San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
‘Happy Days’ at 50
Ron Howard, Donny Most, Anson Williams, Henry Winkler and Marion Ross look back on the legendary television series
On Tuesday night, Jan. 15, 1974, Richie, Potsie, Ralph and Fonzie entered our living rooms for a visit that would end up lasting more than a decade.
Created by Garry Marshall, “Happy Days” arrived as a comic but earnest chronicle of adolescence in 1950s Milwaukee. It revolved around Richie Cunningham (Ron Howard) and his equally hormonal pals — Warren “Potsie” Weber (Anson Williams) and Ralph Malph (Donny Most) — along with the rest of the Cunninghams: Richie’s younger sister, Joanie (Erin Moran); mother, Marion (Marion Ross); and father, Howard (Tom Bosley). (Chuck, an older brother played by a series of actors, disappeared early in the show’s run.)
“Happy Days” didn’t really take off with viewers until a couple of seasons later, when it was retooled into a broader multicamera sitcom oriented around the local tough turned mentor and guardian angel, Arthur Fonzarelli (Henry Winkler), known the world over as the Fonz. In the 1976-77 season, “Happy Days” became the most-watched show on television, supplanting “All in the Family.” It ran until the summer of 1984, a total of 11 seasons, while generating multiple spinoffs — “Laverne & Shirley,” “Mork & Mindy,” “Joanie Loves Chachi” — and untold tons of Fonzie merchandise.
In December, the surviving members of the original core cast — Howard, 69; Most, 70; Williams, 74; Winkler, 78; and Ross, 95 — met in a video chat to commemorate the 50th anniversary of “Happy Days.” (Bosley died in 2010, Moran in 2017.) They reminisced about the special bond they felt at the time and have felt ever since, and how the elevation of Fonzie was integral to the show’s popularity. (Disclosure: I helped Williams on his campaign for mayor of Ojai, California, in 2022, and we are friends.)
These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
What were some of the factors that helped “Happy Days” become a hit? Ron Howard:
We had great chemistry, and the writers knew how to write for that, but I also think that this collision of Garry Marshall’s sense of young guys and fun and energy and (executive producer) Tom Miller’s sense of what an American family meant at that time was the secret sauce of the show.
Henry Winkler: We were telling the same stories of the actual time, of the ’70s, but because it was placed in the past, it never felt as if the moral of the story was hitting you on the head.
Anson Williams: When they changed to live audience, three camera, that’s when the chemistry really came in, when we could work together as a team every day.
Howard: And Henry created this amazing character that captured everybody’s imagination. There was an
older guy called Fonzie, but he had six lines in the first episode. Henry, from the first moment, began offering the show, the writers, the actors, this other possibility.
The show arrived during Watergate and the waning years of the Vietnam War. Do you think people were eager to re-embrace what they saw as the values of the past? Winkler:
It is exactly what everybody is looking for all the time: They’re looking for warmth and peace, some comedy, some relief. Anson said Tom and Garry created a team by creating a baseball team. We traveled all over the world. We played together, and the person who plays together stays together.
How would you describe Garry Marshall’s role as the series progressed? Ross:
He was so important to the show. He was the father of this whole group.
Williams: Garry was also very influential for all of us to wear other hats in the industry. He wanted us to use the Paramount lot as a college: Learn other areas, watch other directors, come to the writers’ room. I think the reason all of us today are still involved and productive is because of Garry. He wanted us to have the best lives we could possibly have.
Howard: I’ve been around a lot of very talented people over my career, even before “Happy Days.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better boss, a better creative manager of people and ideas than Garry Marshall.
Winkler: He was generous but also was structured. He took no bad behavior. One time, when he was announcing the guest cast, I said, “Garry, we have to hurry up because I’m flying to Arkansas.” He nodded, put down the microphone, grabbed me by my shirt, put me against the wall and said, “Don’t ever do that again, because they have every right to be recognized like you.” He kept us in line.
Beginning in its second season, “Happy Days” aired opposite “Good Times,” which also premiered in 1974 and became a big hit with its own pop culture phenom, Jimmie Walker. Were you ever concerned that your show might not make it? Howard:
We slipped a lot in our second season, and the decision was made to move to a three-camera show in front of an audience. I had never done that. It terrified me, but it turned out to be an exciting experience. The other idea was to move the Fonzie character front and center. It was kind of a reckoning for me because the focus of the show shifted, and yet that was our way to win. The only thing I ever said to the bosses or the executives is, “What’s happened here with Fonzie is great. Just make sure that you understand, too, that we have a real chemistry here, and we think of ourselves as an ensemble.” I’m glad that they made the moves they made, whether I was 100 percent comfortable with them at the time or not. It was thrilling to see the show take off.
Winkler: They came to me at ABC and they wanted to change the title to “Fonzie’s Happy Days.” I said, “If you do that, it is an insult to everybody I’m working with. Why fix something that isn’t broken? We are really good. I live in the family and that’s why I’m successful. I’m asking you, if you never listen to me again, leave it alone.”
Ron, is it true that had they done that, you would have left the show? Howard:
I told them I would leave. I don’t think I contractually could have. But I told them if you really want to change the name of the show to that, I would rather go back to USC and film school and what I was doing before the show launched.
How do you look back on the experience now? Winkler:
I thank God I was part of this ensemble. It is a
gift from heaven that fell in my lap.
Donny Most: I used to stay (on the set) and people would say, “You’re done, you can go home.” Because we were one-camera then. I wouldn’t go. Marion and Tom (Bosley), I’d be watching them in the kitchen scene and watch Henry in his scenes. I wanted to stay and absorb it all.
Donny, how did it shape of the rest of your life and career? Most:
I met my wife on the show my last season. She was an actress and we’re married 42 years. People say, “What do you remember most about the show? Which episode? Which scenes?” What I remember are the conversations we had in between shooting or before a show.
I heard the four of you guys are on a text chain. Howard:
Yeah, it really kicked off in COVID. We’ve always stayed in touch — gotten together, had a meal, emails and so forth.
Is it rare for co-stars in a TV show to remain close for decades? Winkler:
I always thought if you work with somebody for six months, you make a movie, you’re going to have dinner with them when it’s over. Then you call them, and you’re still waiting for them to call you back. That didn’t happen with our show. Anson is an entrepreneur, has created products. Marion has gone on to act and do plays. Ron is a billion-dollar director. Don Most has a combo and travels the country as a crooner.
Williams: And a great crooner.
It has to be at least partly because of the time of life when you got to know each other, right? If you had met in your 30s or 40s, it might not have happened that way. Most:
I remember Ron comparing us to army guys who had been in the trenches together.
Howard: We were transforming together. We were growing up. Tom Bosley was teaching us how to get life insurance, homeownership loans. We had our first children and marriages.
At the peak of the show’s popularity in the late 1970s, the Fonz was one of the most popular characters in the world. Wasn’t there some moment at a Dallas mall when the scale of it became clear? Winkler:
There were 25,000 people. Don kept saying, “How are we going to get out of here? What happens if they all start moving forward?” For the first time, I used the character off the show. I looked at the crowd and said, (in the Fonz voice) “All right, listen up, you’re going to part like the Red Sea.” They honestly did. We got into the limousine and were able to take off.
Henry, how did you deal with the popularity and when it was over? Winkler:
I wrote about it in my memoir. I think there is an emotional component to dyslexia. For me, anyway. When everybody was talking to me, I knew it was practically good to keep the show going and we’re all making a living, but I couldn’t believe they were talking to me. My sense of self was so damaged from when I was younger. When the show was over, I sat in my office at Paramount and I had psychic pain. Because I had just lived Plan A. I didn’t have a Plan B. I didn’t even think about a Plan B. I’m sitting there not being able to be hired.
As the rest of you saw Henry getting so big and taking over the show, did it ever make you jealous? Williams:
People ask me that question and I’d say, “Are you kidding? The Fonz bought me a house.” He was probably the most popular actor in the world for a while but it never came to the set. As popular as he was, it didn’t change anything
as a team. That’s a big deal.
Howard: You couldn’t be jealous of it because it was 1,000 percent earned. Here’s this guy who created this character, a guy we all immediately loved working with and were inspired by, and audiences dug it. Anything other than maximizing that character wouldn’t have made sense.
Ron, what did you see on the show that helped you become a better director? Howard:
(The director) Jerry Paris. Brilliant at staging us, and when you’re doing a three-camera show in front of an audience, it is all about character movement and staging. He knew I wanted to direct and so it was a tutorial.
Most: You cannot underestimate the contributions Jerry made to our show. He directed most of the episodes and was in there day in and day out. He was a genius at what he did.
At the center of the show was the relationship between Richie and Fonzie, the strait-laced kid and the guy with the jacket. How did that develop? Winkler:
We were brothers on the set. I could go somewhere, in my imagination — in the middle of a show — Ron would go with me like we were attached by a thread. It was unspoken.
Howard: I grew up on “The Andy Griffith Show” and used to see Andy playing the straight man role, whether it was with the Barney Fife character, Don Knotts, or with Frances Bavier (Aunt Bee). I witnessed somebody who took a lot of pleasure and joy out of riding along with people who were going to get the laughs but needed it to be a partnership. I intuitively built upon that experience.
Winkler: Ron, you were an unbelievable partner.
Howard: It was a blast.
OPERA
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“We found a way for it to be a little more in your face and more personal,” said Lang, who recently moved to San Diego full time. He lives in Hillcrest with his husband, Christopher K. Morgan, and their two “Chipit” puppies (a mix of Chihuahua and pit bull). Morgan was recently hired as the new artistic director of Malashock Dance at Liberty Station.
Lang, whose past directorial credits with San Diego Opera include “Carmen” in 2019 and “As One” in 2017, said he has never staged an opera production like this without traditional scenery and with the orchestra front and center. But it won’t be his last. Opera companies all over the country are reimagining how they present traditional operas on reduced budgets as the industry works to both rebuild and expand its audience after the pandemic.
“I don’t know what the solution is, but we have to try things. We have to find new and younger audiences,” he said. “People who were born in the ’80s are different than people born in 2000. We should explore doing immersive things. We should cater to people who grew up with video games and iphones because they take in information differently. This is a moment where there’s not the funding we used to have. If people want to see operas in huge productions, then there needs to be more funding.”
A timeless story
Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte based “Don Giovanni” on the tale of Don Juan, an unrepentant womanizer who gets dragged to hell for his sins. The character first appeared in a Spanish play in 1630, and different versions of Don Juan’s story proliferated over the next 150 years.
In the Mozart-da Ponte version, the amoral Don Giovanni — the Italian translation for “Don Juan” — spends most of his time seducing and accosting women, from engaged noblewomen to peasant girls, with the help of his faithful servant Leporello. One of the women successfully fights Don Giovanni off, but when her father, the Commendatore (commander), later confronts her attacker to defend her honor, Don Giovanni kills him.
Eventually, Don Giovanni is forced to pay for his exploits in dramatic fashion, but not before some of the most famous arias, duets and ensembles in the opera canon are performed. These include Leporello’s comic “catalog aria,” where he goes through his notebook to list all of the women the Don has seduced, and two show pieces by Don Giovanni: the ultra-fast Champagne Aria and the seductive ballad “La ci darem la mano” (“there we will take each other’s hands”), among others.
The era of libertinism — a philosophy devoted to the pursuit of pleasure — died out in the 19th century. And the depiction of women in this opera — powerless, unsophisticated and easily duped — is out of step with today’s times. Or is it?
Lang said there are many contemporary parallels to the characters in this opera.
Men in positions of power still make the headlines regularly for sexually abusing women. Former President Donald Trump bragged on tape in 2005 about how easy it was to assault women because he’s famous, and just last May, a jury found him liable for assaulting a woman in 1996 and ordered him to pay her $5 million.
In Lang’s opera production, Don Giovanni is able to attract women because he’s a celebrity.
“Giovanni has such a rock star vibe,” Lang said. “It turned into finding a way to present it with a rock concert look, with the lighting, in a way.”
And the three women characters in “Don Giovanni” also turn up regularly in contemporary society. For example, the peasant girl Zerlina is a textbook domestic abuse survivor who allows, and even encourages, her boyfriend Masetto to take out his anger on her.
Although Don Giovanni is a classic villain in the opera, Lang said that in his production, he wants to find the dark and light shades of every character.
“All the characters are good and bad,” he said. “There are operas where there are bad guys and good guys, but that is not at all ‘Giovanni.’ They all have multiple facets. If no, then how will you relate to them (as an audience member). The point of this art form is to make people think.”
Lang said he has strong ideas about what he wants to say in this production, but he also wants to leave some things open to the audience’s interpretation. Just what he’s keeping a secret until opening night.
Born to entertain
Lang grew up in Louisiana, where he started playing piano at age 4 and was a natural storyteller. He described his childhood as “very vibrant.”
“I love making people laugh and happy,” he said. “I think performing arts for me has always been about sharing something. There’s this unspoken feeling that when we’re seeing or performing a show that we get to be part of something bigger than us.”
Lang studied piano performance in college, but he realized quickly that he didn’t want to play music. Instead, he moved to California and performed in musical theater in Orange County and San Francisco for a year before discovering a new passion for ballet. He went back to college to study dance. After finishing his degree at NYU’S Tisch School of the Arts in his mid-20s, he went right to work dancing at the Metropolitan Opera in Manhattan.
Over the next decade, Lang alternated between dancing in operas at the Met and at Santa Fe Opera in New Mexico and touring with a ballet company.
Eventually, he expanded his expertise into choreographing and assistant directing opera. In recent years he has become a full-time opera director and choreographer.
“As a director, I found my voice,” he said. “I see myself more as a director who choreographs than a choreographer who directs.”
Lang’s first work with San Diego Opera was during the 2014-15 season, when he assistant-directed the last “Don Giovanni,” as well as “La Boheme” and “Nixon in China.” Then he returned to assistant direct “Tosca” in 2016 and “Falstaff ” in 2017. Lang said he booked the job to direct this year’s “Don Giovanni” before his husband, Morgan, was hired last fall to run Malashock Dance.
Lang and Morgan met 19 years ago in New York. Lang was a member of a dance company in the summer of 2005 when Morgan was hired to fill in for a dancer who was out. They’ve been together ever since, supporting each other by traveling to each other’s gigs whenever possible from home bases in New York, Washington, D.C., and, most recently, Hawaii.
“We make time for each other,” Lang said. “Since COVID I don’t like being apart as much. I like being crowded with him all the time.”
This interview with Lang took place just before the “Don Giovanni” singers were scheduled to arrive in San Diego for rehearsals.
The cast includes Argentine baritone Germán Enrique Alcántara in his company debut as Don Giovanni; baritone Ethan
Vincent as Leporello; soprano Tasha Koontz as Donna Anna; mezzo-soprano Megan Moore as Donna Elvira; tenor Alexander Mckissick as Don Ottavio; soprano Ashley Fabian as Zerlina; bassbaritone Christian Pursell as Masetto; and bass Brent Michael Smith as Il Commendatore. San Diego Opera principal conductor Yves Abel will conduct the San Diego Symphony, and Bruce Stasyna will conduct the San Diego Opera Chorus.
Lang said he finds opening nights “a groan-fest” because he’s usually too nervous to thoroughly enjoy the show. Instead, his favorite part of directing opera is being in the rehearsal room with the singers as they all work together to develop and craft the characters and story.
“It’s an honor to be in the room with these artists who have worked to so long to become who they are, and there’s this magical moment when it all comes together onstage,” he said.
Because of this production’s short rehearsal period and its unique new staging concept, Lang said he believes a lot of new ideas will be sparked in the rehearsal room as he and the cast talk, block out the scenes and find the core of their characters in this modern setting.
“I’m excited to be finding a new voice and finding a different way of telling the story. It’s really stretching me,” he said. “It feels good to be exploring a different part of myself and dealing with these very deep characters.”
“Giovanni has such a rock star vibe. It turned into finding a way to present it with a rock concert look, with the lighting, in a way.” Director Kyle Lang