My Days Read online

  No matter what we have done, or will ever do, the world will always think of Tom Bosley and Marion Ross as Howard and Marion Cunningham, Ron Howard and Erin Moran as Richie and Joanie Cunningham, Henry Winkler as Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli, Anson Williams as Potsie Weber, Donny Most as Ralph Malph, and Scott Baio as Charles “Chachi” Arcola. When we began our eleventh and final season, we all knew that we had been a part of something very special—something that would define us for the rest of our careers and lives. We were all very proud of Happy Days and grateful for the opportunity we were given to be a part of that show and to bond so strongly with our fellow cast members.

  It has been the sad case that some television shows have ended without the producers and the cast being aware that they had done their last episode. I have always thought that was terrible, that there was no resolution for either the actors or the fans. That, fortunately, was not the case with Happy Days. We all knew that the last two weeks of November 1983 had been slated for the taping of the final two-part episode of Happy Days. Up until that time, during our last season, we all knew the end was coming, but it really began to hit us as a reality during those final two weeks, and each of us took turns being weepy. We all knew that when we said our final lines as the characters we had become so associated with, it would be the end of an extremely important time of our lives.

  Our last show—the wedding of Joanie and Chachi—wrapped production on the evening of November 28, 1983.

  In our final scene, my last line as Marion was, “Wouldn’t it be lovely if someone made a toast on this happy occasion?”

  Then Tom, as Howard, made a beautiful toast in which he talked about how, when you come to one of life’s milestones, like a wedding, you have to look back and reflect on what you have done and what you have accomplished. He then put his arm around me and talked of watching Richie, Joanie and their friends grow into adulthood, and of how the time had come for me and him to have the pleasure of watching the love we gave them be passed on to their children.

  As we were doing that scene, I could feel my lips begin to quiver, and when Tom looked at me with tears welling up in his eyes, he said the line “I guess no man or woman could ask for anything more.”

  If you ever catch the final moments of that episode, you will notice Tom’s voice cracks slightly as he says the word more. The emotion you see on my face is very real, and I remember taking a hard swallow and pursing my lips tightly so I wouldn’t lose my composure.

  Tom and I then both broke the fourth wall, looked directly into the camera, and he addressed our viewers: “So thank you all for being a part of our family.” I took another hard swallow and my eyes filled with tears as he raised his champagne glass and delivered the very last line of the show that made my lifelong dream come true: “To happy days!”

  In what I thought was a masterful touch, they then dissolved into a montage of clips from our eleven-year run as the song “Memories,” by Elvis Presley, was played, and then, in the last few seconds before fading to black, showed all of us watching Joanie and Chachi cut their wedding cake.

  After that scene, we were all emotional and crying, although our work was far from over. The very next day we were all scheduled to board a plane at Los Angeles International Airport that would take us to Okinawa. We may have wrapped Happy Days, but we still had a softball game scheduled against the United States Marines.

  The members of that cast were also the members of my softball team and will always be my extended family. I would have never achieved my dream without Garry and each one of them. That is why, after my hesitations to write this book were quashed, I agreed to write it on one condition: that every member of our cast, our team, our family, would be involved.

  It broke my heart that Tom, Al Molinaro and Pat Morita were gone, but I was thrilled when every other member of the principal cast agreed to be a part of this book. Although, little could I have known that between the time I started this book and finished it, we would lose two more members of our family: Garry and Erin.

  Chapter 16

  My Boss Garry

  Everyone, if they are fortunate—very fortunate—has a person who comes into their life, changes everything for the better, and makes their dreams come true. Of all the good fortune I have experienced in my professional life, nothing will ever top crossing paths with Garry Marshall.

  Without Garry, there never would have been a Happy Days, a Mrs. C or the fulfillment of my great dream.

  Along with having played an instrumental role in my life, Garry always impressed me by being one of the kindest people I have ever known. I know some people thought of him as this gruff New Yorker with the Bronx accent, but that would not be those who really knew him. I have seen how he cared for his mother and his sisters. I’ve seen how he loved his wife and children. And, of course, I have seen how he loved the cast he assembled for Happy Days.

  Ever since I first met Garry, when I auditioned for him for the pilot of what would become Happy Days, I have always pictured him as a little boy walking down a New York street, kicking a piece of paper, and finally picking it up and opening it and reading what it says: “You will be in charge of everything and everyone.” That is the image that always comes to my mind when I think of Garry.

  While everyone who worked on Happy Days, from the cast to the entire crew, played a part in the show’s success, to me, 100 percent of the credit for that show becoming such a huge hit goes to Garry.

  He had always been attuned to people—what they were about, how they would fit into his life or on one of his shows, or how they would work out as a player with one of his legendary softball teams. Garry was the most unconventional television or film producer I have ever encountered. If there is some sort of a guide or playbook for producers, I’m guessing Garry never read it. He operated in a different way than most people in the television or film industry. He always seemed to have a good “feel” for someone, and throughout his career he hired people who would have never gotten a chance otherwise. He was a genius when it came to putting a team together, whether for a show, a film, a play or a softball game. And if you were fortunate enough to be a part of his life and one of his teams, you would find that your teammates always had fascinating stories of how they came into Garry’s world. You would find out that a writer’s dad had owned a cab service and, having Garry as a fare, had mentioned that his son wanted to get involved with television. Garry had said, “Fine. Send him to see me.”

  Garry had always been a “gatherer” of people. He had a very trusting nature. But I think that trust was based on a keen perception of a person’s soul (along with their softball prowess). From the time he first started out in television, he gave so many people a chance—their start. He made people’s dreams come true. He completely changed their lives—made them rich and made them stars. What a lovely life that must be, to put your head down on your pillow every night and know that you have so dramatically changed people’s lives.

  When I am asked to share any specific memory of working with him, I always think of the times when I would be doing a line or an action of some sort and it just wouldn’t work, just didn’t feel right for some reason. Garry’s finely tuned perceptive intuition would kick in during those moments. He would stop everything and come over to me and say, “That’s not working for you, is it, Marion? Let’s fix it.” That sort of understanding and care is not just rare in the entertainment industry; it is rare in our world—period!

  I always thought the world of Garry. And what did he think of me? Well, God forbid I would ever dare ask him that question. For that, I turned it over to my writing colleague, David Laurell, who, in what would prove to be Garry’s last interview about Happy Days, just a few months before his death in 2016, was far more adept than I could have ever been in getting the answer.

  “You’ve heard the term ‘a hot mess’? Marion Ross is just the opposite of a hot mess!”—Garry Marshall

  David Laurell (DL): You cast Marion in the role of the mothe
r for the pilot that became the Love, American Style episode. Did you know her prior to casting her?

  Garry Marshall (GM): I didn’t know her at all. We found her through an open casting call. And I remember when she came in to read for the part. Right away I thought she was perfect. She had that bubbly housewife personality. She had the right look, and she also had a certain sexuality and nurturing quality. Marion had a pedigree as an actress, and there was also a star quality about her. I remember she really popped with me in the audition. She came in wearing a bright red dress. I asked her about the dress. I mean, how could you not? It was blinding me, it was so bright [laughing]. She told me she always tried to wear a red dress or something very bright and colorful when she went on an audition. She said that she had chosen to be an actress because she wanted to be noticed—to be seen. Well, in that red dress she had on, you couldn’t miss her.

  By the way, David, you were correct about it being a pilot that became the Love, American Style episode. I know everyone thinks it was the other way around—that Happy Days evolved out of a Love, American Style episode. But that wasn’t the case. It was shot as a pilot, and back in those days, when a pilot didn’t get picked up, they didn’t want it to go to waste—to lose the money is what it was—so they would recut the pilots and give them some title and use them for Love, American Style, because anything could go on that show.

  DL: When Happy Days was ultimately picked up by ABC, you went back to Marion for the role of Mrs. Cunningham.

  GM: You know, when Happy Days was picked up, the show’s original title was Cool. Then the network tested it, and everybody thought it was a show about cigarettes, so Tom Miller, the producer, was the one who came up with the name Happy Days. And yes, when we put the cast together, we went with Marion and Ron Howard and Anson Williams—the only three who had been in the pilot.

  That was a no-brainer—going with Marion. She and I bonded right away because we are both Scorpios. She was born in late October, and I was born on November 13. So we got along, and she was just perfect for the part. She perfectly portrayed the solid mother of the 1950s, and she also had the ability to deliver a joke. In the beginning, when we started out, her role was pretty small, and yet she got big laughs with lines that weren’t really even jokes. Sometimes she got a laugh with just a word or a look. And as the years went by, Mrs. C became one of the show’s most popular characters. The character of Mrs. C grew—evolved—and that was all because of Marion.

  DL: When you think back on doing Happy Days, what memories do you have of working with Marion?

  GM: She was never a problem. And believe me, over the years I’ve dealt with my share of actors who were problems, but never Marion. One of the things that was always great about working with her was that she wanted to distinguish herself, within her role, but she never came to me with crazy ideas from the moon. I’ve worked with actors who have come up with all sorts of crazy things they wanted to do with their character or the plots that would have ruined the whole show. That wasn’t the case with Marion. She was good at coming up with things that really worked for her character.

  DL: On television shows, especially long-running sitcoms, some things that work tend to just bubble up during rehearsals and even during tapings. Did Marion bring shadings to the character of Mrs. C that the writers then elaborated upon?

  GM: That kind of thing does happen all the time. I remember [laughing], there were ten writers or so on Happy Days, and one day, Marion comes down to my office and asked me this odd question: “Who is the writer assigned to doing my lines?” I told her that wasn’t the way it works, that we don’t assign writers to a particular character. We don’t have a guy who just writes for Fonzie or for Mrs. C. They all write for everyone, I told her. So I never knew where the hell she was going with that, but she seemed to be satisfied with my answer, and that was that.

  A lot of actors look at the scripts and just turn to their lines and complain about not liking this or that. But Marion was always the type who looked at her lines—even if it was just a word or a direction the writers had written—and asked herself how she could deliver them well. How to make it work. She was never the kind of actor who was looking to the writers to give her lines that worked. It was the other way around with her. She felt her job was to take their lines and make them work. She could make things work no matter what she was given.

  But you mentioned how things happen—come up—that aren’t in the script that work and then the writers incorporate that. That can be just a word or a look or the way an actor does something with a prop. I think one of the things that naturally evolved with Marion was Mrs. C’s relationship with Fonzie. There was always this underlying thing between them. Fonzie loved her and looked to her as a parental figure because he didn’t have parents. Those two characters formed a special bond, which was never planned out by the writers. That all just evolved. To everyone, Fonzie was this cool tough guy. But that was never the way Mrs. C saw him. She saw him in a different light, and to separate the way Mrs. C perceived Fonzie from everyone else, she was the only character on the show who called him “Arthur.” Marion was always a person with great dignity, and I think she saw the character of the Fonz as she did every character—that they should be treated with respect and dignity. That relationship between those two characters was always where we would go when we needed the “aw” moment. We would do a scene with Fonzie putting his head on Mrs. C’s shoulder.

  DL: That affection—that love between those characters—seemed to translate to all the actors behind the characters on Happy Days. We always hear of so many shows in which cast members don’t get along and there’s a clash of egos. That didn’t seem to be the case with Happy Days.

  GM: I have never worked on a show that was more like family than Happy Days. They all ate together. They cared about one another. They hugged a lot. That’s what I wanted: for that cast to be like a real family, and that’s what happened. Tom Miller once said to me, “Sometimes you get really blessed, and you were really blessed with Happy Days.” I have never worked on another show like that. On the set of Laverne & Shirley, there was always fighting going on. My kids always tell people that when they were little, they were allowed to visit the set of Happy Days but not the set of Laverne & Shirley, because of all the fighting and foul language. On Happy Days they all just melded together. It was a great time for all of us. We had a hit show.

  All these kids, who ranged in age from eighteen to twenty-four, were making a lot of money. They had become stars, and yet they were all real people—they were kids who were growing up, and falling in and out of love, and getting married. I remember Marion holding court with all of them when they were dating badly and breaking up badly and spending money badly. We all shared in each other’s real lives. During the show Tom Bosley’s wife passed away, and we were like any family, seeing life and death and marriages and everything that everyone deals with in life. That entire cast always stuck together, and I think Jerry Paris, the director, was a great influence behind that happening. They all knew him and respected him—his goodness, as well as his faults. He was the kind of director who really understood his cast, and I think that was a big part in how, over eleven seasons, we all really got to know and love one another.

  DL: And, unlike so many other shows, this cast has remained close as the years have passed.

  GM: That is true and, of course, everyone loved Marion. What’s not to love? But I think for the kids who grew up doing that show, they also always trusted Marion. I think whenever you do a film or a play or a television show—whenever you do anything, in any line of work—you need someone to go to in case of problems. I’ve done eighteen movies, and Héctor Elizondo was in every one of them. Why? Because we’re such great friends? No. Because I always have to have someone in the cast I can go to in case there’s trouble. In Laverne & Shirley it was Phil Foster. In Mork & Mindy it was Conrad Janis, and with Happy Days it was Marion.

  If there was ever any trouble, if I ever had
to call the cast together for some reason, I needed a mature person—the adult in the room—who they all trusted. No matter what you’re doing, someone has to be an adult, and Marion was the adult on that show. I always relied on her to be the sane one. To keep everyone sane, including me! So they all trusted her, and I trusted her. Marion was always the most grounded one—always there for all these other people who were having their problems and troubles. But she never gave me the least bit of trouble. I went through eleven seasons with her, and I never even knew who her agent was. I’ve done shows with actors where I’ve had to ban their agents from the set because they drove me so crazy.

  DL: As people read this book, I think they may be surprised to learn that, while Marion created a character who became the archetype of the all-American mom, she herself constantly questioned her real-life role as a mother.

  GM: It’s not an easy job, being a mother. I grew up with a working mother, so I understood what she was going through. And it’s even harder when you are a single parent who is working a job. I know how hard it was to be a father doing that, and Marion and I would talk about that once in a while—the difficulties of raising our kids. I think that maybe she learned some things about being a good mother from playing Mrs. C.

  We did the show in the 1970s, and during that time there were a lot of changes going on with women and the way they were being perceived by themselves and by society. The housewife she was playing—Mrs. C—was a thing of the past by that time. But Marion had lived through that time—the 1950s—and she saw how things had changed, and how women were changing, and she wanted to bring some of that change to Mrs. C. As the years went by, Mrs. C branched out. She wore slacks instead of a dress and even went out and got a job. But as far as how she raised her two kids—Jim and Ellen—I think she did a really great job as a real mom.