroën C3 designed for Happy Days