Happy Days (TV Program)

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    ‘Happy Days’ Got Us Unstuck in Time

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    Mention “Happy Days” to TV viewers of a certain age (raises hand) and the first thing they remember might be not an episode or a scene or a catchphrase but a lunchbox. I’m specifically thinking of a cool Thermos-brand one — featuring Henry Winkler as the show’s pop-phenom greaser, Arthur Fonzarelli, a.k.a. Fonzie, a.k.a. the Fonz — which luckier ’70s kids than I got to schlep their PBJs to school in and which is now in the collection of the Smithsonian.To remember “Happy Days” is to remember your youth, which was also the function of “Happy Days” when it premiered in 1974. Well, at least it sort of was. Ostensibly the show appealed to grown-ups who were young during its time period — roughly, the mid-50s to mid-60s, over 11 seasons. But some of its most ardent fans were the lunchbox-toters toddling down someone else’s memory lane.Now “Happy Days” is 50 years old. Or is it? Time gets fuzzy when you enter the “Happy Days”-verse. In some ways the series never ended; it was just handed down through the culture like a vintage varsity jacket. It was repurposed as a nostalgia object by the Spike Jonze video for Weezer’s 1994 single “Buddy Holly.” In 1998, “That ’70s Show” set its own reverie, like “Happy Days,” among a gang of teenage friends in Wisconsin. Last year, that series’s sequel, “That ’90s Show,” created a ’90s version of the ’70s version of the ’50s.If all this math is too much, all you need to know is that there are only ever two periods in pop-culture nostalgia. There is Then (simple, innocent, fun), and there is Now (scary, corrupt, confusing). Eventually, Now becomes another Now’s Then, and the cycle repeats. “Happy Days” was nostalgic because the teenagers weren’t smoking weed. “That ’70s Show” was nostalgic because the teenagers were smoking weed. We rock around the clock and around the calendar, returning ever again to the beginning.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      ‘Happy Days’ Cast Looks Back on 50th Anniversary of Hit Show’s Premiere

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      In an interview, the surviving members of the original cast — Ron Howard, Donny Most, Anson Williams, Henry Winkler and Marion Ross — look back on the nostalgic hit, which premiered Jan. 15, 1974.On Tuesday night, Jan. 15, 1974, Richie, Potsie, Ralph and Fonzie entered our living rooms for a visit that would end up lasting more than a decade.Created by Garry Marshall, “Happy Days” arrived as a comic but earnest chronicle of adolescence in 1950s Milwaukee. It revolved around Richie Cunningham (Ron Howard) and his equally hormonal pals — Warren “Potsie” Weber (Anson Williams) and Ralph Malph (Donny Most) — along with the rest of the Cunninghams: Richie’s younger sister, Joanie (Erin Moran); mother, Marion (Marion Ross); and father, Howard (Tom Bosley). (Chuck, an older brother played by a series of actors, disappeared early in the show’s run.)“Happy Days” didn’t really take off with viewers until a couple of seasons later, when it was retooled into a broader multicamera sitcom oriented around the local tough turned mentor and guardian angel, Arthur Fonzarelli (Henry Winkler), known the world over as the Fonz. In the 1976-77 season, “Happy Days” became the most-watched show on television, supplanting “All in the Family.” It ran until the summer of 1984, a total of 11 seasons, while generating multiple spinoffs — “Laverne & Shirley,” “Mork & Mindy,” “Joanie Loves Chachi” — and untold tons of Fonzie merchandise.In December, the surviving members of the original core cast — Howard, 69; Most, 70; Williams, 74; Winkler, 78; and Ross, 95 — met in a video chat to commemorate the 50th anniversary of “Happy Days.” (Bosley died in 2010, Moran in 2017.) They reminisced about the special bond they felt at the time and have felt ever since, and how the elevation of Fonzie was integral to the show’s popularity. (Disclosure: I helped Williams on his campaign for mayor of Ojai, Calif., in 2022, and we are friends.)These are edited excerpts from the conversation.What were some of the factors that helped “Happy Days” become a hit?RON HOWARD We had great chemistry, and the writers knew how to write for that, but I also think that this collision of Garry Marshall’s sense of young guys and fun and energy and [the executive producer] Tom Miller’s sense of what an American family meant at that time was the secret sauce of the show.HENRY WINKLER We were telling the same stories of the actual time, of the ’70s, but because it was placed in the past, it never felt as if the moral of the story was hitting you on the head.ANSON WILLIAMS When they changed to live audience, three camera, that’s when the chemistry really came in, when we could work together as a team every day.HOWARD And Henry created this amazing character that captured everybody’s imagination. There was an older guy called Fonzie, but he had six lines in the first episode. Henry, from the first moment, began offering the show, the writers, the actors, this other possibility.Early in its run, “Happy Days” was retooled into a broader multicamera sitcom.ABC Photo Archives/Disney, via Getty ImagesThe show arrived during Watergate and the waning years of the Vietnam War. Do you think people were eager to re-embrace what they saw as the values of the past?WINKLER It is exactly what everybody is looking for all the time: They’re looking for warmth and peace, some comedy, some relief. Anson said Tom and Garry created a team by creating a baseball team. We traveled all over the world. We played together, and the person who plays together stays together.How would you describe Garry Marshall’s role as the series progressed?MARION ROSS He was so important to the show. He was the father of this whole group.WILLIAMS Garry was also very influential for all of us to wear other hats in the industry. He wanted us to use the Paramount lot as a college: Learn other areas, watch other directors, come to the writers’ room. I think the reason all of us today are still involved and productive is because of Garry. He wanted us to have the best lives we could possibly have.HOWARD I’ve been around a lot of very talented people over my career, even before “Happy Days.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better boss, a better creative manager of people and ideas than Garry Marshall.WINKLER He was generous but also was structured. He took no bad behavior. One time, when he was announcing the guest cast, I said, “Garry, we have to hurry up because I’m flying to Arkansas.” He nodded, put down the microphone, grabbed me by my shirt, put me against the wall and said, “Don’t ever do that again, because they have every right to be recognized like you.” He kept us in line.Beginning in its second season, “Happy Days” aired opposite “Good Times,” which also premiered in 1974 and became a big hit with its own pop culture phenom, Jimmie Walker. Were you ever concerned that your show might not make it?HOWARD We slipped a lot in our second season, and the decision was made to move to a three-camera show in front of an audience. I had never done that. It terrified me, but it turned out to be an exciting experience. The other idea was to move the Fonzie character front and center. It was kind of a reckoning for me because the focus of the show shifted, and yet that was our way to win. The only thing I ever said to the bosses or the executives is, “What’s happened here with Fonzie is great. Just make sure that you understand, too, that we have a real chemistry here, and we think of ourselves as an ensemble.” I’m glad that they made the moves they made, whether I was 100 percent comfortable with them at the time or not. It was thrilling to see the show take off.WINKLER They came to me at ABC and they wanted to change the title to “Fonzie’s Happy Days.” I said, “If you do that, it is an insult to everybody I’m working with. Why fix something that isn’t broken? We are really good. I live in the family and that’s why I’m successful. I’m asking you, if you never listen to me again, leave it alone.”Winkler and Scott Baio, center, during a rehearsal in 1981. “Happy Days” ran until 1984, a total of 11 seasons.Richard Creamer/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty ImagesRon, is it true that had they done that, you would have left the show?HOWARD I told them I would leave. I don’t think I contractually could have. But I told them if you really want to change the name of the show to that, I would rather go back to USC and film school and what I was doing before the show launched.How do you look back on the experience now?WINKLER I thank God I was part of this ensemble. It is a gift from heaven that fell in my lap.DONNY MOST I used to stay [on the set] and people would say, “You’re done, you can go home.” Because we were one-camera then. I wouldn’t go. Marion and Tom [Bosley], I’d be watching them in the kitchen scene and watch Henry in his scenes. I wanted to stay and absorb it all.Donny, how did it shape of the rest of your life and career?MOST I met my wife on the show my last season. She was an actress and we’re married 42 years. People say, “What do you remember most about the show? Which episode? Which scenes?” What I remember are the conversations we had in between shooting or before a show.I heard the four of you guys are on a text chain.HOWARD Yeah, it really kicked off in Covid. We’ve always stayed in touch — gotten together, had a meal, emails and so forth.Is it rare for co-stars in a TV show to remain close for decades?WINKLER I always thought if you work with somebody for six months, you make a movie, you’re going to have dinner with them when it’s over. Then you call them, and you’re still waiting for them to call you back. That didn’t happen with our show. Anson is an entrepreneur, has created products. Marion has gone on to act and do plays. Ron is a billion-dollar director. Don Most has a combo and travels the country as a crooner.WILLIAMS And a great crooner.It has to be at least partly because of the time of life when you got to know each other, right? If you had met in your 30s or 40s, it might not have happened that way.MOST I remember Ron comparing us to army guys who had been in the trenches together.HOWARD We were transforming together. We were growing up. Tom Bosley was teaching us how to get life insurance, homeownership loans. We had our first children and marriages.At the peak of the show’s popularity in the late 1970s, the Fonz was one of the most popular characters in the world. Wasn’t there some moment at a Dallas mall when the scale of it became clear?WINKLER There were 25,000 people. Don kept saying, “How are we going to get out of here? What happens if they all start moving forward?” For the first time, I used the character off the show. I looked at the crowd and said, [in the Fonz voice] “All right, listen up, you’re going to part like the Red Sea.” They honestly did. We got into the limousine and were able to take off.Henry, how did you deal with the popularity and when it was over?WINKLER I wrote about it in my memoir. I think there is an emotional component to dyslexia. For me, anyway. When everybody was talking to me, I knew it was practically good to keep the show going and we’re all making a living, but I couldn’t believe they were talking to me. My sense of self was so damaged from when I was younger. When the show was over, I sat in my office at Paramount and I had psychic pain. Because I had just lived Plan A. I didn’t have a Plan B. I didn’t even think about a Plan B. I’m sitting there not being able to be hired.In the heyday of “Happy Days,” the Fonz was one of the most popular characters in the world.ABC Photo Archives/Disney, via Getty ImagesAs the rest of you saw Henry getting so big and taking over the show, did it ever make you jealous?WILLIAMS People ask me that question and I’d say, “Are you kidding? The Fonz bought me a house.” He was probably the most popular actor in the world for a while but it never came to the set. As popular as he was, it didn’t change anything as a team. That’s a big deal.HOWARD You couldn’t be jealous of it because it was 1,000 percent earned. Here’s this guy who created this character, a guy we all immediately loved working with and were inspired by, and audiences dug it. Anything other than maximizing that character wouldn’t have made sense.Ron, what did you see on the show that helped you become a better director?HOWARD [The director] Jerry Paris. Brilliant at staging us, and when you’re doing a three-camera show in front of an audience, it is all about character movement and staging. He knew I wanted to direct and so it was a tutorial.MOST You cannot underestimate the contributions Jerry made to our show. He directed most of the episodes and was in there day in and day out. He was a genius at what he did.At the center of the show was the relationship between Richie and Fonzie, the strait-laced kid and the guy with the jacket. How did that develop?WINKLER We were brothers on the set. I could go somewhere, in my imagination — in the middle of a show — Ron would go with me like we were attached by a thread. It was unspoken.HOWARD I grew up on “The Andy Griffith Show” and used to see Andy playing the straight man role, whether it was with the Barney Fife character, Don Knotts, or with Frances Bavier [Aunt Bee]. I witnessed somebody who took a lot of pleasure and joy out of riding along with people who were going to get the laughs but needed it to be a partnership. I intuitively built upon that experience.WINKLER Ron, you were an unbelievable partner.HOWARD It was a blast. More

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      Book Review: ‘If You Would Have Told Me’ by John Stamos and ‘Being Henry’ by Henry Winkler

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      Candid memoirs by Henry Winkler and John Stamos reveal how lucky breaks — and Yale training, and a curling iron — made them into household names.IF YOU WOULD HAVE TOLD ME: A Memoir, by John Stamos with Daphne YoungBEING HENRY: The Fonz … and Beyond, by Henry Winkler with James KaplanWhen I worked for a casting director in the 1980s, the most fun part of the job was looking at the marked-up appointment sheet at the end of each day. Because film and TV auditions are intimate, often conducted over a desk, my boss had devised a code by which to secretly rate the sensitive actors sitting just inches away from her: CBNC (close but no cigar), LLIT (a little long in the tooth), and so on.Listen to This ArticleOpen this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.So you can imagine my surprise when, after a very chatty young actor known for playing snotty know-it-alls had auditioned one day, my boss abandoned her usual hieroglyphics and simply scrawled next to the actor’s name on the appointment sheet, in all caps, the seven-letter epithet that starts with “A” and ends with “E” and is synonymous with “backside.” Cowabunga!Neither of the smart and entertaining new memoirs by Henry Winkler and John Stamos inspires such odium — even if both TV stars have written books that traffic heavily in their authors’ lesser angels. These foibles elicited differing reactions from me — I wanted to give the adorably needy Winkler the kind of slow-burn hug that would both congratulate and pacify him; I wanted to abandon the businesslike and unidealistic Stamos in a black box theater with Stella Adler until he starts babbling about “making choices” and his “instrument.”Winkler’s essential m.o. in life, we learn, is to try to make everyone love him because his Holocaust survivor parents didn’t. After graduating from Yale Drama School, he got his breakout role as the too-cool-for-school Fonzie on “Happy Days” just six weeks after moving to Los Angeles.Playing the Fonz has been a meal ticket that has yielded Winkler interesting reactions from unlikely sources. “You do not have to tell me who you are,” Marcello Mastroianni made clear. “Finally, we meet,” Orson Welles uttered.On the flip side, Winkler has spent much of his post-Fonzie career trying not to be typecast — an obstacle not made easier by the fact that he didn’t learn he was severely dyslexic until he was 34. Winkler has made up for lost time by branching out into other pursuits — directing, producing, writing children’s books .But Winkler’s bigger obstacle, it seems, has been emotional immaturity: Until he started therapy seven years ago, he had intimacy problems, including not being able to tell his partner, Stacey, that he loved her. (Wonderfully, Stacey, now his wife, writes responses throughout the book, such as “There were times when I thought … ‘Now I have another child?’”)Winkler’s affective shortcomings throw his social anxiety and bouts of verbal diarrhea into high relief. After meeting Paul McCartney, Winkler, hoping to hang out with the former Beatle, called him 10 times without getting an answer; after chattering incessantly at Neil Simon’s house over dinner one night, he spent months summoning the courage to ask Simon over, only to be told twice that the playwright was “busy.” It’s this kind of candor — coming from someone who once duct-taped deli turkey to his shoes so his dog would play with him — that makes Winkler so lovable on the page. Under the juddering neediness lies a mensch: After Winkler had shot his role in “Scream,” he was told his name couldn’t be on the movie poster because the Fonzie connection would create the wrong expectations for a horror film. But, Hollywood being Hollywood, when the film came out Winkler was asked to do press. Which he agreed to. Winkler’s story is also aided by the fact that his deepest work as an actor — on the terrific recent HBO series “Barry” — came directly after the therapy sessions that helped Winkler with his intimacy issues. As my former boss might have written, VTEBNLPBI (very tidy ending, but no less powerful because of it).John Stamos, he of “Full House” and “E.R.” and Broadway, takes longer to warm to on the page. Stamos is blessed with some of Winkler’s candor — he admits to having had two nose jobs and having gone to Alcoholics Anonymous. However, it’s hard to rouse a head of steam for a thespian whose raison d’être is to “get famous” and who cops to “trying to achieve sex symbol status.” WIJJ (where is the joy, John)?Such dampening pragmatism seems to spill over even to Stamos’s love life. After saying of one actress more famous than he was that “it wouldn’t hurt to get to know her,” he dated her for almost a year. Later in the book, Stamos confesses that he used to want to partner up with “someone who has a bigger, more exciting life than mine to elevate me” so they’d be “a power couple always in the press,” but, once he started seeing his now-wife, Caitlyn, he realized that what he’d always needed was someone who’s cozy-making — someone who would tell him when he has “too much product in my hair.” Some Stamos fans may enjoy this kind of Malibu verismo, but I found myself repeatedly looking floorward in search of a dog to pet. That said, a few things save Stamos from hanging himself. For one, he’s great with period detail. When Stamos auditioned in the early ’80s to play the thief and urchin Blackie Parrish on “General Hospital,” he had his mother feather his hair with a curling iron — hair that was already streaked with Sun In. He rejected his father’s Members Only jacket in favor of his mother’s long leather jacket, and tied a yellow bandanna around his leg in homage to Chachi on “Happy Days.” Then he drove to the audition in an El Camino he calls “the El Co.” You can almost smell the Travolta.Second, we can chalk some of Stamos’s apparent lack of passion about acting up to the fact that music — specifically, drumming — seems to be his true love. After befriending at Disneyland a Beach Boys cover band called Papa Doo Run Run early in his career, Stamos proceeded to charm his way into the inner circle of the actual Beach Boys and then to play drums hundreds of times with the legacy pop group during the 1980s and ’90s. These sections of the book are some of its most exciting.Lastly, Stamos is a highly social creature. I enjoyed reading about his mentors, Garry Marshall and Jack Klugman; the charity work he has done with abused and neglected kids; and the strings-pulling that he did on behalf of both his first wife, the actress Rebecca Romijn, and his pal Don Rickles. Similarly, the chapter about his friend and “Full House” colleague Bob Saget, who died last year, is lovely.Speaking of tidy endings: Winkler, it turns out, was an early influence for Stamos. After meeting the affable fellow actor, Stamos decided, “I’m going to treat people the way he treats me.”ALAFWARHC: At last, a friend for Winkler who’ll always return his calls.Audio produced by More

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      New Memoirs by Henry Winkler and John Stamos

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      Candid memoirs by Henry Winkler and John Stamos reveal how lucky breaks — and Yale training, and a curling iron — made them into household names.IF YOU WOULD HAVE TOLD ME: A Memoir, by John Stamos with Daphne YoungBEING HENRY: The Fonz … and Beyond, by Henry Winkler with James KaplanWhen I worked for a casting director in the 1980s, the most fun part of the job was looking at the marked-up appointment sheet at the end of each day. Because film and TV auditions are intimate, often conducted over a desk, my boss had devised a code by which to secretly rate the sensitive actors sitting just inches away from her: CBNC (close but no cigar), LLIT (a little long in the tooth), and so on.Listen to This ArticleOpen this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.So you can imagine my surprise when, after a very chatty young actor known for playing snotty know-it-alls had auditioned one day, my boss abandoned her usual hieroglyphics and simply scrawled next to the actor’s name on the appointment sheet, in all caps, the seven-letter epithet that starts with “A” and ends with “E” and is synonymous with “backside.” Cowabunga!Neither of the smart and entertaining new memoirs by Henry Winkler and John Stamos inspires such odium — even if both TV stars have written books that traffic heavily in their authors’ lesser angels. These foibles elicited differing reactions from me — I wanted to give the adorably needy Winkler the kind of slow-burn hug that would both congratulate and pacify him; I wanted to abandon the businesslike and unidealistic Stamos in a black box theater with Stella Adler until he starts babbling about “making choices” and his “instrument.”Winkler’s essential m.o. in life, we learn, is to try to make everyone love him because his Holocaust survivor parents didn’t. After graduating from Yale Drama School, he got his breakout role as the too-cool-for-school Fonzie on “Happy Days” just six weeks after moving to Los Angeles.Playing the Fonz has been a meal ticket that has yielded Winkler interesting reactions from unlikely sources. “You do not have to tell me who you are,” Marcello Mastroianni made clear. “Finally, we meet,” Orson Welles uttered.On the flip side, Winkler has spent much of his post-Fonzie career trying not to be typecast — an obstacle not made easier by the fact that he didn’t learn he was severely dyslexic until he was 34. Winkler has made up for lost time by branching out into other pursuits — directing, producing, writing children’s books .But Winkler’s bigger obstacle, it seems, has been emotional immaturity: Until he started therapy seven years ago, he had intimacy problems, including not being able to tell his partner, Stacey, that he loved her. (Wonderfully, Stacey, now his wife, writes responses throughout the book, such as “There were times when I thought … ‘Now I have another child?’”)Winkler’s affective shortcomings throw his social anxiety and bouts of verbal diarrhea into high relief. After meeting Paul McCartney, Winkler, hoping to hang out with the former Beatle, called him 10 times without getting an answer; after chattering incessantly at Neil Simon’s house over dinner one night, he spent months summoning the courage to ask Simon over, only to be told twice that the playwright was “busy.” It’s this kind of candor — coming from someone who once duct-taped deli turkey to his shoes so his dog would play with him — that makes Winkler so lovable on the page. Under the juddering neediness lies a mensch: After Winkler had shot his role in “Scream,” he was told his name couldn’t be on the movie poster because the Fonzie connection would create the wrong expectations for a horror film. But, Hollywood being Hollywood, when the film came out Winkler was asked to do press. Which he agreed to. Winkler’s story is also aided by the fact that his deepest work as an actor — on the terrific recent HBO series “Barry” — came directly after the therapy sessions that helped Winkler with his intimacy issues. As my former boss might have written, VTEBNLPBI (very tidy ending, but no less powerful because of it).John Stamos, he of “Full House” and “E.R.” and Broadway, takes longer to warm to on the page. Stamos is blessed with some of Winkler’s candor — he admits to having had two nose jobs and having gone to Alcoholics Anonymous. However, it’s hard to rouse a head of steam for a thespian whose raison d’être is to “get famous” and who cops to “trying to achieve sex symbol status.” WIJJ (where is the joy, John)?Such dampening pragmatism seems to spill over even to Stamos’s love life. After saying of one actress more famous than he was that “it wouldn’t hurt to get to know her,” he dated her for almost a year. Later in the book, Stamos confesses that he used to want to partner up with “someone who has a bigger, more exciting life than mine to elevate me” so they’d be “a power couple always in the press,” but, once he started seeing his now-wife, Caitlyn, he realized that what he’d always needed was someone who’s cozy-making — someone who would tell him when he has “too much product in my hair.” Some Stamos fans may enjoy this kind of Malibu verismo, but I found myself repeatedly looking floorward in search of a dog to pet. That said, a few things save Stamos from hanging himself. For one, he’s great with period detail. When Stamos auditioned in the early ’80s to play the thief and urchin Blackie Parrish on “General Hospital,” he had his mother feather his hair with a curling iron — hair that was already streaked with Sun In. He rejected his father’s Members Only jacket in favor of his mother’s long leather jacket, and tied a yellow bandanna around his leg in homage to Chachi on “Happy Days.” Then he drove to the audition in an El Camino he calls “the El Co.” You can almost smell the Travolta.Second, we can chalk some of Stamos’s apparent lack of passion about acting up to the fact that music — specifically, drumming — seems to be his true love. After befriending at Disneyland a Beach Boys cover band called Papa Doo Run Run early in his career, Stamos proceeded to charm his way into the inner circle of the actual Beach Boys and then to play drums hundreds of times with the legacy pop group during the 1980s and ’90s. These sections of the book are some of its most exciting.Lastly, Stamos is a highly social creature. I enjoyed reading about his mentors, Garry Marshall and Jack Klugman; the charity work he has done with abused and neglected kids; and the strings-pulling that he did on behalf of both his first wife, the actress Rebecca Romijn, and his pal Don Rickles. Similarly, the chapter about his friend and “Full House” colleague Bob Saget, who died last year, is lovely.Speaking of tidy endings: Winkler, it turns out, was an early influence for Stamos. After meeting the affable fellow actor, Stamos decided, “I’m going to treat people the way he treats me.”ALAFWARHC: At last, a friend for Winkler who’ll always return his calls.Audio produced by More

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      Cindy Williams’s 6 Best Moments Onscreen

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      Her comedic work in “Laverne & Shirley” was career-defining. But the actress had other chops, too. Here’s a look at some of her best work and where to see it.To most people, the actress Cindy Williams, who died on Wednesday at age 75, was synonymous with Shirley Feeney of the hit 1970s and ’80s sitcom “Laverne & Shirley,” a spinoff of “Happy Days” about two unattached women in the 1950s and ’60s. But Williams was much more than that character. She had serious dramatic chops, as evidenced in her early film work. And as a comic actor, she demonstrated a Lucille Ball-like ability to combine sweetness and slapstick.Still, Shirley was a career-defining role — a lively, sometimes demure, sometimes daring bottle-capper at Shotz Brewery, in Milwaukee. The show resurrected a vintage style of zany comedy that freed up Williams and her co-star, Penny Marshall, to act both more adult and more childish at the same time. Audiences ate it up, and the show ran for eight seasons.Of the two lead characters, Shirley was the more relatable, restrained of the two, which made her moments of cutting loose just that much more memorable: Watch her hungry and diving for food on the floor in “Guinea Pigs” (Season 2, Episode 14); going agro in “Tag Team Wrestling” (Season 3, Episode 2); drunk-crawling across the dinner table in “Shirley and the Older Man” (Season 4, Episode 24); or panicking while chained to a giant computer, in protest of the local power company, in “The Right to Light” (Season 5, Episode 17).Since much of her best work was steeped in nostalgia, it seems only fitting to look back at a few career highlights, with some tips on where to stream them.‘American Graffiti’ (1973)In this hit boys-coming-of-age movie from George Lucas that set off a wave of 1950s and ’60s nostalgia (see “Happy Days,” two years later), Cindy Williams pulled off the difficult trick of standing out in a stardom-bound cast that includes Richard Dreyfuss, Harrison Ford and Ron Howard. In it, Williams plays a high-school head cheerleader who is losing her class-president boyfriend (Howard) as he heads off to college. In one great scene, he proposes that they see other people while he’s away; in an even better one, set at a school dance, she breaks the news to him that she has always been the controlling force in their relationship. You might be tempted to follow this memorable pair into adulthood in the sequel “More American Graffiti,” but don’t bother — it’s better if they stay 17 forever. (Read the original review of “American Graffiti” here.)Rent it on Amazon, Apple, Google Play, Vudu, YouTube and other major platforms.‘The Conversation’ (1974)In her earliest roles, Williams was often cast as a best friend or ingénue — a sweet slip of a girl and not much more. But in this paranoid thriller from Francis Ford Coppola, she showed us something darker. Playing one half of a young couple being covertly recorded by Gene Hackman’s security pro Harry Caul, Williams sounds at first — on audio tape — like the embodiment of innocence. But as Harry applies filters to clean up his recordings, the carefully nuanced nature of Williams’s line readings slowly becomes clear, and we’re left wondering whether her character might be the spider in this web of deceit. (Read the original review here.)Stream it on Showtime; rent it on most major platforms.‘Happy Days’ (1975)Season 3, Episode 10: ‘A Date With Fonzie’Following her dramatic turn in “The Conversation,” Williams was tapped to join her comedy-writing partner, Penny Marshall, in what was intended to be a one-time guest appearance on this popular sitcom set in the 1950s. In the episode’s story line, Fonzie (Henry Winkler) enlists Laverne (Marshall) and Shirley (Williams) to go on a double date with him and Richie (Howard), for whom Shirley was thought to be an easy conquest. Williams had a relaxed chemistry with Howard (who played her boyfriend in “American Graffiti”), but this time, her character got to enjoy herself. The Shirley persona freed Williams up: She was funny, cute and sexy, and she had a mean right hook. Naturally, Richie — and the audience — wanted to see more of her and her bestie, which in TV-world meant a spinoff featuring the twosome was in order.Stream it on Paramount+.‘Laverne & Shirley’Season 5, Episode 25 (‘The Diner’)“Laverne & Shirley” helped fine-tune a certain type of sitcom convention — the female duo, the “hangout” comedy — but if you want to do a deep dive, stick with Seasons 1 to 5. Once Laverne and Shirley move from Milwaukee to California in Season 6, the quality declines.For one of the funniest episodes, head over to “The Diner,” where the gals (briefly) take over the diner left to Lenny (Michael McKean) by his late uncle Lazlo (renamed Dead Lazlo’s Place, where you can get a Dead Lazlo Burger). It’s got the physical comedy: Laverne cooks and Shirley serves, resorting to carrying items to tables with her mouth. It’s also got some of the best lines, especially when the customers don’t even have the decency to call Shirley by her right name. You’ll want to plead, along with Laverne, “Please don’t harass Betty, please!”Stream much of Season 1 to 5 free on Pluto; bootlegs of individual episodes are easy to find online.Season 4, Episode 3: ‘Playing the Roxy’One of the best things about Season 4 is how many Shirley-centric episodes there are. In “Playing the Roxy,” the gal pals were reading a trashy story about a stripper before Shirley hits her head; suddenly, she believes she is that stripper, the best exotic dancer in North America. If Shirley’s body is a temple, Roxy’s is an amusement park — and Williams throws herself into the role with gusto, practicing bumps and grinds against a doorframe before staging an elaborate burlesque performance. If anything signaled that Williams wasn’t content to play it safe, it was this.Season 4, Episode 7: ‘A Date With Eraserhead’Granted, some of the sitcom’s plots are outlandish and require a suspension of disbelief. But then, occasionally, some are incredibly realistic. What would your best friend do if she believed your boyfriend was cheating on you? In “A Date With Eraserhead,” Laverne confronts Shirley’s beau, Carmine (Eddie Mekka), on her friend’s behalf (“I’ll hold him, you hit him”), only to learn that the couple has “an understanding” — that’s to say, an open relationship. This episode may not have the usual comic centerpiece, but it feels more true to the relationships at the core of the series, and Williams gets to show a few sides of Shirley that we might not have suspected were there, including heartbreak, jealousy and perhaps even love. More

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      Cindy Williams, Star of ‘Laverne & Shirley,’ Dies at 75

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      The show, in which Ms. Williams and Penny Marshall played roommates who worked in a Milwaukee brewery, was a spinoff of “Happy Days” and became a staple of 1970s television.Cindy Williams, an actress best known for her role on the 1970s slapstick sitcom “Laverne & Shirley,” died on Wednesday in Los Angeles. She was 75.Her death followed a brief illness, her assistant, Liza Cranis, said by phone on Monday, adding that she had died “peacefully.” No cause was given.With Penny Marshall, Ms. Williams starred in the sitcom, which ran from 1976 to 1983 and was a spinoff of the television show “Happy Days.” It followed two young single women working at a Milwaukee brewery in the 1950s. Ms. Williams played Shirley Feeney, an upbeat and demure complement to Ms. Marshall’s brash Laverne DeFazio.“Laverne & Shirley” ran for eight seasons and, for several years, was among the highest-rated shows in the country. Ms. Williams appeared in more than 150 episodes but left in the final season of the show, after considerable on-set tension between her and Ms. Marshall. Ms. Marshall died in 2018, also at age 75.Ms. Williams is survived by her children, Emily and Zak Hudson, who, in a statement on Monday, described their mother as “one of a kind,” noting her sense of humor and “glittering spirit.” Her marriage to the musician Bill Hudson ended in divorce.Ms. Williams signing copies of her book “Shirley, I Jest! A Storied Life” in 2015.Beck Starr/Getty ImagesBefore Ms. Williams debuted in the role that would most define her career, she was cast in the George Lucas film “American Graffiti,” released in 1973. For her portrayal of Laurie in the film, she earned a nomination for best supporting actress from the British Academy Film Awards. The next year, she was in the Francis Ford Coppola film “The Conversation.” American Graffiti” and “The Conversation” garnered best picture nominations at the Academy Awards.Ms. Williams also auditioned for the role of Princess Leia in the “Star Wars” franchise, a part that eventually went to Carrie Fisher.Later in her career, Ms. Williams was a guest star on well-known television shows such as “Law and Order: SVU” and “7th Heaven” and earned several stage credits including the Broadway production of “The Drowsy Chaperone,” in which she briefly played Mrs. Tottendale.But she was best known as Shirley.“She was sort of an optimist, kindhearted, repressed, temperamental, fun-loving person,” Ms. Williams once said of her character. “I always saw her as having this fear,” she added, noting that while Shirley’s desires were never explicitly played out onscreen, both Laverne and Shirley strove for the comforts of modern life.“That was the sadness of those characters to me,” Ms. Williams added. “What if that never happens, then where are we? And that was sort of my life, too.”Born in Van Nuys, Calif., a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles, on Aug. 22, 1947, Cynthia Jane Williams became interested in acting during high school and attended Los Angeles City College, where she majored in theater arts, according to biographies provided by Ms. Cranis. “I’m what you might call a ‘Valley Girl,’” Ms. Williams wrote in her 2015 memoir, “Shirley, I Jest! A Storied Life.”She worked at a pancake house, as well at the Whisky a Go Go nightclub in Hollywood, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Ms. Williams went on to perform in commercials for deodorant and sunglasses, some of which never aired, she said in an interview with the Television Academy. Her early television roles included parts on “Room 222,” “Nanny and the Professor” and “Love, American Style.”“I always played the lead’s best friend, always,” she said.Then known for her seemingly guileless American sweetheart presence, Ms. Williams turned that expectation inside out with an exceptionally sly performance in “The Conversation.” In the film, the viewer pieces together her words from a surreptitiously recorded conversation, expecting her to be a helpless victim, not the calculating femme fatale that she is. More dramatic roles might have followed, but she turned to situation comedy instead.Ms. Williams and Ms. Marshall were writing partners at Zoetrope, a production company founded by Mr. Coppola, where they were working on a prospective TV spoof for the bicentennial, when Garry Marshall, Ms. Marshall’s brother, asked if the two women would guest star on his show “Happy Days” as easy dates for Fonzie (Henry Winkler) and Richie (Ron Howard). Fonzie claimed Laverne for himself, while Shirley was meant for Richie, reuniting Ms. Williams with her “American Graffiti” co-star, Mr. Howard, who had played her boyfriend in that film.The episode of “Happy Days,” which aired in 1975, was so popular that Mr. Marshall pitched Fred Silverman, a top executive at ABC, about doing a comedy starring the two, arguing that there were no other shows about blue-collar women.The opening credits of “Laverne and Shirley” featured a school rhyme and a heartwarming mission statement that summed up the duo’s playful, hopeful ethic that anyone could relate to: They might just be young working-class women in the big city, but they are going to make their dreams come true.Laverne and Shirley’s high jinks were reminiscent of those of Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz on “I Love Lucy,” but, for this classic comedy duo, Shirley was (usually) the calmer and dreamier of the pair. With her breezy personality, Ms. Williams demonstrated an easy flair for portraying the awkwardness of youth in broad physical comedy.In a review of “Laverne & Shirley” in 1976, John J. O’Connor, the television critic for The New York Times, wrote: “Both title roles are played to a splendid noncondescending turn. Miss Williams and Miss Marshall touch all the best bases, a bit of Barbara Stanwyck in “Stella Dallas” here, a bit of Giùlietta Masina in “La Strada’ there, touches of Lucille Ball, Eve Arden and that crowd all over the place.”Though the actresses shared the screen, Ms. Williams sometimes felt that her co-star got preferential treatment because of her connection to Mr. Marshall. For her part, Ms. Marshall felt that Ms. Williams’s husband at the time, Mr. Hudson, who wanted to be a producer, was too demanding.At the beginning of the show’s final season, viewers watched Ms. Williams marry Walter Meeney — and become Shirley Feeney Meeney. Soon afterward, however, her long run had an ignominious end, with the plot claiming Shirley had followed her new husband overseas, leaving only a note to say goodbye. In reality, the actress had hoped to work with the show to hide and accommodate her pregnancy. She later sued for $20 million; the case was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.“‘Laverne & Shirley’” ended abruptly for me,” Ms. Williams wrote in her memoir. “When we shot the first episode, I was four months pregnant. But when it came time to sign the contract for that season I realized that the studio had scheduled me to work on my delivery due date.”“In the wink of an eye, I found myself off the show,” she wrote. “It was so abrupt that I didn’t even have time to gather my personal things.”In 2013, Ms. Williams and Ms. Marshall reunited for an appearance on the Nickelodeon series “Sam & Cat,” a modern show that riffed on the themes of “Laverne & Shirley” and starred Jennette McCurdy and Ariana Grande.Ms. Williams published her memoir two years later, and last year she completed a national theater tour of a one-woman show, “Me, Myself and Shirley.” In the show, she chronicled her life in Hollywood as well as her relationship with Ms. Marshall.“You couldn’t slip a playing card in between us because we just were in rhythm,” she said last year in an interview with NBC. “I couldn’t have done it with anyone else.”Sheelagh McNeill More

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      Warren Berlinger, Film and Television Character Actor, Dies at 83

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best MoviesBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest TheaterBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWarren Berlinger, Film and Television Character Actor, Dies at 83Mr. Berlinger, who had dozens of roles in a career that spanned more than six decades, appeared in “Happy Days” and “The Cannonball Run.”Warren Berlinger from a 1978 episode of the television series “Operation Petticoat.”Credit…Walt Disney Television via Getty ImagesBy More