Mork & Mindy is an American science fiction sitcom broadcast from 1978 until 1982 on ABC. The series starred Robin Williams as Mork, an alien who comes to Earth from the planet Ork in a small, one-man egg-shaped spaceship. Pam Dawber co-starred as Mindy McConnell, his human friend and roommate. In 1997, the episode "Mork's Mixed Emotions" was ranked #94 on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time list.^[1]

Broadcast history[link]

Premise and initial success[link]

The series was a spin-off from the sitcom Happy Days. The character of Mork, played by a then-unknown Robin Williams, first appeared in the Happy Days Season 5 episode, "My Favorite Orkan," which was a take on the 1960s sitcom, My Favorite Martian. Williams' character Mork attempts to take Richie Cunningham back to his planet of Ork as a human specimen, but his plan is foiled by Fonzie (though all this turned out to be simply a dream Richie had). The Mork character proved to be popular enough with the audience to go forward with the planned series of his own.

In Mork & Mindy, Mork resides in the present-day city of Boulder, Colorado, of the late-1970s and early-1980s (as opposed to the late-1950s setting of Happy Days).

Mork's egg-shaped spacecraft lands on Earth with a mission to observe human behavior. Mork is assigned his mission by Orson, his mostly-unseen and long-suffering superior (voiced by Ralph James), who has sent Mork to Earth to get him off Ork, due to the fact that humor is not permitted on Ork. To fit in, Mork dresses in Earth clothing (a suit, which he wears backwards). He befriends 21-year old Mindy (Pam Dawber) after she is stranded one evening after an argument with her boyfriend. Mork offers assistance, and Mindy, not seeing his back or the on-backwards suit, assumes he is a priest, mistaking his wardrobe gaffe for a priest's collar. Mindy is taken by Mork's willingness to listen (unknown to her, he is simply observing her behavior as part of his mission), and the two become friends. They walk back to her apartment, when Mindy sees his backwards suit and Mork's rather unconventional behavior for a priest. She asks him who he really is, and the innocent Mork, having not learned how to lie, tells her the truth.

After discovering Mork is an alien, Mindy promises to keep his true identity a secret and allows him to move into her attic. However, Mindy's father, Fred (Conrad Janis), expresses outrage that his daughter is living with a man (particularly one as bizarre as Mork). Fred's mother-in-law, Cora (Elizabeth Kerr), presents a much less conservative view, and approves of Mork and the living arrangement. Mindy and Cora also work at Fred's music store where Cora gives music lessons to a young child named Eugene (Jeffrey Jacquet), who becomes Mork's friend. Also seen occasionally were Mindy's snooty old friend from high school Susan (played by Morgan Fairchild) and the possibly-insane Exidor (played by Robert Donner).

Storylines usually centered on Mork's attempts to understand human behavior and American culture as Mindy helps him to adjust to life on Earth. It usually ends up frustrating Mindy as Mork can only do things according to Ork customs. For example, lying to someone, or not informing them it will rain is considered a practical joke (called "splinking") on Ork. At the end of each episode, Mork reports back to Orson on what he has learned about Earth. These end-of-show summaries allow Mork to comment humorously on social norms.

Mork's greeting was "Na-Nu Na-Nu" (pronounced "nah-noo nah-noo") along with a hand gesture similar to Mr. Spock's Vulcan salute from Star Trek combined with a handshake. It became a popular catchphrase at the time, as did "Shazbot" (Shozz-bot), an Orkan profanity that Mork used. Mork also said "kay-o" in place of okay.

This series was Robin Williams' first major acting break and became famous for Williams' use of his manic improvisational comedic talent. Williams would make up so many jokes during filming that eventually, the scripts had specific gaps where Williams was allowed to perform freely. In many scenes, Dawber apparently had to bite her lip to avoid laughing and ruining the take.

The series was extremely popular in its first season. The Nielsen ratings were very high, ranking in the top five, behind Laverne & Shirley (at #1) and Three's Company (at #2), both on ABC, which was the highest rated network in the US in 1978. The show tied with the series that spawned it, Happy Days, at #3.^[2][3] However, the network management sought to improve the show in several ways. This was done in conjunction with what is known in the industry as counterprogramming, a technique in which a successful show is moved opposite a ratings hit on another network. The show was moved from Thursdays, where it outrated CBS' The Waltons, to Sundays where it replaced the cancelled sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica. The show now aired against two highly-rated shows: NBC's anthology series entitled The Sunday Big Event and CBS' revamped continuation of All in the Family entitled Archie Bunker's Place.^[2]

Second season[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

The second season saw an attempt to seek younger viewers and premiered a new, disco arrangement of the gentle theme tune.

The characters of Fred and Cora were dropped from the regular cast. It was explained that Fred went on tour as a conductor with an orchestra, taking Cora with him. Fred and Cora made return appearances in later episodes. Recurring characters Susan and Eugene made no further appearances after season one and were never mentioned again.

New cast members were added. Among the new supporting characters were Remo and Jean DaVinci (Jay Thomas and Gina Hecht), a brother and sister from New York City who owned a new neighborhood deli where Mork and Mindy now spent a lot of time. Also added as regulars were their grumpy neighbor Mr. Bickley (who was seen occasionally in the first season and ironically worked as a verse writer for a greeting-card company) portrayed by Tom Poston, and Nelson Flavor (Jim Staahl), Mindy's snooty cousin who ran for city council.

The show's main focus was no longer on Mork's slapstick attempts to adjust to the new world he was in, but on the relationship between Mork and Mindy on a romantic level. Also, some of the focus was on Mork trying to find a steady paying job to pay his own way and support each other.

In a two-part, second-season episode, Raquel Welch appeared as Captain Nirvana of the Necrotons, an alien species of beautiful women that were enemies of the Orkans.

Due to the abrupt changes to the show and time slot, ratings slipped dramatically (from #3 to #27). The show was quickly moved back to its previous timeslot and efforts were made to return to the core of the series; unfortunately ratings did not recover.

Decline[link]

Third season[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

For the third season, Jean and Remo were retained as regulars.

Mindy's father and grandmother returned to the series. The show acknowledged this attempt to restore its original premise, with the third season's hour-long opener titled Putting The Ork Back in Mork.

Several new supporting characters were added to the lineup. Joining were two children from the day-care center where Mork worked named Lola and Stephanie. Also added was Mindy's close friend Glenda Faye Comstock (Crissy Wilzak). Wilzak lasted one season as a regular.

When these ideas failed to improve ratings, many wilder ideas were tried to attempt to capitalize on Williams' comedic talents. The season ended at #49 in the ratings.

Fourth season[link]

Despite the show's steady decline, ABC agreed to a fourth season of Mork, but executives wanted changes.

In the fourth season, Mork and Mindy were married. Jonathan Winters, one of Williams' idols, was brought in as their child, Mearth. Due to the different Orkan physiology, Mork laid an egg, which grew and hatched into the much older Winters.^[4] It had been previously explained that Orkans aged "backwards", thus explaining Mearth's appearance and that of his teacher, Miss Geezba (portrayed by then 11-year-old actress Louanne Sirota). Other attempts included the use of special guest stars. Unfortunately, those changes failed to increase ratings, and the show ended at a dismal No. 60. After four seasons, and 95 episodes, Mork & Mindy was canceled.

Characters[link]

• Mork (Robin Williams) - An alien from the planet Ork sent to observe human behavior. It was mentioned many times by Mork that he was grown from a test tube by the Orkan scientists.
• Mindy McConnell (Pam Dawber) - A female human who finds Mork and teaches him about human behavior. Eventually falls in love, gets married to Mork and raise an Orkan "child".
• Fred McConnell (Conrad Janis) - Mindy's father with conservative values.
• Grandma Cora Hudson^[5] (Elizabeth Kerr) - Mindy's less-conservative, progressive grandmother.
• Franklin Bickley (Tom Poston) - Mindy's upstairs neighbor.
• Mearth (Jonathan Winters) - "Child" of Mork and Mindy. Due to Orkan Physiology, Orkans age backwards starting with elderly adult bodies but with the mind of a child and regressing to feeble "old" young kids.
• Remo Davinci (Jay Thomas) - He is the co-owner of The New York Delicatessen.
• Jean Davinci (Gina Hecht) - Sister of Remo Davinci and the co-owner of The New York Delicatessen.
• Nelson Flavor (Jim Staahl) - He is the straight-laced cousin of Mindy with dreams of political power.
• Orson (voiced by Ralph James) - Mork's mostly-unseen and long-suffering superior who has sent Mork to Earth to get him off Ork due to the fact humor is not permitted on Ork.

Recurring characters[link]

• Susan Taylor (Morgan Fairchild) - Mindy's snooty ex-friend from high school. In the episode, "Mork's First Christmas", a glimpse into why Susan is such a shallow person was shown. As she and Mindy are turning out the lights to the apartment, Susan comments that it seems like Mork's first Christmas, wherein Mindy says that his family never celebrated Christmas. As Mindy enters her bedroom, Susan turns out the light saying (out of Mindy's earshot) "Mork and I have a lot in common" (This part of the scene is usually cut during reruns).
• Exidor (Robert Donner) - An eccentric man (with possible mental illness) who regards himself as a prophet. He is often seen wearing a flowing white robe with a blue sash. He knows that Mork is an alien but nobody believes him. He was the leader of a cult called "The Friends of Venus," of which he was the only member; he regularly engaged in conversations with imaginary members of his cult (such as "Pepe" and "Rocco"), but he was the only person who could see them. Most times he is found yelling at his imaginary cult. He makes the comment "Entourages can be the pits!". Later, since the Venusians had abandoned him, he began to worship O.J. Simpson. He also had a plan to become "Emperor of the Universe" by becoming a rock star, but his musical instrument of choice was the accordion. Exidor appears to be something of a squatter, as on at least two separate occasions he is present in homes not his own. Once, Mork visited Exidor at a very nice apartment where he supposedly lived with his imaginary girlfriend and her twin sister. Another time, he is "on vacation" in Mindy's family home, where he apparently believed there was a beach in the living room closet. ("Everybody out of the water! Can't you see that fin?") He eventually got married, in a "forest" which was Mindy's attic. Mindy thought his wife would be imaginary, but turned out to be a real woman named Ambrosia. Exidor became highly popular with audiences and prompted wild applause from the studio audience when entering a scene.
• Mr. Sternhagen (Foster Brooks) - Mindy's boss when she got a job at a local TV station. He is overbearing and demanding of Mindy when sober, but occasionally turns up drunk and cheerful (Brooks was a comedian noted for his "drunk" act).
• Glenda Faye Comstock (Crissy Wilzak) - Mindy's friend.
• Todd Norman "TNT" Taylor (Bill Kirchenbauer) - An obnoxious and arrogant womanizer. He later teaches Mork to drive at the FastLane Driving School.
• Cathy McConnell (Shelley Fabares) - Fred's new younger wife and Mindy's stepmother.
• Lola' and Stephanie (Amy Tenowich and Stephanie Kayano) - Two children from the daycare center Mork works at later in the series. Lola is a young philosopher and Stephanie is a chubby girl who loves to eat.
• Billy (Corey Feldman) - Also a daycare center child, he wants to be like his namesake Billy the Kid. Mork introduces him to the Orkan hero Squellman the Yellow.
• Arnold Wanker (Logan Ramsey) - The landlord of Fred and Mindy's music store.^[6][7] He dies in Fred's music store, but Mork (misinterpreting the comments made to his wife) brings him back to life (a "one-in-a-billion" chance).

[edit] Happy Days connection

This article or section may contain previously unpublished synthesis of published material that conveys ideas not attributable to the original sources. See the talk page for details. (October 2010)

Actor-director Jerry Paris was inspired to create the character of Mork after directing an unusual and memorable episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show in which van Dyke's Rob Petrie believed the Earth had been surreptitiously invaded by walnut-eating aliens who stole humans' thumbs and imaginations.^[8] When he moved on to direct Happy Days, he introduced Mork in a similarly atypical season-five episode entitled My Favorite Orkan.^[8][9] In it, Richie tells everyone he has seen a flying saucer, but no one else believes him. Fonzie tells him that people make up stories about UFOs because their lives are "humdrum". Then while Richie's at home, Mork walks in. He freezes everyone with his finger except Richie and says he was sent to Earth to find a "humdrum" human to take back to Ork. Richie runs to Fonzie for help. When Mork catches up to him, he freezes everyone, but finds himself unable to freeze Fonzie due to The Fonz's famous and powerful thumbs. Mork challenges Fonzie to a duel: finger vs. thumb. After their duel, The Fonz admits defeat, and Mork decides to take Fonzie back to Ork instead of Richie. Then, Richie wakes up and realizes he was dreaming. There is a knock on the door and much to Richie's dismay, it is a man who looks exactly like Mork except in regular clothes asking for directions.

When production on Mork & Mindy began, an extra scene was filmed and added to this episode for subsequent reruns. In the scene, Mork contacts Orson and explains that he decided to let Fonzie go, and was going to travel to the year 1978 to continue his mission. In the pilot episode of Mork & Mindy, Orson tells Mork that he is assigning him to study the planet Earth. Mork remembers that he's been to Earth before to collect a specimen (Fonzie) but he "had to throw it back, though. Too small."

Fonzie and Laverne of Laverne & Shirley appeared in the first episode of the show. In this segment, Mork relays to Mindy his trip to 1950s Milwaukee where Fonzie sets Mork up on a date with Laverne.

Mork returned to Happy Days in a 1979 episode in which Mork tells Richie that he enjoys coming to the 1950s because life is simpler and more "humdrum" than in the 1970s. Fonzie sees Mork and immediately tries to run away, but Mork freezes him and makes him stay. He eventually lets him go, but not before Fonzie asks Mork to reveal two things about the future: "cars and girls". Mork's response is "In 1979... both are faster." to which the Fonz replies "Whoa!" The episode is mostly a retrospective in which clips are shown as Richie and Fonzie try to explain the concepts of love and friendship to Mork.

DVD releases[link]

Paramount Home Entertainment and CBS DVD have released the first three seasons of Mork & Mindy on DVD in Regions 1, 2 and 4.

Nielsen ratings/Broadcast history[link]

Syndication[link]

Mork & Mindy was syndicated off network by Paramount beginning in the Fall of 1982. Many stations (nearly all independent stations) bought the program to use as a transition from cartoons to sitcoms in the 5 p.m. hour. Still, the show's ratings in syndication were disastrous. By 1983 most stations that owned the show rested it much of the time running it in the summer, during which time weaker programming tended to air back then. Very few stations renewed the show a few years later.^{[citation needed]} By 1987, the show only aired in a handful of TV markets. With the expansion of cable channels available, the show began airing on cable. Nick at Nite reran the show from March 4, 1991 to November 27, 1995.^[10] The show has also aired on FOX Family Channel in the late 1990s. It has aired in recent years on Me-TV and is now airing on The Hub.

Filming locations[link]

1619 Pine Street, Boulder, Colorado was used for the external shots of Mindy's house on Mork & Mindy

In an interview with Garry Marshall on June 30, 2006, Pat O'Brien mentioned that Mork & Mindy was filmed on Paramount stage 27, the former studio for his infotainment program The Insider.

The house from the show is located at 1619 Pine Street, just a few blocks away from the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder. This was also used in the show as Mindy's actual address in Boulder, as shown in the episode, "Mork Goes Public". The same house was later used for exterior shots on the series Perfect Strangers in Episode 21 of Season 5, "This Old House", where the show's main characters, cousins Larry and Balki, remodel a home for a fix-and-flip in hopes of huge profits. Often mistaken, it was not the house the cousins moved into with their wives during the final two seasons. In addition, it was used in three episodes of Family Matters as Myra's house.^{[11][unreliable source?][original research?]}

Spin-offs and adaptations[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

• In the United Kingdom, a long-running comic strip version was written by Angus P. Allan, illustrated by Bill Titcombe, and printed in children's television magazine, Look-In. Several British-produced annuals were also released that tied in with the series.
• A subsequent Saturday morning cartoon entitled Mork & Mindy/Laverne & Shirley/Fonz Hour ran on ABC from 1982 to 1983. The Mork & Mindy segments were a prequel with Mindy as a student in high school. The character of Eugene returned in this spin-off voiced by Shavar Ross.
• In 2005, a made-for-television movie entitled Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of Mork & Mindy aired on NBC. Chris Diamantopoulos portrayed Robin Williams while Erinn Hayes portrayed Pam Dawber.
• In 1979, a short-lived Brazilian version of the series appeared as Superbronco. It was produced by Rede Globo and starred comedian Ronald Golias and actress Liza Vieira.

See also[link]

• List of Mork & Mindy episodes
• 3rd Rock from the Sun

References[link]

External links[link]

• Mork & Mindy at the Internet Movie Database

Fonzie
Fonzie and Richie.
First appearance	"All the Way" (1974)
Last appearance	"Passages, Part II"
Portrayed by	Henry Winkler
Information
Gender	Male
Occupation	Mechanic, Part Owner of Arnold's Restaurant, Teacher (1956–)
Family	Vito Fonzarelli (father), Angela Fonzarelli (mother)
Children	Danny (adopted son)
Relatives	Grandma Nussbaum (grandmother), Chachi Arcola (cousin), Spike (cousin), Angelo (cousin)

Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli (also Fonzie, The Fonz, or Fonz) is a fictional character played by Henry Winkler in the American sitcom Happy Days (1974–1984). He was originally a secondary character, but eventually became the lead. By the mid 1970s, he dwarfed the other characters in popularity.^[1][2][3]

In 1999 TV Guide ranked him number 4 on its 50 Greatest TV Characters of All Time list.^[4]

Character traits and development[link]

Born in the fictional town of East Meadow, as a child he and his mother were abandoned by his father. The only advice Fonz remembered his father giving was, "Don't wear socks in the rain." When he disappeared, he left a locked box for his son, but not a key; Arthur did everything to open the box before finally running over it with his tricycle to reveal that it only contained the key. In the sixth season episode, "Christmas Time", a sailor delivers a Christmas present ostensibly from his father, who wishes to make amends. Fonzie is resentful, but at the end of the episode reads his father's letter explaining why he left and opens it. He also learns that the sailor was his father, who admits in the letter that he doubted he would have the courage to reveal the truth to his son. In a later episode, Fonz unexpectedly meets a woman he believes is his mother in a diner. She convinces him she is not, but in the end, she looks at a picture of Fonz as a small child and sighs.

Grandma Nussbaum appears to have been a primary caregiver to Fonzie through the age of six. When he (instead of Grandma Nussbaum) moves into the Cunningham's garage apartment—a plot development that helped precipitate his domination of the program—he turns his old apartment over to his grandmother. She is rarely referred to after that but she is featured in at least one later episode.^[5]

Grandma Nussbaum (and she alone) calls Fonzie "Skippy." She is also the grandmother of Fonzie's cousin Chachi. Fonzie's devotion to her foreshadows his ongoing devotion to mother figures throughout the show, particularly to Mrs. Cunningham.

When Mrs. C. feels her family no longer needs her, she visits Fonzie to confide in him.

Fonzie previously belonged to two different gangs, the Demons and the Falcons. He earned a particularly infamous reputation during this time, making many of his peers afraid of him. His redemption begins in the months before the series. The Fonz intervened in a rumble to which gang members had challenged high school student Richie Cunningham. Thanks to this intervention, Richie developed respect for Fonzie. Despite their differences, the two became best friends. While Richie learned the world from Fonz, Fonzie learned about the closeness of a tight-knit all-American family from the Cunninghams. Though at first looked down on and mistrusted (a result of his past and him being a high school dropout), he eventually became accepted by Richie's family, especially when he rented an attic room over their garage. Even Richie's father, Howard ("Mr. C." to Fonzie and the most resistant to him living with them), a pillar of the community, came to regard Fonzie with affection.

Fonzie regards Richie's two best friends, Ralph Malph and Potsie Webber, as nerds, largely because of their willingness to do virtually anything to fit in. Because Richie doesn't compromise his principles as easily and sticks to what's right and wrong, Fonzie doesn't subject Richie to this kind of treatment, and over time, comes to become fond of him.

At the start of the series, Fonzie is a high school dropout, prompting establishment characters in the show to see him as a rebel and bad influence. Fonzie is shown once attempting to go back to school with Richie, but he later decides it just isn't for him and drops out again. However, a few seasons later, Fonzie is secretly attending night school and ultimately earns his high school diploma. Throughout it all, Fonzie worked as an auto mechanic. He later became an auto mechanic instructor at the school and finally a full-fledged teacher.

Fonzie has a very high moral code. He always treats others with respect and sticks up for those that can't defend themselves. On the other hand, he often expects others to follow his example. After Chachi accidentally burns down Arnold's, for example, Fonzie very angrily yells at him for what he's done, even though other characters (including owner Al) understand it was just an accident.

Fonzie was consistently portrayed as being very successful with women. Very few women turned down his advances or made him nervous. While displaying somewhat womanizer behavior, Fonzie always treated whoever he happened to be dating with utmost respect. His success with women made him a frequent source of advice for Richie, Potsie, Ralph and Chachi. In Season 10, Fonzie maintained a long-term relationship with a single mother, but they would break up by the following year. Though he never married, he adopted a young orphan boy named Danny in the final season, completing his transformation from rebel to family man.

Despite his aloofness, Fonzie had more whimsical traits, such as a devotion to the Lone Ranger, whom he excitedly meets in an episode. While confident with women, he blushed whenever Richie's mother Marion ("Mrs. C." to Fonzie), who became like a surrogate mother to him, kissed him on the cheek. She was the only person Fonzie allows to address him by his first name, Arthur, which she always did affectionately. Richie's sister Joanie also became attached to Fonzie; he called her "Shortcake." In one episode, when it is revealed that Fonzie had never been christened as a baby, the Cunninghams stood by him at church so that he could finally be christened.

Fonzie, "Sticks" and Richie in his "office", 1975.

Fonzie self-appointed the men's washroom at Arnold's as his "office," where he and Richie and his friends would gather to work out developing problems. Written on the walls were phone numbers of his many girlfriends (There was a payphone in there, too). On opening night of the newly-built Arnold's (after Chachi burned the old one down), Al had a desk set up in the new men's washroom just for Fonzie. It included a desk telephone and organized pull-down sheet of all the phone numbers Al recovered from the fire.

Fonzie's rough past earns him a great deal of respect and fear from more antagonistic characters. Throughout the series he served as defender and protector of Richie, Ralph and Potsie whenever they were confronted by various bullies and ruffians. Various episodes indicate that the Fonz has extensive martial arts training. Even opponents larger than him are shown to back down from confrontations. Those who do fight him never come out on top. In one episode, he compares his nerve strike knowledge to that of a woman (Katmandu) while both use Ralph as a training dummy. In subsequent episodes, he out-dueled an expert fencer and mangled a gangster's prosthetic iron hand with one fist. Meanwhile, more sympathetic characters idolize Fonzie due to his success with women and his imperturbable "cool". Despite the respect he has earned, several people still antagonized him – including Officer Kirk (Ed Peck), an overzealous police officer who sometimes (always unsuccessfully) tried to frame Fonzie or run him out of town.

Richie is the only person in the series to have ever struck Fonzie without retaliation. In the episode "Welcome Home Richie", Fonzie finds Richie (who has just returned home from the Army) drowning his sorrows in a local bar after resigning himself to a job at the Milwaukee Journal rather than follow his dream to become a Hollywood screenwriter, largely to please his family. Richie punches Fonzie in the face after Fonzie tries to take him home, but puts Richie in a full nelson after Richie takes a swing at him a second time. "What, you think you're gonna do that to me a second time?" is what Fonzie says prior to pinning Richie to a pool table. They make up and Richie returns home and decides to go to California.

Fonzie would at times demonstrate an almost magical ability to manipulate technology with just a nudge, bump or a snap of his fingers for things such as starting a car, turning on lights, changing the song selection on a juke box or getting free sodas from a vending machine. Somewhat hyperbolic examples of this can be seen in his dreamlike encounter with the extraterrestrial Mork such as a form psychokinesis triggered from the snapping of his fingers to a laser resistant, Lightsaber-like thumb.

Fonzie thinks he is never wrong and, consequently, has trouble saying the word (as evidenced in the episode titled "Tell it to the Marines", which originally aired on December 16, 1975). He also has trouble saying the word, "sorry" (as evidenced in the episode titled "My Fair Fonzie", which originally aired on November 22, 1977).

Civic involvement[link]

Fonzie is involved with community projects. He endorses Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1956 presidential campaign. At a rally Fonzie declares, "Hey, he won the war, didn't he!?" and "I like Ike! My bike likes Ike!" Eisenhower carried Wisconsin with 62% of the vote easily defeating Adlai Stevenson (supported by Richie Cunningham's more-researched speech). In that election, Eisenhower got 457 electoral votes to 73 for Stevenson.^[6]

The Fonz becomes involved with other issues. Highlighting actor Henry Winkler's off-camera work, several episodes dealt with civil rights of people with disabilities. Concerned that students with epilepsy were denied their chance to attend public school and play sports, he intervenes to resolve the issue. Such advocacy builds on the previous season's episode where Fonzie hired wheelchair-bound Don King to work in his garage, promising to provide workplace accommodation for his employee.^[7][8]

Concerned about other equal opportunity issues, Fonz wants Milwaukee racially integrated. Personally friends with African Americans, he becomes upset when a party in which Richie will welcome Hawaii into the Union gets boycotted. People have grown anxious because it will be racially integrated. Initially wanting to force people to attend, Fonzie learns from Mr. Cunningham that people cannot change their minds overnight.^[9] He volunteers to go south with Al and Freedom Riders to help integrate a segregated diner. Normally flirtatious with women, Fonzie is instead disgusted that the waitress does not serve black customers. At one point he tells her that he cannot date her because of her compliance with the diner policy.^[5]

Production details[link]

Micky Dolenz, on the strength of his performance as a biker on an episode of Adam-12, was Garry Marshall's original choice to play Fonzie. Dolenz was several inches taller than the other cast members, and Marshall thought it might be better for Fonzie to be on the same eye level as the other characters. A search for a shorter actor as an alternate resulted in Henry Winkler landing the role.^[10] ABC's censors refused Fonzie a leather jacket, thinking it made him look like a hoodlum. Garry Marshall got them to allow Fonzie to wear his jacket close to his motorcycle (a Triumph TR5 Trophy) since a leather jacket was considered safety equipment. Marshall put him near his motorcycle as often as possible, even to ride it into Arnold's. When it wasn't possible to have the bike in the scene, Fonzie would wear a white windbreaker. Eventually, Fonzie was allowed to wear the leather jacket even when not near his bike. One of the jackets is in the Smithsonian Institution.^[11] Henry Winkler gets requests to "be the Fonz" in real life. "People expect me to be this guy who can walk into a dark room, snap my fingers, and turn on the lights. Or they want me to pound my fist on the hood of a car, and start the engine. I can't do it. I've tried! I think the silliest request I ever got was when somebody asked me to quiet the animals in a zoo." He always insisted in interviews that Fonzie was a role he played and that he was just an actor. According to Winkler, "The Fonz was everybody I wasn't. He was everybody I wanted to be."^[12] On Happy Days, Fonzie met Mork, an alien. Played by Robin Williams, Mork proved so popular that he received his spin-off series, Mork & Mindy. Fonzie, Richie Cunningham and Ralph Malph starred in a Saturday morning cartoon spin-off, The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang, where the characters, with a female character named Cupcake and a "Fonz dog" (an anthropomorphic dog named Mr. Cool that imitated the Fonz's thumbs-up "Aaay" catchphrase), traveled through time.

Trivia[link]

Statue[link]

In Downtown Milwaukee, the setting of the show, a statue of Fonzie has been erected near the Riverwalk. He is in his trademark thumbs-up pose.

Terms popularized[link]

The phrase "jumping the shark", a term originating from a melodramatic Happy Days scene in which Fonzie jumps on water skis over an enclosure of sharks, has become part of popular culture. The expression denotes the moment when a television series loses its credibility due to predictable repetition or contrived extensions of its theme, usually as a result of the writers being unable to maintain its quality indefinitely.^[13]

Fonzie had a habit of hitting electrical equipment to make it work, and this became known as the Fonzie touch, a term that is still in use today.^[14]

Reception[link]

Virgin Media included Fonzie in their "80s finest" segment and stated: "He was the coolest dude in suburban America on the classic sitcom Happy Days. He wore a jacket; he got all the chicks; he even made the thumbs-up sign look good."^[15]

See also[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Fonzie

• Fonzie (band) – Punk rock band from Portugal
• List of breakout characters

References[link]