My Days Page 17

  “Okay, everybody, I need you to listen to me,” he began. “You’re all doing a great job, but we have got to start really buckling down and cooperating with one another and really taking this serious, because we have a big hit on our hands!”

  We all broke out in applause, and while I don’t remember much of anything else he or anyone else said during that meeting, it was the first time I allowed myself to really believe that my dream of being a star of a television show was becoming a reality.

  Our ratings were strong, and by our third season, when we were a genuine hit, the producers came to each of the cast members and, instead of having us sign back on for just another season, asked us to sign for two seasons. By then, we had moved on from doing Happy Days as a one-camera show to doing it with the traditional three-camera setup in front of a live studio audience. Many television aficionados know that it is widely believed that Desi Arnaz created the three-camera system for I Love Lucy, but television historians have argued that this system actually goes back to the late 1940s, when it was employed in the filming of such shows as NBC’s Public Prosecutor, CBS’s Silver Theatre and a few others.

  No matter who really gets the credit for that multi-camera format, all I know is incorporating that concept, along with doing the show in front of a live audience, dramatically changed both the way Happy Days was done and how it was presented to viewers. The dynamic of doing the show in front of an audience shifted the tone and gave it a heightened energy, a different texture and a different pace, which were all for the better.

  All of us in the principal cast, with the exception of Ron and Erin, had worked in the theater, so even though doing a television show, with the many stops and starts, is very different than doing a play, having the chance to be in front of real live people—to feed off their energy and reactions—was something we all loved. Garry also loved having the audience as a sounding board. He was always very in tune to the audience’s reactions to everything, and if ever a line or a joke or a scene wasn’t working, he would engage the audience, asking them for their thoughts, opinions and input. I always thought he was very smart to do that.

  As much as we all loved having an audience, oh, did they love having the opportunity to come in and see how it all came together. We always seemed to attract a young crowd for the tapings, and as the years went by and Henry broke out as “the Fonz,” becoming America’s heartthrob and one of the country’s biggest stars, our audiences became younger and wilder. They would line up for hours before being escorted into Stage Nineteen and would just go crazy when, before we began taping, Garry would welcome them and introduce the cast members. We were all received with love and warmth, but it was a completely different thing when it came to Henry. It was like Beatlemania, with all these young girls screaming and going wild.

  Fonziemania had swept the nation. Henry had gone from being a secondary character with hardly any lines to being the central focus of many episodes. And his image was on everything, from posters and lunch boxes to pillows, drinking glasses and just about anything else they could figure out how to put a person’s image on.

  Most actors by nature are born with healthy egos, and while I always felt that we all kept ours in check during the run of Happy Days and that there was never any serious resentment over the fact that Henry had risen to be the show’s breakout star, it did at times make the rest of us feel like we were supporting players. His fame was, of course, great for all of us, but along with being humans, we were still those actors with healthy egos, and at one time or another each of us went through “Fonzie overload.” I will never forget the day when, though the show was sitting strongly in the number one slot in the ratings, a dejected Ron Howard came into my dressing room and flopped into a chair, looking like he had lost every friend he ever had.

  “What’s wrong?” I said as this brief pulse of fear shot through my body and I wondered if anything had happened to any of our cast or a member of his family.

  “Ya know, Marion, there are just some mornings that I hate having to get out of bed and come to work,” he said with this out-of-character look of disgust on his face.

  “Why, dear?” I said, turning to him. “What’s bothering you?”

  “It’s just all about the Fonz. Every damn day it’s the Fonz this and the Fonz that. There are other people involved with this show other than him, ya know!”

  I know that, just like the rest of us, it was difficult for Ron to express that, because he held no resentment toward Henry. It was not Henry, but the character of Fonzie, whom we all at times resented, because he sucked the air out of everything associated with the show. While I know each of us felt that way from time to time, we rarely really came out and verbalized that complaint to one another, and certainly not to the producers, who were simply capitalizing on having a show that was giving the world one of the most iconic characters in television and pop culture history. We all, pragmatically, knew and understood the fact that a big part of our show’s success had to do with the character of Fonzie, and that was why we usually let our personal feelings about the character overshadowing everything just pass. One of the things that made that much easier to do was that Henry was such a sweetheart about it all. He never thought of himself as anything other than a part of our team. He never acted like he was the star or was better than anyone else. That sort of thing just wasn’t a part of his personality, of who he was as a person, a person whom we all loved.

  While Henry, along with Ron, Anson and Donny, had all become highly recognized stars by the time we were into our fifth season, that same lightning had not struck for me. Unless it was some planned and publicized Happy Days event, I was, for the most part, able to go to a market or out for dinner without being noticed. That slowly began to change after our sixth season, when the writers began to beef up Marion’s role. I began to notice more and more people either glancing in my direction and whispering when I was out in public or just coming up to me and asking for an autograph and telling me how much they loved the show. Yes, there were times, especially when we would all be out doing what had become our famous Happy Days softball games and tours, that, while I had become very well known to the crowds, I was never the hot item the guys were. But I got that, and it was okay with me.

  I had made it. I had seen my dream become a reality, felt that I was doing something important, and secretly allowed myself to revel in the fact that I was no longer a nobody. Had I realized my dream of becoming one of the stars of a hit show when I was in my twenties, I think I would have handled it differently. I don’t mean to say that I would have let it go to my head and would have started living some wild Hollywood lifestyle. That was just never a part of who I was. But I do think I would have taken it much more for granted. The fact that my success as an actor didn’t come until I was in my early fifties made me more grateful for it and also allowed me to handle it in a more mature fashion.

  When that success finely came, I felt odd about it at times. I was, on one hand, extremely happy, grateful and satisfied, and yet, on the other hand, I felt it was a bit anticlimactic. Maybe the best way I can describe my feelings is the way lyricist Fred Ebb does in the song “A Quiet Thing,” which he wrote for the 1965 play Flora, the Red Menace, which starred Liza Minnelli. In that song he writes that when your dreams come true, you don’t hear bells ringing, choirs singing, fireworks going off, or crowds cheering. That the happiness that accompanies a realized dream sort of tiptoes in as “a very quiet thing.”

  That was how it was for me, and even the show’s huge success—when we were the undisputed number one in the ratings—didn’t change me much. Although it was satisfying to have accomplished what I had always hoped to accomplish, and to feel more secure financially than I ever had in my life, my personal world—my life at home with my children—was not that different.

  It was a happy time for me, although, as with any successful show, there was also a lot of stress to deal with, as everyone from the network executives on down became obsessed
with maintaining our success. I know I dealt with that stress far better than I would have had I been in my twenties. I felt that all I had gone through both professionally and personally had left me with a good dose of solid maturity, and I was at peace, feeling that I was doing what I was supposed to be doing—that I had achieved what I had always felt I was put on this planet to do. It was not the happiest time of my life, but it was an exciting and gratifying time. I was on a hit show, I greatly loved the people I was working with, and I just came to enjoy it more and more as each season passed.

  In the years following Happy Days, many interviewers, reporters and talk show hosts have seemed surprised when I have said that I didn’t consider the days when we were in production to be my happiest. But I think when you are actually in the middle of something—in the eye of the hurricane, so to speak—you just can’t appreciate things in the same way you can when it is over, when some time has gone by, and you have a better perspective and understanding of just how lucky and fortunate you were to have been in a hit show, and you are able to really enjoy the benefits that come with having been a part of something so special.

  Although I loved doing Happy Days, and we really did all become like a big close-knit and loving family, it was still work in which things would go wrong and the tension and stress were always present. While the people who loved our show—or any television show—might have watched it and thought that doing it was all fun and games, I can tell you that is simply not true. Putting out a weekly television show, especially one that is operating under the pressure of maintaining its quality and extremely high ratings, and is also making the network and a lot of other people huge sums of money, is a really serious thing. You are never just playing around when you are associated with a hit show, believe me! The pressures are big on everyone involved.

  I know that while I always felt good about the way I handled the pressures of doing Happy Days, there were just those times when it would take its toll on me, and by the time I got home to the kids, I would be pretty crabby. I can clearly recall evenings when I would step in my front door and scream, “Everybody! Get out of my way!”

  I think the reason for that stemmed from the fact that I had been an angel all day. I rarely complained about anything, and if I did, I never made any sort of a big issue about it. I was extremely cooperative and good at doing whatever it was I was told to do. I never got into any arguments or debates over anything, was always prompt and professional, and then, on top of all that, when the cameras rolled, I played the archetype of maternal perfection. Who could keep that up day after day and not get so anxious and exhausted that once they were in the cocoon of their own home, their entire demeanor would change and, like an uncaged wild animal, they would be ready to strike out at anything that was keeping them from getting undressed and into a tub filled with warm, sudsy water? If there is such an angel, it wasn’t me!

  While I have always felt I was a nurturing mother (both to my real children as well as to Ron, Erin, Henry, Anson, Donny and any other Happy Days cast or crew member, no matter what their age), I know there were too many times when I would return home after putting in a long day and be the complete opposite of the loving and caring mother I had played all day and that Americans had come to know me as.

  Perhaps, had I been doing a different role, I would not have found myself contemplating that fact so often and then feeling so much guilt because of it. Every week people from all over the nation would tune in and watch me portray such a picture-perfect mom that the most repeated line I got in my fan mail was, “I wish I had a mother just like you!” And yet, in reality, my own flesh-and-blood children were left in the care of someone else all day and then learned to duck and cover when I returned home like some sort of a spinning-out-of-control whirling dervish.

  I would, at times, feel so bad about this double life I was living that I would bring Jim and Ellen to the set. They both even played small roles on Happy Days, Ellen as a candy striper in a hospital scene and Jim in an episode that became one of our most famous (or should I say infamous?) and went on to coin that television industry and pop culture phrase “jumping the shark.” That took place in 1977, during our fifth season, when one of our writers, Fred Fox, wrote an episode titled “Hollywood: Part Three.” In that show, our central characters were visiting Los Angeles, and Fonzie accepted a challenge to water-ski up to a confined shark and then jump over the dangerous sea predator. If you ever catch a rerun of that episode, watch for the young fellow running down the beach, yelling, “It’s a shark! It’s a shark!” That’s my son, Jim. I enjoyed the days that the kids joined me on the set, although it did bother me when Ellen once told me she didn’t like coming to the set, because I was so different there than I was at home.

  That is not to say I was ever a bad mom. Neither I nor either of the kids ever thought that. I was just different from the mothers their friends had, in that I had a demanding job and seemingly everyone in the country, other than my two children, thought that I, like Mary Poppins, was practically perfect in every way. On weekends and when Happy Days was on hiatus, things were much better. I loved raising my children and spending time with them, seeing them grow and develop their unique personalities and curiosities and interests in various things. They would have their friends over, and to all of them, I wasn’t the perfect Mrs. C. I was just good ole Mrs. Meskimen.

  Although Happy Days brought about many changes in our lives, the kids and I were always keen on trying to keep many things the same (although both Jim and Ellen would have liked it if I had loosened up the purse strings a lot more). I made it a point to try to keep things perfect at home, which, of course, they never were—not in our family, or any family. When I first got the part of Marion and began getting used to a regular paycheck, I saved every penny I could. I was making a decent living but, unbeknownst to me, nowhere near what I should have been making.

  One day, a few seasons into our run, one of the producers pulled me aside and told me I was not being paid enough. I delivered that news to my agent, and after we did a little research, it was decided that we would ask for more money. The answer was no. So we waited a little longer and asked again. The answer was still no. That was when we made the decision that I would not show up for the next Monday’s table read and would continue to be a no-show until they upped my salary.

  When that Monday came, I, in fact, didn’t show up to work, and sometime around noon I received a call from Ron, who told me that during the morning table read, the producers announced to the cast that I was being replaced. At that time, the character of Mrs. C wasn’t as entrenched in the show as she would be in years to come, so if they had to change out the actress playing the mother, it wasn’t a big deal. There was even a precedent for doing so: on Bewitched, the producers replaced Dick York, who had fallen ill, with Dick Sargent in the character of Darrin Stephens without hurting the show’s popularity or ratings.

  If the powers that be at the network and the producers of Happy Days thought they could call my bluff by announcing that they were going to recast the role of Marion, they were 100 percent right! After speaking with Ron and then calling my agent, I panicked and was back reporting for work on Stage Nineteen bright and early the next morning.

  That did change a few years later, when the show had become such a huge hit and Mrs. C had become such a beloved character. It was during our hiatus that my manager called to tell me that negotiations were about to begin to get me a raise. I was advised that things would probably get rough and that I should not worry about anything except heading off on the cruise I had planned. I did just that, and when I returned, Garry called me and said, “I’m going to the network to fight for you. Tell me what you want, and tell me what you need. I’ll fight for what you want and won’t settle for anything less than what you need.”

  I wasn’t greedy or out of line in what I was asking. I just wanted what the other kids were getting, and Garry and our other producers were on my side. They knew that in the grand sche
me of things, when you considered the kind of money Happy Days was making for the network, the increase I was asking for wasn’t even half of a drop in the bucket. What was said between Garry and the network representatives, and just how rough it may or may not have gotten, I have no clue. All I do know is Garry kept his promise, he fought for my getting a raise, and I finally got it.

  As the seasons of Happy Days passed, I had the chance to work with and get to know so many wonderful actors who they brought in to play new characters, including Scott Baio as Chachi Arcola; Al Molinaro as Al Delvecchio; Pat Morita as Arnold; Ellen Travolta as Louisa Delvecchio; Cathy Silvers as Jenny Piccalo; Ted McGinley as Roger Phillips; Roz Kelly as Carol “Pinky” Tuscadero; singer Suzi Quatro as Leather Tuscadero; Lynda Good-friend as Lori Beth Cunningham; Lyle Waggoner, who guest starred as one of Marion’s old flames; and, of course, Cindy Williams and Penny Marshall, who as Shirley Feeney and Laverne DeFazio, brewery worker friends of Fonzie’s, were such a hit with viewers that Garry spun them off into the successful series Laverne & Shirley.

  Since the early days of television, we have all heard and read stories of how cast members of various shows were either archenemies or like a loving family. Just as any real family, we at Happy Days had issues arise from time to time. But, as for the principal characters, we all developed a deep love and respect for one another. We truly did become a family, and as is the case with any family, we matured and our lives evolved and changed. That happened with each of the main characters on our show and with each of us who brought those characters to life. We all brought so much of ourselves to those characters that, although each of us has a résumé that includes other fine work and honors—including Ron winning two Oscars for his 2001 film A Beautiful Mind and being presented with the National Medal of Arts by the United States Congress, and Henry being awarded the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, an order of British chivalry that rewards a person’s contributions to the arts and sciences—it is, and always will be, our roles on Happy Days that indelibly burned the names and images of each of us into popular culture and television history.