THE GOOD OL' HAPPY DAYS -CHUCKLES ARRIVES -BEFORE THE SHARK JUMP

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It is interesting to note that halfway through this decade, the years that represented the pushing of envelopes--the stretching of boundaries in thematic elements and presentation of same--that the most popular sitcoms would involve a trip to the good ol' days. With Americans celebrating the Bicentennial, a celebratory theme in some returning sitcoms, looking back with fondness would become the nation’s pastime in the aftermath of political turmoil and confusion.

HAPPY DAYS AGAIN

In the sixties Gary Marshall was a writer on “The Dick Van Dyke Show” with his partner Jerry Belson. With lots of television and some feature film work under his belt by 1970 he brought Neil Simon’s “Odd Couple” to prime time in 1970. Even with the critical acclaim generated by this show, Marshall helmed a few undistinguished efforts before providing American audiences with the pleasures of living in the past with the Cunninghams and their “Happy Days.” After a season and a half of mediocre ratings, ABC had enough confidence in this series to renew for a third season, adding a studio audience to the mix. With a new writing team and a three camera setup, the series morphed from a gentle (yet ribald) view of fifties life to a “buddy” comedy featuring a straight-laced overachiever and his slightly darker protector: the Fonz.



With the feature film “American Grafitti” still on the radar, the “greaser” culture being glorified in the Broadway hit “Grease,” and the rock and roll of the era being re-visited and re-imagined via the stylings of Sha Na Na, Marshall found the perfect time to recapture his childhood memories for current audience enjoyment. The single three-camera episode from the low-rated second season tested so well that ABC decided to play up the laughs and gags at the expense of the period design and thoughtfulness. As the series progressed and became a ratings champion, it depended on familiar character traits and interactions….the star power of nerdy actor Henry Winkler in his persona of the ultra-cool biker Arthur Fonzarelli in contrast to clean-cut “aw shucks” Richie created by Ron Howard (who at this point was a TV veteran from his days as Opie on “Andy Griffith Show”)--resulting in fantastical plot elements, leading to the infamous “Jump the Shark” scenario.

WORKING GIRLS



And with Marshall’s previous series “The Odd Couple” finally put out if it’s low-rated misery, he decided to use his sister and the Felix/Oscar set to create another apartment…this time 1950’s Milwaukee where the Cunninghams reside. A guest appearance on “Happy Days” by Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams (who starred with Ron Howard in “American Grafitti) as a pair of gum-chewing “floozies” on a date with Richie and the Fonz led immediately to the mid season series “Laverne and Shirley.” The two brewery workers would morph into, well, Felix and Oscar as William’s Shirley became more prudish and naive countering Marshall’s course and “experienced” Laverne. To this day, I never understood how this uninspired spin off setup, with the forced 50’s setting, could become such a ratings hit. As the writing and gags were, for the most part, pedestrian and sometimes childish, I can imagine audiences were yearning more for the long-ago Lucy and Ethel antics more than the sophisticated Oscar and Felix shenanigans.

Perhaps as modern audiences were alienated by reruns of Donna Reed, "Father Knows Best" and the Beav in a cynical world experiencing overt violence and permissiveness post-sixties it became cathartic to celebrate the darker elements of those halcyon black and white days--by adding the womanizing hood prone to violence or the not-so-chaste life-hardened single gals--and to do it in what is still a relatively family-friendly environment compared to the wild west of Lear's world or the 4077th.

Marshall teamed up with Thomas Miller and Edward Milkis to form this new production company. No longer working as much with Belson, Jerry Paris (an actor on the Van Dyke series) became his new directorial collaborator. This new team, releasing through Paramount, would produce most of ABC’s three-camera output throughout the decade and (sans Marshall) on through the eighties. So while Norman Lear was pushing the envelope and MTM Productions (along with “M*A*S*H” and “Barney Miller”) was leading the way in the premium blend of wit and character, Marshall’s company became the third leg of the 70’s sitcom stool by shucking the class of “The Odd Couple” for the pop culture retro feel-good comedy that would usurp the social content and quality productions that groped it's way out of the sixties morass of brainless genre fare.