Tag: Henry Winkler

Mork and Happier Days

The world is saddened today by the news that Robin Williams has passed away. He was such a part of our lives that everyone has their own favorite movie scenes or performances, and I cannot add much that you already do not know or that you cannot find elsewhere.

But Williams is one of the few performers where I remember the first moment I saw him. And I was blown away. As a kid turning on Happy Days, a show that was in its fifth season and showing signs of old age, I suddenly saw something completely new. This strange alien character called Mork and the actor playing him was one of the funniest things I had ever seen. The next day at school, everyone was talking about him and his appearance on the Happy Days episode called “My Favorite Orkan.” Here is a scene with Henry Winkler as Fonzie and Robin Williams as Mork.

Robin Williams and Mork, of course, got their own spinoff series which I followed until that one went into its own old age. In many ways, I feel Williams and I grew up together, as I enjoyed his juvenile antics but then got to appreciate his more serious adult work in movies I’ve written about in different contexts like Dead Poets Society (1989), Insomnia (2003), and the underrated World’s Greatest Dad (2009).

It is very sad to hear how he passed, but I am very thankful he lived and gave us so much. Rest in Peace. Na-nu Na-nu.

What is your first memory of Robin Williams? Leave your two cents in the comments.

  • Happy Days on Love, American Style
  • O Me, Does That Apple Commercial About Poetry Sound Familiar?
  • The Long Lost Chuck Cunninghams
  • A Christmas Carol: Dickens, Edison, Sim, and the Fonz
  • World’s Greatest Dad (Missed Movies)
  • Is Your Job Your Life?: Lessons from A Folk Singer & Al Pacino

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    The Long Lost Chuck Cunninghams

    Happy Days Chuck
    Even the DVD cover omits Chuck.

    Chuck Cunningham was Richie’s older brother on Happy Days who famously ate sandwiches, dribbled basketballs, and then disappeared, never to be heard from again. The way his character vanished and was never mentioned again by this TV family eventually led to the name Chuck Cunningham Syndrome.

    What you may not remember about Chuck, though, is that he was played by two different actors. Gavan O’Herlihy initially played the character in the series, followed by Randolph Roberts. According to IMDb, O’Herlihy appeared as Chuck during the first season in seven episodes from January to March 1974. Later in the year, during the second season, Randolph Roberts appeared in two episodes as Chuck. [Update: The clip of a show with Chuck is no longer on YouTube, but if you find the series debut episode, “All the Way,” at around the 7:40 mark you may see O’Herlihy enjoying dinner with the Cunninghams. A brief part of the clip also appears in the TMZ video below.]

    Reportedly, the reason the show eventually got rid of Chuck was that he was never a big character and the producers realized that Fonzie (Henry Winkler) had become the “big brother” to Richie (Ron Howard). Several websites note that Gary Marshall, the series creator, humorously stated that his response to the question about what happened to Chuck was that the character got a basketball scholarship in Outer Mongolia.

    But why were there two Chucks in the series? In the following video, O’Herlihy, who had been a champion Irish tennis player, explains at around the 4:04 mark how Happy Days gave him his big break in acting. But after he realized that they expected his character to have a limited role, dropping in from college occasionally, he wanted to go on to other work. So apparently, the producers then brought in Roberts briefly before deciding to dump the character all together.

    O’Herlihy went on to appear in a number of roles in films like Willow (1988), often playing a villain such as in a standout performance in Lonesome Dove (1989). By contrast, Roberts continued in some acting roles for a little more than a decade before leaving acting and, according to Wikipedia, becoming an education supervisor for ITT Technical Institute in San Diego.

    On an additional note, technically, there were three Chuck Cunninghams. In the original Happy Days pilot version that appeared as a segment of Love, American Style (discussed in another post), Chuck was played by actor Ric Carrott. As in the Happy Days series, Chuck only appeared briefly in the Love, American Style episode (eating dinner). Carrott went on to appear in a number of TV shows during the 1970s as well as in small parts in a number of films before leaving acting. He may be best known for his work as Captain Chris Gentry on the Saturday morning kid’s show Space Academy.

    Regarding the TV series Happy Days, it is interesting to speculate whether or not the show would have abandoned Chuck Cunningham had O’Herlihy stuck around, as it seems likely that the loss of the first actor hastened the character’s demise. One might image that if O’Herlihy had not left the character, the writers might have kept Chuck in the family, occasionally dropping by while he was at college and then off living somewhere else. Or maybe the series occasionally would have covered him playing basketball in Mongolia.

    2015 Update    : After this article was posted TMZ did a short segment on the Chuck Cunningham mystery where they caught Ron Howard with the question about what happened to Chuck. Check it out.

    Who is your favorite TV character who suffered from Chuck Cunningham Syndrome? Leave your two cents in the comments.

  • Happy Days on Love, American Style
  • Mork and Happier Days
  • “American Graffiti” Opens in 1973
  • A Christmas Carol: Dickens, Edison, Sim, and the Fonz
  • Andy Griffith Was America’s Favorite Country Boy
  • A Rushed “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around the Clock” Goes to Hollywood and the Hall

    • (Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)

    Buy from Amazon

    A Christmas Carol: Dickens, Edison, Sim, and the Fonz

    Charles DickensOn December 17, 1843, London publishing house Chapman & Hall published a novella called A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas.  The novella, by Charles Dickens, would become a classic.

    Charles Dickens had already found success from writing projects, including The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1836), Oliver Twist (1838) and Nicholas Nickleby (1839). His new book, which he only started writing three months earlier in September 1843, was an immediate success, and many today credit it with reviving Christmas traditions in Victorian England.

    We now know the book simply as A Christmas Carol. While it may seem odd that a book about ghosts would become a Christmas classic (instead of a Halloween story), Dickens was not the only one telling yuletide ghost stories. In Victorian England, it was a tradition to tell ghost stories around the fire on Christmas Eve. I guess many places still have that tradition, but it is now called, “watching A Christmas Carol on television.”

    Adaptations of “A Christmas Carol”

    Soon after the novella was published, people began adapting the story for theater productions. Dickens himself often gave readings of the book throughout his lifetime.

    As technology changed, there were adaptations for radio and screens. Thomas Edison created an early silent version of the story in 1910.

    One of the most famous movie versions of the book — and the most highly regarded in many quarters — is 1951’s Scrooge, starring Alastair Sim. Sim, who was born in Edinburgh in 1900 and starred in a number of projects on stage and screen before his death in 1976, had the perfect voice and face for Mr. Scrooge.

    And now with modern technology, we can add the tradition of watching Scrooge on the Internet.

    Other famous versions of the movie feature George C. Scott, Jim Carrey, and Albert Finney as Scrooge. The Alistair Sim one remains my favorite.

    An American Christmas Carol

    But I must admit I have a soft spot for a 1979 made-for-television movie called An American Christmas Carol, starring Fonzie himself, Henry Winkler as the Scrooge character named Benedict Slade.

    Maybe I was at an impressionable age when I first saw An American Christmas Carol. Or maybe I liked the way it put a new twist on an old story by setting it during the Depression in New England.

    You also may watch An American Christmas Carol below.

    No matter who is your favorite Scrooge, may the future find that it always be said of him (or her), “that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!”

    What is your favorite version of A Christmas Carol? Leave your two cents in the comments.

  • Mork and Happier Days
  • Happy Days on Love, American Style
  • What Holiday Film Featured a Kidnapping?: Christmas Movie Quiz
  • ‘Fairytale of New York’ at Shane MacGowan’s funeral
  • With Glowing Hearts: “O Holy Night” By John Denver
  • There Will Be Another Christmas
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    Happy Days on Love, American Style

    Did you know that the series “Happy Days” started out as a segment on the ensemble show “Love, American Style”?

    Fonzi Happy Days
    “Aaaay! Why wasn’t I on this Love show?”

    Television producer Garry Marshall recently wrote a book, My Happy Days in Hollywood: A Memoir (2012). In promoting the book he has talked about how his work on Happy Days was his favorite favorite work (as opposed to the often contentious work on Laverne & Shirley).

    Some of Marshall’s revelations include that Fonzie was based on a friend of his from summer camp.  Also, Nathan Lane auditioned for the show. Recently, I discovered something else interesting about the origin of Happy Days.

    Do you remember the television show Love, American Style that ran on ABC from 1969-1974? The hour-long show featured different stories and casts each week.  For awhile Love, American Style was on the same nights as The Brady Brunch, The Partridge Family, The Odd Couple, and Room 222. While reading about some of these shows recently, I was surprised to discover that the series Happy Days got its start on Love, American Style.

    According to Wikipedia, in 1971 producer Garry Marshall had the idea for a sitcom featuring teenagers growing up in the 1950s. He created a pilot called New Family in Town, featuring many of the characters and several of the stars that would later appear in the Happy Days series.  There were a few exceptions.  In the pilot, Harold Gould played the father Howard Cunningham and Susan Neher played sister Joanie.

    But no network was interested in the pilot, so Marshall sold the show to the producers of Love, American Style.  That ensemble series then ran the pilot as a segment. The segment was retitled for the show as “Love and the Happy Days” and ran in early 1972.

    After the network saw the success of the Broadway play Grease and the movie American Graffiti (1974), they remembered the Happy Days pilot and bought the rights. Happy Days ran on television from 1974-1984. One of the reasons Ron Howard got the part in American Graffiti was because George Lucas saw him in the original pilot.

    If you are interested in seeing how it all began, below is the opening of “Love and the Happy Days” from Love, American Style. If you have never seen Love, American Style, though, I should warn you that if you view the opening you might have the song going through your head the rest of the day.

    What is your favorite episode of Happy Days? Leave your two cents in the comments.

  • The Long Lost Chuck Cunninghams
  • Mork and Happier Days
  • A Christmas Carol: Dickens, Edison, Sim, and the Fonz
  • “American Graffiti” Opens in 1973
  • Andy Griffith Was America’s Favorite Country Boy
  • A Rushed “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around the Clock” Goes to Hollywood and the Hall

    • (Some Related Chimesfreedom Posts)