Ron Howard Almost Quit ‘Happy Days’ Over Proposed Title Change

Hiring Ron Howard was a coup for the producers of the ‘70s sitcom Happy Days. Howard was TV royalty, Opie from The Andy Griffith Show, one of the previous decade’s biggest comedy hits. But it didn’t take long before ABC wanted to move the Happy Days spotlight from Howard to one of his costars.

Henry Winkler’s Fonzie was a minor character during the show’s first season, a motorcycle-riding hoodlum who provided a contrast to the (more or less) wholesome antics of Richie and his pals Potsie and Ralph Malph. But Winkler’s comic charisma turned the Fonz into the show’s breakout star. By the time Fearless Fonzarelli was launching his bike over 14 garbage cans in Season Three, he had become America’s most popular sitcom character. 

The network knew a phenomenon when it saw one. The president of ABC, Leonard Goldenson, decided the best way to cash in was to change the show's name to Fonzie’s Happy Days.

That was a step too far for Howard. He didn’t mind Winkler becoming so popular — “It made perfect sense that you’d build this Fonzie character and maximize that,” Howard recently told Vulture. “But the optics of now being in a show called Fonzie’s Happy Days, my ego wouldn’t allow for that. I wasn’t bluffing. I would’ve left.”

Leaving was about the only recourse Howard had. “My contract, I’m sure, had no clause connected to titles,” he said. “They could have said, ‘Fuck you. We changed the title, and we expect you to show up Monday morning.’”

But Howard credits the show’s creator for understanding why it was a terrible idea. “Thank God for great bosses,” Howard says. “Garry Marshall said, ‘If you’re not cool with it…’”

Winkler wasn’t cool with it either. According to his memoir, Being Henry: The Fonz... and Beyond, he asked Goldenson to reconsider the title change. “If you do that, it is so disrespectful to everybody else who has been doing Happy Days as a family together with me for two years,” Winkler told the ABC exec. “How much more of a success can you make the show by changing the name to Fonzie’s Happy Days? That would be so hurtful — just a slap in the face to everyone else in the cast. I cannot live on that set if you do that. I just wouldn’t — couldn’t — do that. It works so fine just the way it is.”

Howard remembered Winkler having a similar attitude years later when ABC wanted to spin off Fonzie into his own show. The network’s thinking made sense — megahits Laverne & Shirley and Mork & Mindy (as well as dud Joanie Loves Chachi) began on Happy Days. 

Winkler “just said, ‘Why fix it if it’s not broken? My success depends on the ensemble I’m in,’” Howard recalled.

ABC would finally get its way a few years later when it commissioned a Saturday morning cartoon called Fonzie and the Happy Days Gang. For some reason, Howard did lend his voice to the terrible cartoon, which replaced Potsie with an alien named Cupcake. 

Howard should have stuck to his guns and run before pocketing a check for this one.