![]() ![]() Nevertheless, some of the New Family footage appears in a Happy Days episode as flashback. The actors who played Howard, Chuck, and Joannie were replaced. Some revision was in order, and the original pilot was never in strict continuity with the show. Suddenly, New Family in Town was a hot commodity. The film helped start both the 50s nostalgia boom (though the original stage-musical Grease had already premiered and Sha Na Na had been touring for a few years), and the increasingly gross, "cuttin' loose" teen comedies (though American Graffiti is tame when compared to what followed). The pilot did not sell, but in 1972, appeared on the romantic-comedy anthology, Love, American Style, under the title, "Love and the Happy Days."Ī year later, George Lucas had his first hit with American Graffiti, a nostalgic flick set in '62, starring Ron Howard as an all-American high school graduate. RON HOWARD HAPPY DAYS MOVIE TVPossibly the first example of 50s nostalgia in the mass media, it also featured Richie's wordlier friend Potsie ( Anson Williams), girlfriend Arlene (Tanis Montgomery), father Howard ( Harold Gould), mother Marion ( Marion Ross), older brother Charles (Ric Carrott), and kid sister Joannie (Susan Neher) in a plot involving the Cunninghams' purchase of their neighbourhood's first TV set. In 1971, Garry Marshall hired Ron Howard, fresh out of his role as all-American kid Opie Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show to play an all-American teenager on New Family in Town. Happy Days, in any case, went through several incarnations. A few diehard fans claim it never jumped at all, but there's no denying that its ratings fell precipitously in the 1980s. Others disagree, and suggest Happy Days jumped at some other point. ![]() When Fonzie water-skied over a shark, the show was advertising its desperation, a desperation born of the realization that it wasn't very good anymore. RON HOWARD HAPPY DAYS MOVIE SERIESThe term " jumping the shark"- referring to the moment when a long-running series ceases to be worth watching- derives from the top-rated sitcom, Happy Days ( 1974- 1984), created by Garry Marshall. every time I give someone a thumbs-up, it is the fonz that moves my thumb. How could he be so damn cool back then, and then turn into this presence that clearly haunts B-movies and flops? Or, conversely, how could we think that he was so cool back then? RON HOWARD HAPPY DAYS MOVIE MOVIEIt was a terrible shock when I saw a picture of Fonzie/ Henry Winkler in 1985 as he was then: a rather chubby 40 years old guy.Īn IMDB search on his movie career is even more depressing. Realism was not very interesting.Īt that time, I hoped that eventually I would grow up to be like Fonzie. It did not matter that the US were not like Happy Days any more, and that I was not living there, and that it is doubtful if the US ever where like Happy Days. And the women, the women just went insane for Fonzie. In Italy we didn't have Arnold's, and our cars were dinky FIATs.īut what is more, Happy Days contained Fonzie, and Fonzie was the definition of cool. Teenagers drove cars, big cars with crome. People dressed in bright colors and hung out at Arnold's. Happy Days was a main force in shaping my idea of the USA (only at that time I wasn't refined enough to call it "USA", I just called it America and that was more than enough). At first I watched it on a black and white TV, and then my family got color. I used to watch Happy Days when I was a kid, in the 70s. Happy Days: the words themselves bring back an intense flashback of childhood. ![]()
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