6 Behind-the-Scenes Stories From ‘Happy Days’

Happy Days cast composite image
Everett Collection

For 11 seasons, Happy Days was one of the most beloved sitcoms in America, often finding a home among the Nielsen top 20 shows on TV. On-screen, Richie, Fonzie, Ralph, Potsie and the Cunninghams were an idyllic, unbreakable unit; off-screen … things were kind of exactly the same. Unlike a lot of classic shows that had tons of strife behind the scenes, the Happy Days crew do mostly remember having genuinely happy days shooting on set.

But just because there wasn’t a lot of drama among the cast and crew of Happy Days, doesn’t mean that there weren’t a ton of fascinating stories. Read on to find out how Fonzie got his “whoooaaaas,” why the show was almost about flappers, and the very unusual technique creator Garry Marshall came up with to get the cast functioning as a real team.

1 Creating the Fonz’s catchphrases was pure horse play

HAPPY DAYS, Henry Winkler, 1974-1984.

Paramount/Courtesy: Everett Collection

It’s not too hard to figure out most of the inspirations behind Arthur Fonzarelli’s character. Based on a “tough guy” that series creator Garry Marshall knew from growing up in the Bronx, Fonzie’s mannerisms are pure 1950s greaser, as is his look (though he did briefly have to wear a puce golf jacket instead of his signature leather one — producers thought leather was too closely associated with street thugs and criminals).

But a few of the Fonz’s signature phrases have a much stranger inspiration: horseback riding. “I got the ‘Heeeey’ and the ‘Whoaaa’ from my favourite sport at the time: horse-riding,” Henry Winkler told The Guardian in 2015. Winkler remains interested in horseback riding to this day — in 2024, he presented the prizes at the Jersey Stakes horse race in the UK.

Winkler invented the Fonz’s catchphrases to solve a simple problem: he though that the writers made Fonzie too wordy in the scripts, which clashed with the actor’s understanding of the character. “I understood that he spoke too much sometimes,” Winkler told the Television Academy Foundation in 1997. “They’d write paragraphs for me, and I reduced the language to sound — ‘ayyyy,’ ‘whoa’.”

Winkler recalled a moment on set when his desire to make Fonzie a man of few words proved truly controversial: “There was a scene where they wanted me to pray to God, to thank God for the meal I’m going to have with the Cunninghams … and I said, ‘I promise you, I can do this with one sound.’ I went [as Fonzie], ‘God … whoa.’ And I thought that said it, pretty much. And I had to fight for about an hour and a half with a producer at the time — who was also a preacher — that I was not being disrespectful, that that was okay to do.”

2 There was a Happy Days baseball team

HAPPY DAYS, Donny Most, <a href=

Marshall started a cast baseball team to help enhance the connection and cooperation between the actors — and it turned into more than just an after-work hobby. The Happy Days team won most of the amateur games they played, toured USO bases to play with military teams, and even occasionally served as an opening act for major league games. Every cast member took the team very seriously — as producer and showrunner Brian Levant told People in 2024, Marion Ross “used to tell people, ‘I’m a 53-year-old woman who has to tell my friends I can’t go shopping, because I have baseball practice.’ ”

3 Winkler “thought my life was over” when Ron Howard quit the show

HAPPY DAYS, Henry Winkler, Ron Howard, television, 1974-1984.

Everett Collection

Winkler describes costar Howard as a “brother” — but that didn’t make it easy when Howard left the show to pursue his directing career. “Ron decided to leave,” Winkler recalled in a 1997 Television Academy Foundation interview. “In the seventh year, I got a phone call in the blue phone booth that was next to the donuts [on set]. [Howard] said, ‘Henry, I gotta tell ya, I’m not coming.’ I said, ‘What do you mean, not coming?’ He said, ‘No, no, no, I’m gonna be a director. I’ve decided not to sign back on’ … I thought my life was over. I’d never had an acting partner like this in my life. There was an unspoken connection between Ron and me … The Fonz and Richie, they were yin and yang, they made the full circle.”

Luckily, Winkler’s life was not over, and neither was his friendship with Howard — he costarred in Howard’s second directorial effort, Night Shift, which got Winkler a Golden Globe nomination. Today, Winkler and Howard remain as close as ever — Winkler and his wife Stacey are even godparents to all of Howard’s children.

4 They shared a shooting location with a Best Picture winner

image from the 1974 film

Everett Collection

Though fans will recall that, famously, “Happy Days is filmed before a live audience,” in its first season, it was actually shot with a single camera at a studio — which led to a chance encounter between two of the stars and another group of 1970s icons.

“At first, we shot [the show] like a movie, with one camera at a studio – Arnold’s diner was on the back lot,” Winkler recalled to The Guardian. “One day, Ron Howard and I saw Robert De Niro and Francis Ford Coppola filming – it turned out The Godfather Part II was being shot in our studio, too. As young actors, our mouths dropped open.”

5 It was almost … Flappy Days (until American Graffiti came along)

AMERICAN GRAFFITI, Ron Howard, 1973

Everett Collection

Today, Happy Days is seen part of the massive trend of 1950s-related pop culture in the ’70s, from American Graffiti to Grease to Sha-Na-Na. But when Marshall was first approached to do a TV show about the past, it was supposed to be set in a very different era.

“In 1971, I was asked to make a show about flappers in the 1920s and 30s,” Garry Marshall told the Guardian in 2015. “I said I know nothing about that era, but I’ll do it if it’s set in the 50s.” That initially proved a hard sell, however. “When I did the original pilot, no one would buy it. The networks said who cares about the 50s? Luckily, along came a wonderful film called American Graffiti and ABC said: ‘We can have some of that.'”

6 Mork was created by a seven-year-old

Pam Dawber and <a href=

If you’ve ever wondered how a fairly realistic sitcom came to feature an alien as a character, here’s your answer: it was an elementary schooler’s idea. “My son was into Star Wars and moaned there wasn’t enough space in Happy Days,” Marshall told the Guardian. “Robin Williams had only played one part before, a farmer, so it was me who gave him his big break.”

 

1974 (50 Years Ago)
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January 2024

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