I had forgotten that Happy Days actually gave Fonzie his own dance.
This is from the 1979 episode “Stolen Melodies,” and the setup is pure Happy Days. Leather Tuscadero, played by real-life rocker Suzi Quatro, has written a song called “Moonlight Love.” After auditioning for the television show National Sok Hop, the song suddenly turns up credited to another group.
Naturally, Fonzie isn’t going to let that slide.
He shows up at the TV studio, confronts the people involved and eventually takes over the microphone himself. Instead of letting the other band introduce its new dance, Fonzie brings out Leather and announces a brand-new one:
“Do the Fonzie.”
And then the Fonz actually has to dance.
The song was written especially for the show by Jim Dunne and performed by Suzi Quatro. The dancing was choreographed by Shirley Kirkes, so somebody really did have the job of figuring out exactly how Fonzie should dance without making the coolest guy on television look completely ridiculous.
Quatro was already a successful rock singer and bass player when she joined Happy Days as Leather Tuscadero. She later recalled that she was touring Japan when the show called her back to audition for the role.
By this point Fonzie had become such a pop-culture phenomenon that Happy Days could invent an entire dance around him and it somehow made perfect sense.
And just about a year later, one of Henry Winkler’s famous Fonzie leather jackets went into the Smithsonian.
Do you remember “Do the Fonzie” — and would you have tried this dance at a sock hop?
Tag: Happy Days
The Moment TV Jumped The Shark
f you’ve ever heard someone say a show “jumped the shark,” this is the clip they’re talking about.
I mean… here’s Fonzie, cool as ever, leather jacket and all… out on water skis… and yeah… literally jumping over a shark on Happy Days.
And somewhere along the way, that moment turned into a phrase we still use today.
So here’s how that even happened.
Back in the late ’90s, a guy named Jon Hein created a website called Jump the Shark. The whole idea was to track the exact moment when a TV show starts to go downhill. Not slowly… not over time… but that one moment where you sit there and go, “Alright… what are we doing here?”
And the moment he pointed to?
This one. Fonzie. The shark. 1977. Episode “Hollywood: Part 3.”
From there, it just stuck. The phrase took off, and now people use it for everything. Not just TV… anything that goes too far trying to stay relevant. A show, a company, even people. When it stops feeling real and starts feeling forced… that’s when you hear it… “they jumped the shark.”
Now here’s the part a lot of people don’t realize… the people involved didn’t think it was some disaster at the time.
Henry Winkler has talked about it in interviews and basically said… look, the show had already done physical comedy, and to him, it was just another fun stunt. He’s even pointed out that ratings didn’t suddenly crash after that episode, so in his mind, it didn’t ruin anything.
Writer Fred Fox Jr. said something similar. They were trying to make those Hollywood episodes bigger… more exciting… something different. At the time, it wasn’t, “we’re out of ideas”… it was, “let’s top what we’ve already done.”
And even creator Garry Marshall defended it. He always said people forget just how big Fonzie was back then. The idea was to give him a larger-than-life moment. Something memorable.
Well… mission accomplished.
Because here we are, decades later, still talking about it.
And that’s the funny part. The phrase “jump the shark” is usually meant as a knock… like something went downhill. But this scene? It’s one of the most remembered moments in TV history.
So yeah… maybe it did jump the shark.
But it also made sure none of us would ever forget it.
American Graffiti Trailer
Is it just me or is it impossible to find American Graffiti on TV anymore? The 1973 coming of age movie was directed and co-written by George Lucas of the Star Wars fame. American Graffiti is one of the most profitable movies of all time, produced for just $777,000 and has an estimated return of $200 million at the box office, not including TV reruns which we don’t see anymore!
Where were you in ‘62? The movie follows the lives of four friends in 1962 in Modesto, California. Many say this movie launched the TV show, Happy Days but its success renewed an interest in a script ABC already had called Love and the Television Set from their already hit show Love American Style.
American Graffiti star studded line up included Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Paul Le Mat, Charles Martin Smith, Candy Clark, Mackenzie Phillips, Cindy Williams, and Wolfman Jack. There were many cameo appearances like Suzanne Somers as the elusive blonde in the T-bird.