Farewell, Joanie
Happy Days star dies
Erin Moran, the former child star who played Joanie Cunningham in the sitcoms Happy Days and Joanie Loves Chachi, has died, aged 56. A statement from the sheriff’s department in Harrison County, Indiana, said the dispatcher “received a 911 call about an unresponsive female. Upon arrival of first responders, it was determined that Erin Moran Fleischmann was deceased. An autopsy is pending”.
The dispatcher confirmed that the woman was the actress, who had been married to Steven Fleischmann.
A Burbank, California native, Moran began acting in TV and movies before she was 10. She had nearly a decade of experience when she was cast in 1974 in Happy Days as Joanie Cunningham, the kid sister to high school student Richie Cunningham, played by Ron Howard.
Debuting at a time of nostalgia for the seemingly innocent 1950s, the sitcom was set in Milwaukee and soon became a hit. Howard and Henry Winkler, who played The Fonz, were the show’s biggest stars, but Moran also became popular.
Howard tweeted in tribute to his on-screen little sister, saying: “Such sad, sad news. RIP Erin. I’ll always choose to remember you on our show making scenes better, getting laughs and lighting up tv screens.”
Winkler also paid tribute, tweeting “Oh Erin, now you will finally have the peace you wanted so badly here on earth, Rest In It serenely now, too soon.”
Moran’s more recent credits included The Love Boat and Murder, She Wrote, but she never approached the success of Happy Days and was more often in the news for her numerous personal struggles.
She continued the role in 1982 in the short-lived spinoff Joanie Loves Chachi, alongside Scott Baio, until its cancellation the following year.
Then, Moran’s career essentially stalled, with the exception of several television guest spots, and an appearance in the 2007 independent comedy feature Not Another B Movie.
In 2008, she was a contestant on VH1’s reality show Celebrity Fit Club. Her downward spiral became evident in September 2012, when she was photographed looking worse for wear outside a Holiday Inn in Corydon, Indiana, after reportedly being kicked out of the trailer she shared with Fleischmann. Moran was told to leave the trailer she’d been sharing with her husband by his mother, who was tired of her “hard-partying ways”, reported RadarOnline.com. The National Enquirer reported earlier that year that the couple had moved into the “rundown trailer park” after losing their California home to foreclosure. They were understood to be living off a dwindling sum of money which was the result of a payout springing from a lawsuit filed by several Happy Days cast members in April 2011. The actress and three of her Happy Days co-stars, Don Most, Anson Williams and Marion Ross, plus the estate of Tom Bosley, who died in 2010, filed a US$10 million breach-ofcontract lawsuit against CBS, which owns the show. The suit claimed that cast members had not been paid for merchandising revenues owed under their contracts. In July 2012, the actors settled their lawsuit with CBS. Each received a payment of US$65,000 and a promise by CBS to continue honouring the terms of their contracts.
Such sad, sad news. RIP Erin Ron Howard