Jill Eikenberry, another classmate, who went on to star on ‘‘L.A. Law,’’
saw signs of that determination during their second year, when Winkler
appeared in a production of ‘‘The Physicists,’’ a 1962 play by Friedrich
Dürrenmatt. The play opens with Winkler’s character, a patient in a mental
institution, having just murdered a nurse. ‘‘It was really kind of shocking,’’
she said, ‘‘because I saw this person who was so clearly not Henry, and how
did he know how to do that when we were just newbies?’’ He had found
something, or revealed something. ‘‘He was this nice Jewish boy from New
York,’’ she continued. ‘‘Mysterious and dark and interesting and weird?
There wasn’t any of that. But the mysterious parts came out.’’
At the end of their three-year program, Winkler and Naughton were asked
to join the Yale Repertory Theater, a professional regional company whose
productions sometimes advance to Broadway. In the fall of 1970, Winkler
got his fi rst paying job as an actor, earning a solid review in The Times for
a staged adaptation of three Philip Roth short stories. He joined an improv
group; tried out for plays, Broadway, movies and commercials; made $10
appearing on a game show; got fi red from a play in Washington, D.C.; had
one line on a soap opera, delivering a telegram. He made it to Broadway (in
a play called ‘‘42 Seconds From Broadway’’) that closed on opening night.
‘‘I decided at that moment, I was not just going to be on Broadway for one
night. I’m going to make this work.’’ He landed a movie job, driving a Mafi a
don’s limo in ‘‘Crazy Joe,’’ a gritty 1974 New York crime picture starring
Peter Boyle. It wasn’t much, but then came a bigger role, with Sylvester
Stallone in ‘‘The Lords of Flatbush.’’
Things were happening for Winkler. He felt confl icted about doing
commercials, about heading West, about auditioning for TV series. But he
moved to Los Angeles because a representative at his agent’s offi ce said it
was time. He rented a room in West Hollywood next door to a belly dancer,
and fi ve days later won that guest spot on ‘‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show.’’
A week after that he got a guest spot on ‘‘The Bob Newhart Show.’’ Two
weeks later he read for the ‘‘Happy Days’’ pilot.
Scripted television was going through a revolution in 1973, and Norman
Lear was at the center of it. He pretty much owned the realistic comedy
genre, starting with ‘‘All in the Family,’’ and was already dealing with
gender inequality, cancer, rape, impotence, gun control, homophobia
and teenage alcoholism. ‘‘Happy Days,’’ produced by Garry Marshall,
off ered an escape from all of that. Set safely in Milwaukee in the 1950s, it
dodged the big issues of the day and instead told the heartwarming story
of the Cunningham family and their teenage son Richie, struggling into
manhood. The studio wanted a motorcycle gang to balance out the family
but couldn’t aff ord one, so Marshall, who had adapted Neil Simon’s ‘‘The
Odd Couple’’ for television, wrote the character of Arthur Fonzarelli as
Richie’s swaggering sidekick, basing him on tough guys he grew up with
in the Bronx. ‘‘I thought I wanted a tall, handsome blond,’’ Marshall wrote
in his memoir, ‘‘and in walked a short, dark-haired actor from Emerson
College and the Yale School of Drama.’’
Winkler was already sweating through his shirt when he walked in, but
he transformed his body and his voice, and although his part was six lines
long, he got Marshall’s attention by forcing his scene partner, who was
standing, to back into a chair. When he fi nished, he threw the script in
the air and sauntered out, and two weeks later he beat out Micky Dolenz
of the Monkees for the part. He accepted it on the condition that he be
allowed to show the emotional side of the Fonz, this indestructible greaser
whose face easily fl ickered with concern, making sad little dinners for
one in his dingy apartment.
‘‘Happy Days’’ was a nostalgic, soapy comedy about high school kids
making out, driving hot rods and working in the family hardware store.
A review of Season 1 recommended it for 7-year-olds and the ‘‘usual sub-
stratum of catatonics who are afraid to do anything else on Tuesday nights
except watch television,’’ but it became a hit, and despite a scarcity of lines
in the fi rst season, Winkler’s tenderhearted, lusty, defeated car mechanic
became the breakout star.
In the second season, ‘‘Happy Days’’ was up against Lear’s African Amer-
ican family sitcom, ‘‘Good Times,’’ and Jimmie Walker’s catchphrase ‘‘Dyn-
o-mite’’ had caught fi re. Marshall, pushing to make his show bigger and
faster, urged his cast to use wardrobe, gestures and easy-to-imitate lines,
because TV fame in the ’70s depended on it. Book ’em Danno. Who loves ya,
baby. As the writers moved the Fonz to the center of the show, and they hit
No. 1 in the ratings and then fought to stay on top, Winkler’s naturalistic
approach to a humane, domineering, goofy, self-pitying wrench head was
subsumed by his catchphrase ‘‘whoas’’ and ‘‘aayyys.’’
I was 10 when ‘‘Happy Days’’ came on the air, and not the most discerning
viewer. I thought Linc on ‘‘The Mod Squad’’ was the coolest guy on TV,
with Kwai Chang Caine of ‘‘Kung Fu’’ as a close second, but the Fonz was
hard to look away from. He was ironic and emotional, the tip of his tongue
pressed between his teeth when he dialed the phone, and his voice broke
when he turned impish, shrieking, ‘‘The Fonz wants to dance!’’ A glow of
radiant aff ection beamed out of him for his surrogate mother, Mrs. C. The
Fonz could be generous, self-absorbed, loyal and neurotic, all at once.
It is sometimes the case that the longer a show stays on the air, the stu-
pider it becomes. Over the next few seasons, the writers granted the Fonz
increasingly bizarre powers. He danced the kazatsky, jumped his motor-
cycle over 14 barrels, controlled the very animals of the forest. He played
Hamlet, played the bongos, kicked and punched doors, walls, cars and the
jukebox with magical results. He dressed like Elvis and sang ‘‘Heartbreak
Hotel.’’ He took on saintly powers, lecturing on racism, desegregating
Richie’s band. Season 5 began with a baroque three-parter in California
that ended with Fonzie jumping over a shark on water-skis (giving rise to
the phrase ‘‘jump the shark’’).
‘‘I’ll admit,’’ said Ron Howard, who played Richie Cunningham, ‘‘I never
fully understood the tone of that show.’’ In an interview in 2006, he recalled
sitting on the set during the shark episode, fl ipping through the script.
It was a jumbled mess, he said. ‘‘We all thought it was a little ludicrous.’’
But Winkler’s character remained central to the story, even as castmates
tired of the hysteria surrounding him. In her memoir, ‘‘My Days, Happy
and Otherwise,’’ Marion Ross, who played Mrs. Cunningham, recalled, ‘‘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.’’
Winkler struggled with his own weird experience of the monster he
created. At the height of it, he met Stacey and her son, married Stacey,
had two more children and traveled all over the world as a superstar. But
he couldn’t help wondering, in a more essential way, what it meant. ‘‘That
character got through as early as age 3,’’ he said. ‘‘I had children come up
to me and go, ‘Ayyy!’ It was amazing. I’m not kidding. And half my brain
knew this was a good thing, a pragmatic thing, this was keeping the show
on the air. And the other half I never let in, someone telling me how much I
meant to them. Because I realized early on, nothing about me had changed.
I was still short. I still couldn’t spell. I still had trouble reading. Being a star
didn’t fi x any of that.’’By 1984, ‘‘Happy Days’’ had been slipping in the ratings for eight seasons,
so it shouldn’t have been such a shock when it was fi nally canceled. Winkler
did his impression for me of his younger self, at the moment he realized
it was over, sitting in his offi ce at Paramount with his head in his hands. ‘‘I
never thought past this. I’ve lived my dream. I have no idea what to do.’’ He
asked himself: ‘‘Will I ever do anything as powerful as the Fonz? Do I do
anything less? What do I take, what do I turn down, ‘Oh, that’s too much like
the Fonz.’ ’’ He desperately wanted to distance himself from the character
he helped create. ‘‘I thought I could beat it. I was manic about not being
typecast. When I met Jed’’ — Stacey’s son from her fi rst marriage — ‘‘he
said, ‘Hi, Fonzie,’ and I said, ‘Would you like it if I called you Ralph?’ I was
already instructing this 4-year-old. It was insane.’’
Think about iconic characters from long-running hit shows: George
Costanza, Ally McBeal, Don Draper, Norm, Niles, Rhoda, the cast of ‘‘Will
and Grace,’’ ‘‘Sex and the City’’ or ‘‘Friends.’’ As an actor, you spend yearsThe New York Times Magazine 53