It was at this point that Garry Marshall politely raised his hand and notified ABC that they had a pretty promising pilot for a ’50s show in their vaults already. As a matter of fact, it starred one of the leads in American Graffiti.
19
Clocking in to the Nostalgia Industry
RON
ABC wasted little time in putting together a new version of Garry’s 1950s show. American Graffiti took off in the summer of 1973. The network was determined to get its ’50s program on the air no later than January 1974.
This fast-track process forced me to do some fast-track thinking. Should I compromise my education at USC by joining a series again? Could I reduce my course load and do college and TV at the same time? Would signing a seven-year contract—the wildly optimistic but standard length of a commitment that an actor made when he joined a new show—postpone or even unravel my dreams of directing?
I decided to go for it. Happy Days, which is what ABC was calling the new show, had much to recommend it. The pay was good, $3,500 per episode. The program was being built around my character, Richie Cunningham. Isn’t that all that anyone in my business could ask for?
“Yes,” I told my agent, Bill Schuller, “I’m in.”
Then Bill dropped a bomb. I wasn’t a shoo-in. They wanted me to screen-test for the Richie role. This exasperated me. I hadn’t even tested for the original pilot! I mean, come on! I was one of the damn stars of the movie they were trying to emulate! What does a guy have to do?
My competitive juices flowing, I agreed to the test. I was once again paired with Anson Williams, who reprised his role as Potsie. We were given a four-page scene to read, with Garry Marshall directing; the footage would be screened for various suits at ABC and Paramount Television. Garry later told me that he allotted Anson and me a generous three hours to work out our scene, as opposed to one hour apiece for the other paired actors, to tip the scales in our favor; he wanted us all along. The only other serious candidate for the Richie role was a handsome, talented newcomer named Robby Benson, who, like me, was a budding multihyphenate. A few years later, he starred in a terrific movie that he wrote with his father, One on One.
Anson and I thankfully recaptured our roles. A few weeks later, I drove my VW Bug to the Paramount lot, where I gave my name to the guard in the gatehouse and he told me that I was on the list, with a reserved parking space awaiting. To this day, hearing this always gives me a rush of satisfaction.
After I found my spot, we did the first read-through of the first Happy Days episode. I reconnected with Marion Ross and shook hands with Tom Bosley, our new Howard Cunningham. I instantly had a good feeling about Donny Most, a jovial fellow redhead who was playing the new character Ralph Malph, one of Richie’s and Potsie’s friends.
I was really curious about who would be playing Fonzie, another new character, who had six lines in the first episode. He was a likable tough guy modeled after Paul Le Mat’s character in Graffiti, John Milner, and Danny Zuko in Grease, as well as the haimish hoodlums who Garry knew growing up in the Bronx. Fonzie’s real name was Arthur Fonzarelli—like Garry himself, whose father changed the family name from Masciarelli to Marshall, he was Italian American.
This fact notwithstanding, I expected Fonzie to look like Steve McQueen, rugged yet pretty, a glamour biker. But no one in the room fit that physical description. Then one of Happy Days’s executive producers, Tom Miller, took me aside and said that he wanted to introduce me to an amazing actor who had blown everyone away at the auditions.
He was not what I expected: more of an Al Pacino–Dustin Hoffman type, on the small side （five foot six）， with floppy, center-parted dark hair and a scruffy beard. He was a worldly, educated native New Yorker who had earned an undergraduate degree at Emerson College in Boston and a Master of Fine Arts at the Yale School of Drama.
He offered his hand and smiled. “Ron, it’s so nice to meet you,” said this man, who was almost twenty-eight and seemed so much more gracious and grown up than me. “I’m Henry Winkler.”