Happy days for Henry Winkler
IT’S EASY to forget the man kvelling — his word— over the picture of his grandson is world-famous. He’s like any other grandfather, showing photos on his phone of his grandchildren. Except the grandfather in this case is famed actor, director and author, Henry Winkler and the book his four-year-old grandson Ace is being read, was written by Henry. “I can’t begin to tell you how it makes me kvell. My grandson is being read books that I write! Who would have thought?”
Who would have thought indeed? It’s well documented, that Winkler, who had an entire generation of teenage girls swooning when he played The Fonz in TV’s Happy Days in the 1970s, is dyslexic and that, while growing up in New York, he was ridiculed both at school and home as stupid. Against all the odds, he became a hugely successful actor, director and producer and co-author of 31 children’s books about young dyslexic boy Hank Zipzer.
“You know what pleases me most,” he asks. “That so many kids can identify with him; either they are him or are friends with someone like him. So many children have some sort of learning challenge.
“I did not know about all that when I was a child. I was told I was stupid. There are lots of teachers now that are trained to teach students with issues.”
Winkler discovered he was dyslexic aged 31 when his stepson Jed was diagnosed. “Everything sort of fell into place then,” he says.
We’re meeting on the set of a 90-minute CBeebies Hank Zipzer Christmas special, the first time the BBC children’s channel has commissioned a featurelength children’s film. We’re in a disused school in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire and Henry, accompanied by his wife of 38 years, Stacey, is there filming his role of Mr Rock, the friendly music teacher. He’s trim, almost dapper, the once black hair now a stately grey.
The voice though is pure Fonz, drawled New York but with precise enunciation. He’s warm, erudite and, for someone who is famed as funny, very serious.
He’s also a terrific mimic. He does a perfect Liverpudlian accent as he recounts a tale of John Lennon visiting the Happy Days set with his then young son Julian. Years later, when Winkler was Executive Producer on the hit US action series MacGyver, Julian Lennon paid him a visit: “He came into my office on the lot saying ‘Hello I don’t know if you remember me, my name is Julian?’ As if I would forget!”
He equally does a perfect Robert De Niro with whom he recently took a selfie, which he again showed me on his phone.
“One day when we were filming Happy Days, Ron Howard and I were walking down a ‘street’, on the studio lot, and leaning on the doorway is Robert De Niro! We introduce ourselves and I tell him that the first movie I saw was Mean
Streets and how he used a certain swear word really well! Forty years later, I meet Bob at some function and he said, ‘I remember you,’ and recalled our conversation. I had to be a fan and take a selfie!”
Winkler has a wealth of stories as befitting someone who is now an elder statesman of show business. He has had a glittering career and a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He was given an honorary OBE for his work with children’s literacy. He’s a father of three and grandfather of four and has a solid happy marriage.
Scratch the surface, though, and the now 70-year-old is back to being the “stupid” boy of his childhood. His German Jewish refugee parents were particularly cruel: “Throughout my childhood, my parents thought I was stupid and lazy and used to call me Dumb Dog. My father spoke 11 languages and knew how to insult me in every one of them.
“He thought if I sat at my desk long enough I’d eventually get it. I was angry for a long time about it”
His parents, Harry and Ilse are now deceased and Winkler believes his anger towards them has dissipated: “I now have softened a lot, I don’t know now whether I just don’t have the time or energy. I don’t spend as much time thinking about how much I dislike them. I made it a really conscious choice to a be a different type of parent. I heard my parents’ voices flying out of my mouth when I was talking to my children when they were younger. I stopped, that’s not the way I want to sound.”
His parents raised him and his sister Beatrice in Conservative Judaism. “I’m very proud of my Jewish heritage. For 5,000 years they tried to destroy us and we’re still here contributing to the world in major way.
“I don’t think we’re better than, or greater than anybody else. I just happen to be Jewish. I admired my parents for how they got out of Nazi Germany and surviving and starting a whole new life in America.”
Before Winkler gained his BA from Emerson University in 1967, his father sent him to Germany to work at a lumber mill. “He exported and imported lumber, I worked on a mill in the north of Germany. But I haven’t been to Berlin, where they were from. We went back to Germany with the Happy Days baseball team, we travelled all over the country playing with the US Troops.”
As he enters his eighth decade, he shows no signs of slowing down. His diary is full of future projects. He recently completed a travel show where he and William Shatner and George Foreman among others traverse Asia in 35 days. In January, he starts filming a new pilot for HBO with Bill Hader called Barry. Meanwhile, he and his co-writer, Lin Oliver are finishing the 32nd Hank Zipzer novel, which will be published in a special font that makes it easier for dyslexics to read.
He’s an avid fly fisherman and while filming in Yorkshire has been fishing in the River Wharfe. “And then going for a scone,” his wife tells me. Stacey often travels with him on his reading tour of schools where he reads excerpts from the Hank Zipzer books. They are clearly a devoted couple. “When people asked me how come we’ve lasted so long, I used to be glib and have funny answers,” says Winkler. “I don’t have the slightest idea what the answer is. Perhaps making the right choice in the first place. Or perhaps listening to, really hearing, the other person.”
As we are finishing our interview, he’s back into grandfather mode. He says: “In many ways, we’re just like everyone else. In our spare time, we go to the movies with our good friends, we like two movies a day with dinner in between, and of course we babysit for our grandchildren.”