January 15, 1974: "Happy Days" Premieres

Top row, left to right: Henry Winkler, Tom Bosley, Anson Williams.

Bottom row, left to right: Donny Most, Erin Moran,

Marion Ross and Ron Howard.

January 15, 1974. 50 years ago: Happy Days premieres on ABC. The situation comedy is designed to ride the nostalgia wave for the 1950s, and becomes one of the most successful shows in the network's history.

The show was set 19 years in the past: When the show began, it was definitively in 1955; when the show was finally wrapped up in 1984, characters were wearing T-shirts that said, "Kinks '65 World Tour."

The show was based around the Cunninghams, who lived in a suburban part of Milwaukee. Howard (played by Tom Bosley) owned a hardware store downtown. His wife, Marion (Marion Ross), was a housewife. They had a pair of teenage children, Richie (Ron Howard) and Joanie (Erin Moran). They often found it difficult to change with the times, but they were good parents, never going too far and alienating their kids.

(Originally, there was another son, Chuck, played first by Gavan O'Herlihy, then by Randolph Roberts. He appeared in only 11 episodes over the 1st 2 seasons. In the show's final scene, Howard mentions his 2 children, not 3. The character's disappearance gave rise to the term "Chuck Cunningham Syndrome," used to describe TV characters that disappear from shows without an in-universe explanation and are nowhere to be seen or mentioned again.)

Richie has 2 best friends: Ralph Malph (Donny Most) and Warren "Potsie" Webber (Anson Williams), and they're typical suburban 1950s teenage boys, discovering that they're not quite cool enough to have the adventures they want.

Never in the history of television has a "breakout character" more succeeded. Enter Arthur Fonzarelli (Henry Winkler), a.k.a. "Fonzie" or "The Fonz." He was the coolest man on television, with his perfect hair, his T-shirt, his leather jacket, his motorcycle, and his mannerisms. Catchphrase? He had "Sit on it," which, in hindsight, sounds like a safe way to say, "Shove it up your ass." But the Fonz was so cool. How cool was he? He was so cool, he didn't need no catchphrase: He just gave a thumbs-up sign, and said, "Ayyyy!"

He was so cool, he could get any girl he wanted. He was so cool, he would walk into Arnold's, the local malt-shop hangout, and turn on the lights by pounding his fist on the wall. He could start the jukebox the same way.

In spite of his "hood" image, Fonzie showed the elder Cunninghams sufficient respect, to the point where Marion considered him part of the family, and Howard let him rent the room above the garage. He looked after Richie, and, later, Joanie.

Arnold's was owned and operated by Matsuo Takahashi (Pat Morita). He bought it from a man named Arnold, and kept the name when he realized how much it would cost to have the name changed to "Takahashi's." In Season 4, Arnold's was bought by "Big Al" Delvecchio (Al Molinaro). In spite of the name, he was not a mobster, and became an extra father to the show's "kids."

Eventually, Richie got a steady girlfriend, Lori Beth Allen (Lynda Goodfriend), whom he married. After Season 7, in 1981, Ron Howard left the show, to focus on his directing career. Don Most (as Donny now preferred to be called) also left. They returned to for a reunion episode in the final season, and in the final episode.

So, rather than cancel the show, the writers shifted the focus from Richie and his friends, including the Fonz, to Richie's sister, Joanie and her friends, including the Fonz and his younger cousin, Charles "Chachi" Arcola (Scott Baio), whom Joanie dated, and finally married in the show's final episode, on July 19, 1984.

The show never really recovered from the shift from the focus on Richie to the focus on Joanie. Such a moment in a show's history -- often attributed to a marriage, a birth, a death, a major character leaving, a shift in location, and so on -- is often called "jumping the shark." The expression comes from the finale of the 3-part Season 4 opener, "Hollywood," when the gang goes to Los Angeles. Fonzie makes a water-ski jump over a penned-in area with a live shark in it.

Except Happy Days was still high in the ratings for another 4 years, until the Richie/Joanie shift. So the show's "Jump the Shark Moment" was not when Fonzie jumped the shark.

In 1976, Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams guest-starred. Penny was the sister of series creator Garry Marshall, and had previously played recurring characters on The Odd Couple and Chico and the Man. Cindy -- as well as eventual Three's Company star Suzanne Somers, Jaws star Richard Dreyfuss, and Star Wars icon Harrison Ford -- appeared with Howard in the film American Graffiti. Their appearance proved so popular, a spinoff was created, Laverne & Shirley, also set in Milwaukee in the late 1950s, before moving to Los Angeles in 1981 (1965, show-time, and that was their "shark-jump"). 

In 1978, Robin Williams guest-starred as an alien, Mork from Ork. His appearance was so popular, it led to a spinoff, taking place in the present day, Mork & Mindy, which lasted 4 years. Another spinoff, Joanie Loves Chachi, in which those characters left Milwaukee to become stars in Chicago, failed as much as the characters did, and they returned for one more season, reconciling and marrying in the final episode.

Pat Morita died in 2005, Tom Bosley in 2010, Robin Williams in 2014, Al Molinaro in 2015, series creator Garry Marshall in 2016, Erin Moran in 2017, Penny Marshall in 2018, and Cindy Williams in 2023. As of January 15, 2022, Ron Howard, Henry Winkler, Marion Ross, Don Most, Anson Williams, Lynda Goodfriend and Scott Baio are still alive.

Anson Williams was not related to either Cindy Williams or Robin Williams. He was, however, related to the inventor of the anti-choking maneuver: His birth name was Anson William Heimlich.