absolutelyisis
May 19, 2004 @ 8:09 pm
I searched the category twice, and didn't find
Happy Days. I'm opening a new thread for it to direct you all
here for a fascinating theory about Chuck, the lost Cunningham. (If you're going there after June 1, check the archive.)
MarchHare
May 20, 2004 @ 6:26 am
Oh, yeah, Chuck. Back when Happy Days was on film, and Fonzie wasn't in every scene. By the end of the series, Marian was saying "I've raised two children." Chuck ceased to exist.
Thanks for the link absolutelyisis, that's quite a theory!
Kuka
May 20, 2004 @ 6:45 pm
Chuck disappeared. Fonzie's jacket was white. Didn't the structure of the house change at some point too? And the show was much more... 50's in the beginning. I loved the episode where they put some sort of plastic in front of the tv to make it color, then had to sit in a line to watch it properly.
Eris Rising
May 20, 2004 @ 7:22 pm
I'd always thought that Chuck came out of the closet, and the Cunninghams and the rest of the extended clan disowned him in a "We will never speak of him again" fashion.
Oh, was "Happy Days" the first show to take someone who had started on the show as a preadolescent (Erin Moran) and suddenly make her a sex symbol once she filled out? Like they did years later with Ashley on "Fresh Prince"? That always struck me as somewhat disturbing.
elle75au
May 21, 2004 @ 2:23 am
I used to LOVE Happy Days when I was a kid. But it really changed when Ritchie went to College and Fonzie started seeing that women who had the daughter. And then the whole Joanie & Chaaachi stuff.
(My friend and I have a joke that we have to call out firstborn daughters The Fonz & Chachi)
Eris Rising
May 21, 2004 @ 3:28 am
Yeah. Oddly enough, the moment that he jumped the shark in the show was not the shark-jumping moment for me. I honestly enjoyed some of the goofier episodes (The dude ranch! Mork! Random the angel!). The turning point for the show was the new "Fonzie and Big Al's" diner. Bleah. And Fonzie as a teacher.
And why, why, why did they have to introduce Jenny Piccolo as an actual character?
YourDensity
May 21, 2004 @ 7:10 am
Fonzie's jacket was white.
They made Fonzie's jacket white because the network (oh those crazy networks!) was worried that a black leather jacket would make The Fonz look like a rough, street hood. So eventually the director convinced the network that black leather jackets were "motorcycle safety clothes" (which, they are I suppose..) and that Fonzie was being responsible by wearing it.
So the networks said they could show the Fonz in the black leather jacket if and ONLY if he was on his motorcycle. So they put the motorcycle in every scene. They brought it into Arnold's. Then they sloooowly removed the motorcycle once the show (and The Fonz) was a hit.
Oh, and Henry Winkler (the Fonz, who produced MacGyver, btw!) won the role when in an audition he was asked to "comb his hair". All the previous actors combed their hair. Winkler walked up to a mirror, poised the comb and then threw his arms out like "I'm already perfect, why mess with it?" and that cemented the role for him.
I don't know why I know this. Perhaps I caught a special on E! I never really watched it, except as a child in Okinawa on base. We thought it was a modern show (base tv sucks, btw. Or sucked in 1981) and we still have tapes of my brother singing "Sunday Monday Happy Days!"
Navin
May 21, 2004 @ 8:06 am
I loved the episode when Fonzie had to disguise himself as a nerd so he could be abducted by the girl gang. He told them he was looking for snails to add to his snail collection.
One of my favorite editorials from The Onion is Ralph Malph's "Why Do People Laugh When I Say Something Funny?"
muchsarcasm
May 21, 2004 @ 8:58 am
All the previous actors combed their hair. Winkler walked up to a mirror, poised the comb and then threw his arms out like "I'm already perfect, why mess with it?" and that cemented the role for him.
I don't know if this is true or not, but I had heard in one of those behind-the-scenes shows that Henry Winkler was kind of obsessed with his hair. One of his friends had bet him he couldn't go a week without combing his hair, which resulted in that scene.
Denman
May 21, 2004 @ 11:09 am
My favorite episode is when the whole gang including Fonzie were inducted to the army. The stuff where the Fonz faced off against Sgt. Betchler(NOT BELCHER!) showed how cool he was.
giebergoldfarb2
May 21, 2004 @ 3:43 pm
Happy Days was great for the first two seasons, when Richie was the star, it was shot one-camera with a laugh track, Fonzie was a supporting character, Potsie was the guy who tried to get Richie to misbehave, the Cunninghams' house looked like a real house, there was a genuine '50s atmosphere, etc. But the show was struggling in the ratings, so when Fred Silverman took over at ABC, he suggested they retool it to make Fonzie the star. (ABC even wanted to change the title to "Fonzie's Happy Days," but Ron Howard threatened to quit.) They made other changes in the third season:
- Fonzie moved in with the Cunninghams
- They went to a live studio audience, which meant that the acting got broader, there was lots of cheering and applause; Ron Howard looked awkward because he'd never performed in front of a live audience before, etc.
- Potsie became even stupider than Ralph, if such a thing is possible
- They added catchphrases like "sit on it"
When the first season DVD comes later this year, I will grab it. The second season too. But after that... well, it was a hit with the new format, but it was a sellout, and I think even Garry Marshall knows it was a sellout.
Denman
May 21, 2004 @ 4:00 pm
Don't forget the disappearance of "Chuck", Richie's older brother! I don't think the show would have been as huge a part of pop culture without those changes though. It was no American Graffiti to begin with!
Hestia
May 21, 2004 @ 6:16 pm
This programme was such a joke with my peers, I had an impossible job convincing them it was ever good.
To my mind, Happy Days' best was when they had "Rock around the Clock" as the opening theme music. Rich was everyman, Potsie was everman's slightly wacky mate and the Fonz was cool as.
There was a scene where the Cunninghams were worried about Joanie's grades. Richie mentioned the Fonz - that he was a cool guy who'd dropped out of school early.
Mr Cunningham's comment was something like, "At least Joanie will have company..." [paraphrasing]
See! Mr Cunningham didn't know the Fonz! Briefly! It was better that way.
How long was it before "Rock around the Clock" turn to "Sunday Monday Happy Days!" I think it was a least a season and maybe a season and a half. Knowing my memory though, it might've been four episodes. [Everyone with whom I've had a casual coversation on this subject, swears I'm mistaken and 'Rock around the Clock' was never used. But I know I'm right! (And all you will bow down towards me - oops! This is the way cults are created, isn't it?)]
Kev
May 21, 2004 @ 7:08 pm
Yes, Rock Around the Clock was the opening theme for at least the first season (when the show was good and actually seemed to take place in the 50's) and the ending theme was what became the later opening theme.
cmkrcwi
May 21, 2004 @ 10:54 pm
I liked the episode where Richie got drunk and couldn't figure out why since all he had was "some beer in these teeny weeny little glasses". When Howard asked him how many, he said "75".
Doctor Funk
May 22, 2004 @ 5:07 am
I would agree that artistically, the early seasons may be a little better (but I never found them to be much a cut above the episode of "Love, American Style" they were born from.
However, as a weekly thing? I know seven-year-old Doctor Funk couldn't wait to see Superhumanly Cool Fonzie. Dancing with Shortcake at the Dance Marathon, and saving his hair (and the day!) by dancing that Russian Dance. I believe he called it the Kasatzky. He kicked so much ass he would dance it again in a Weezer video twenty years later.
Fonzie and Pinky beating the Malachi brothers in the Demolition Derby. I ignore the years with the woman and her daughter. Pinky was Fonzie's one true love.
Ooooh yeah, baby. That's the stuff. Hot chocolate for the brain: Sweet and comforting, and of no nutritional value whatsover.
absolutelyisis
May 22, 2004 @ 8:45 am
Don't forget the disappearance of "Chuck", Richie's older brother! I don't think the show would have been as huge a part of pop culture without those changes though. It was no American Graffiti to begin with!
Denman, that's what got this thread re-started; click this
link to read a fascinating theory on what happened to Chuck, the forgotten Cunningham.
(If you go to that link after 1 June, you'll need to check the archive, it's the 17 May - 1 June 04 entry.)Doctor Funk,
word about Pinky. She ruled.
Denman
May 22, 2004 @ 11:33 am
That's a pretty good theory! Now if they can only find an explanation how the house suddenly changed from the stairs being to the left when you walk in the front door to being on the left and how the front door and the kitchen door could now be on the same side of the house!
Eris Rising
May 22, 2004 @ 12:02 pm
That's a pretty good theory! Now if they can only find an explanation how the house suddenly changed from the stairs being to the left when you walk in the front door to being on the left and how the front door and the kitchen door could now be on the same side of the house!
Some 50's incarnation of the QE Fab Five?
Fonzie didn't like the way it looked, so he hit the side of the house and everything rearranged itself?
rosiebloom
May 22, 2004 @ 8:04 pm
Fonzie and Pinky beating the Malachi brothers in the Demolition Derby.
Ahhh... one of the brothers throwing flour at the Fonz and the Fonz pulling out a modern
(where the fuck did he get it in '50s?) hair-dryer, and blowing it back
(where the fuck was it plugged up?) in the brother's face.
A found memory.
Note to post-season-two Fonz, if you have to say you're cool...
rosiebloom
May 22, 2004 @ 8:34 pm
Anyone remember Bag? God, he was cool. I mean, his name was Bag! How cool is that? Bag!
absolutelyisis
May 23, 2004 @ 8:24 am
I'm so glad my efforts resurrected the Happy Days thread. I remember a episode, first or second season, when a band called Johnny Fish and The Fins stayed chez Cunningham, but Richie wasn't allowed to tell that they were there. He didn't even get good seats to their show. The lead singer thanked Richie during the show, and suddenly Richie's pals all loved him again.
MarchHare
May 26, 2004 @ 2:11 pm
Man, oh, man, you got made in the shade!
Remember that Potsie was the cute one?
rikraq
May 26, 2004 @ 3:08 pm
Eris Rising
May 26, 2004 @ 4:18 pm
Man, oh, man, you got made in the shade!
Remember that Potsie was the cute one?
Yep. Potsie was the cute one, Richie was the sensitive one, Ralph was the funny one, Fonzie was the cool/dangerous/tough one.
Nowadays they'd be a boy band.
gnbhull
May 26, 2004 @ 4:43 pm
Fonzie's jacket was white.
They made Fonzie's jacket white because the network (oh those crazy networks!) was worried that a black leather jacket would make The Fonz look like a rough, street hood.
[Nitpick] Fonzie's season 1 jacket was blue. [/Nitpick] And I'm ashamed that I know that.
absolutelyisis
May 27, 2004 @ 6:33 am
Nowadays they'd be a boy band.
They
were! Richie, Ralph and Potsie, along with a changing cast of drummers. (Remember when they had a black drummer, and the Cunninghams ended up having a black family's wedding, or reception, in their house?) Potsie would sing like Pat Boone. But Fonzie wasn't in the band. Too cool for that.
Roller Girl
May 27, 2004 @ 12:57 pm
How old was Fonzy supposed to be in the show? Was he close to Richie's age? Any ideas?
absolutelyisis
Jun 1, 2004 @ 8:18 pm
Mala Fide, the
link I started this thread with, has updated, so here's the theory I was linking y'all to:
When a television series "jumps the shark" (see the
Jump The Shark site) it "includes an over-the-top scene or plot twist that is indicative either of an irreversible decline in the show's quality or of a desperate bid to stem the show's declining ratings". The phrase comes from a season finale cliff-hanger episode of "Happy Days" in which Fonzie jumped a shark on water skis. Fonzie was on the skis, not the shark.
The show had arguably lost it before that point or Arthur wouldn't have made the jump at all. Its decline began when Chuck Cunningham, the oldest Cunningham child, was first played by two actors and then vanished so thoroughly that by the time the show ended his mother wouldn't even acknowledge that he'd ever existed.
I know what happened to Chuck.
"Happy Days" obviously takes place in some alternate universe; the 1950s and 60s didn't look anything like the show. In the "Happy Days" universe the events chronicled in the 1950s classic movie "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" are a reality. Being pod people would explain the bizarre behavior of the cast.
Armed with this knowledge it becomes apparent that Chuck, a scholarship athlete and A student, thus a perfect 1950s teen movie hero, resisted assimilation by the pods. We'll probably never know how long Chuck resisted before being destroyed or how many people he saved from the horrors of inhaustion, but it's obvious that television would have been a much better place if he'd survived to triumph and save us from the last eight seasons of "Happy Days".
is a good read most days, but not generally about
Happy Days.
absolutelyisis
Jun 2, 2004 @ 6:16 am
Ooops!
Halfpint Ingals
Jun 10, 2004 @ 6:23 pm
Did the audience not like Joanie ? For everyone else they went crazy. People find this very annoying. Chachi and Fonzie got the cheers and whistles. Richie and friends and the Cunningham parents all got applause. But Joanie hardly got anything. I can only remember around 5 times when she entered alone and got cheers. Sometimes she entered with her mom and Chachi, and people applauded. Sometimes she entered with someone who normally got it and nothing happened. So did the people not like her ?
There was a Christian movie in mid 1980s and the guy looked kinda like Scott Baio. A character in the movie even mentioned it. Judge for yourself
hereEdited to fix link.
ubi
Jun 11, 2004 @ 1:07 pm
Remember the ep in which Potsie had to make up a song to help him learn the parts of the circulatory system in biology class? Was that a real song or lifted from an older source?
The refrain went something like: Pump-pump da pumpa-da-pumpa...
SiameseCatLady
Jun 11, 2004 @ 6:52 pm
Remember the ep in which Potsie had to make up a song to help him learn the parts of the circulatory system in biology class? Was that a real song or lifted from an older source?
The refrain went something like: Pump-pump da pumpa-da-pumpa...
I don't know if the song was a HD original, but they are now using it (and I swear with Anson Williams' vocals) on commercials for St. Joseph Aspirin. The first time I heard it it took me a few minutes to figure out where I knew it from.
morecowbell
Jun 14, 2004 @ 5:56 pm
THANK YOU! I knew I heard that somewhere before!
rosiebloom
Jun 15, 2004 @ 4:39 pm
"Pump, pump, pumps your blood.
The right atrium's where the process
begins,
Where the C02 blood enters the heart
Through the tricuspid valve to the right
ventricle
The pulmonary artery and lungs.
Once inside the lungs it dumps its carbon
dioxide
And picks up its oxygen supply
Then it's back to the heart through the
pulmonary vein
Through the atrium and left ventricle."
ALL JOIN ON CHORUS.
ALL
(SING) "Pump, pump, pumps your blood.
POTSIE
(SING) "The aortic valvels where the
blood leaves the heart
Then it's channeled to the rest of the bod
The arteries, arterioles, and capillaries
too
Bring the oxygenated blood to the cells
The tissues and the cells trade off waste and CO 2
Which is carried through the venules and
the veins
Through the larger vena cava to the
atrium and lungs And we're back to where we started in the heart.
ALL JOIN ON CHORUS.
ALL
(SING) "Pump, pump., pump, pumps your blood"
Halfpint Ingals
Sep 10, 2004 @ 2:03 pm
A Happy days reunion is set to happen. It will tape tomorrow and air in November or February sweeps. Everyone will be back. It will be them talking and sharing memories, no new acting. I was kinda hoping to see what everyone is doing in future, but I guess maybe they will talk about what happened with their characters.
http://www.tvtome.com/HappyDays/ (go down)
hughster
Sep 10, 2004 @ 2:41 pm
And both actors who played Chuck Cunningham will be at the reunion - perhaps one of TV's greatest mysteries will finally be solved!!!
febutterfly
Sep 13, 2004 @ 7:09 pm
My parents quit watching this show sometime after Ron Howard left, and this morning's episode on WGN was a shining example of why they quit: the cast performed musical vignettes about their relatives coming to America. I cringed through part of a musical number between Joanie and Chachi with fake Irish accents, then an entire "I Got the Immigration Blues" jailhouse scene with all the guys (led by Potsie) in black-and-white prison suits, with Fonzie trying to dance [shudder], then a dinner party of the cast as supposedly Spanish immigrants singing a flamenco-type tune. All I could think of was how embarrassed I was for the cast members, especially Marian Ross and Tom Bosley.
MissMarauder
Sep 14, 2004 @ 7:25 pm
I liked the corny immigration episode. :) I liked the blood pumping song one even better, though. Yes, that IS Anson Williams on the aspirin commercials. :D
r01339113
Sep 17, 2004 @ 4:49 pm
I just found out about
this adorable red-haired, freckle-faced white child actor whose insane parents named him Ricky Cunningham. Fandom is one thing, but I think that's just twisted and wanted to share.
Brian C
Jan 25, 2005 @ 3:31 am
Is everybody ready for the reunion show?
I, too, wish it had new acting...but just seeing everyone is good enough, I guess.
ubi
Jan 25, 2005 @ 11:49 am
Is that reunion show tonight?
Brian C
Jan 25, 2005 @ 5:10 pm
Is that reunion show tonight?
No, next week, February 3rd.
It should be really cool...although I hope it doesn't get too maudlin.
iMissEthan
Jan 25, 2005 @ 5:22 pm
I hope Erin Moran is strong enough to handle this. I remember there being some really bad blood between her and Scott Baio around the time of the last reunion.
soccerfiesta
Jan 26, 2005 @ 2:20 am
Wasn't there some bad blood between her and another actor (not Chachi, though- was it Mr. C?) because she made some charges of molestation/abuse? I remember something like that from one of those "behind the scenes" shows on late-night tv.
PS- Thanks to those who explained the whole "jumped the shark" thing. I didn't know that's where the expression came from or what it meant.
JohnBoysMole
Jan 26, 2005 @ 8:41 am
I just found out about this adorable red-haired, freckle-faced white child actor whose insane parents named him Ricky Cunningham. Fandom is one thing, but I think that's just twisted and wanted to share.
Okay, that's creepy.
But on a related note, my brother, who was named at birth "Ricky" and later legally changed his name to "Richard" (Imagine a 6' 4" 300 lb. gay dude named "Ricky")...anyhoo, his significant other's last name is Cunningham and I told them if they're ever able to get married, he should change his last name to Cunningham. He didn't find it as funny as I did.
AmazingGrace
Jan 26, 2005 @ 12:46 pm
I grew up with Happy Days and the earliest seasons were the best. I agree w/ the person who said even Garry Marshall realizes the show sold out. I loved the episodes where the rock band stayed with the Cunningham's but Richie couldn't tell anyone and the Halloween party the best.
iMissEthan
Jan 26, 2005 @ 2:47 pm
No one on the set abused Erin. Check question 13
here for a tiny bit of info.
Brian C
Jan 26, 2005 @ 6:15 pm
How old was Fonzy supposed to be in the show? Was he close to Richie's age? Any ideas?
GREAT question.
I've been watching the show a lot recently (TV Land looped around, so I figured I'd watch it from start to finish...haven't done that in YEARS...Tivo is so useful...hehe), and their relationship is starting to creep me out, if Fonzie is supposed to be anything more than 2 years older.
What say you all?
Richie was 16 in Season 1, so could Fonzie possibly be 18? I really need him to be 18, or else their relationship is seriously disturbing...
JohnBoysMole
Jan 26, 2005 @ 6:39 pm
Richie was 16 in Season 1, so could Fonzie possibly be 18? I really need him to be 18, or else their relationship is seriously disturbing...
Oh, I agree
Brian C. I do think Fonzie is no more than 2 or 3 years older than Richie. His character seems to have been on his own for a long time, so he would have more life experience and therefore, seem a lot more mature.
Okay, I don't want to hear anything more that would taint my Fonzie love. (La la la la la, I can't hear you!)
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