FOG! Chats With Authors Brian Levant and Fred Fox, Jr. About Their Book, ’50 Years of Happy Days: A Visual History of an American Television Classic’

One of the most successful TV shows of all time, Happy Days drew in 30 million viewers weekly at its peak and launched the careers of stars like Ron Howard, Henry Winkler, and Robin Williams. Now, just in time for the show’s 50th anniversary, viewers can tune in for exclusive access, as Happy Days showrunners Brian Levant & Fred Fox Jr. chronicle life on set and examine the evolution of a television show that made history with a deluxe new coffee table book, 50 Years of Happy Days: A Visual History of an American Television Classic.

With memories from Ron Howard, Henry Winkler, Anson Williams, Marion Ross, Ted McGinley, and a host of Hollywood royalty who worked as a team to change the landscape of television forever, this is the exclusive, behind-the-scenes story of one of television’s most successful shows, told by the individuals who made it happen.

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to talk to Brian Levant and Fred Fox Jr. to discuss both the book and their Hollywood careers.  Special thanks to FOG! contributor Steven Thompson for his invaluable assistance in helping copyedit this piece.

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FOG!: I was born in 1971 so Happy Days was a huge part of my childhood. I looked at your IMDb profiles, because I was more familiar with Brian’s accomplishments than Fred’s until I realized that, no, I know all of Fred’s work too. You’ve both had very similar career paths. The big major difference is that, Fred, you’ve done some acting, and Brian’s directed. But besides that, everything else seems to cross over quite a bit. Where did you guys first meet?

Fred Fox, Jr.: I started on Laverne and Shirley. Cindy Williams called me, New Year’s Eve,’75, and said, I’m doing a show called Laverne and Shirley.

Brian Levant: They went to high school together.

FF: Yeah, we went to high school together. I’ll shorten the story.  I ended up on Laverne and Shirley. Wrote a script. Garry asked me to go to Happy Days. Went to Happy Days. One day, I’m on the stage and Bob Brenner, who was one of the producers, comes up to me and says, “Fred, this guy, this young kid, came in, pitched so many stories! We could have done them all!” So. Brian wrote a script, and joined Happy Days. Just an incredible talent.

BL: Well, except for one thing. They did allow me to go to first draft, which, the previous stories that I’d told on The Jeffersons, and an old Danny Thomas series, The Practice…and Chico on the Man ripped me off and sent me a check anyway, so I appreciated that. But it didn’t get me into the Guild. And so, I did my first draft, and I turned it in, and like two hours later, I got a call. I thought, “Oh, they must have really liked it.” And what they said was, “We’ll take it from here.” It sucked.

FOG!: But it was enough of an in that it got you going.

BL: Garry Marshall asked—because I had gotten the meeting after playing basketball with him in his backyard on a Saturday morning—and so he asked what happened. And they said that I didn’t do a good job. He asked to see the script. He looked it over. He said, “He needs seasoning. Bring him in the week we shoot the show and let him sit and observe.” And by that access to see how every word was considered, how they really structured things, how the show worked and coalesced every week. And I learned so much that the next year I came in and pitched again. I was smart. I didn’t bring a whole season’s worth of stories. I’d learned so much in that year. And after I turned in the first draft, they actually asked me to join the staff. It was $300 a week. I’m sorry, $200! Started at $200. I got bumped to $300 later in the year.

You asked how we met. My first time when I walked into K Building, I was greeted by him so enthusiastically and he’s telling me that they said such nice things about me. And he’s such a giving and joyous person. How could you not attach yourself to him for the next 47 years?

FF: Brian is just so talented. We’ve worked so well together over the years, which is very special.

BL: We did a lot of stuff together that no one ever saw or heard of. We were consultants. Grandpa Goes to Washington with Jack Albertson. The studio came to us and said, “Can you take a look at their scripts every week and just see if you can put some jokes in?” It didn’t help.

FOG!: One of the things I thought was really interesting and that really comes across in your book—and it certainly comes across in your chemistry today—is it seemed like the crew and the cast has a very familial relationship.

BL: More so than on almost any show that I’ve worked on, and a lot of that was because of the sports. Fred did the warm-ups for Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley for many years and knew the cast on that level but myself, Nick Abdo, Jeff Ganz, Lowell Ganz, you know, associate producers, people from throughout the show, all played together.

Quite by accident, I just reread The New York Times interview with the cast for the 50th anniversary and Marion said that Garry built a team by starting a team.

FOG!: What seasons did you each start with on the show?

FF: I started in 1976 and stayed till the end.

BL: And I wrote my first script fourth season, which was really the third year of the show since… Then I left in the middle of the sixth—two thirds of the way through the sixth season—went and did 20 episodes of The Bad News Bears, 12 episodes of Brothers and Sisters, 42 episodes of Mork and Mindy, 13 episodes of The Good Time Girl…and Happy Days was still on the air!

FOG!: As you kind of follow the show, it has a meteoric rise. What was it like seeing the show explode? Because, I mean, it evolved very quickly with, you know, Arthur Fonzarelli wearing a windbreaker and sitting on a motorcycle all the time and Chuck Cunningham and basketball in the driveway. And then it became something entirely different. It became, you know, a phenomenon.

BL: Yes. If you look at a graph of Happy Days, it starts off and it goes very high. They finished in the top 20 for the year.They debuted at like number 11, which was, for ABC, spectacular, right?  And then the second season, they crashed, because CBS moved Good Times against them and Jimmy Walker broke through.

In the meantime, Fred Silverman came to ABC, saw Fonzie’s burgeoning popularity, and Garry Marshall went to the playbook he’d used previously to save The Odd Couple, turning it from a single camera show into a three camera show in front of a live audience, which returned the show to its theatrical roots and benefited the performers.

Well. It made the show crazier.

So, with Happy Days, they revamped the show, rebuilt the sets and put them on stage, put the bleachers in on stage 19, and shot the last show of the season as a demonstration of Fonzie in the middle of the show, the show being centered on him, and working in front of an audience, which proved to be a stroke of genius because it unleashed these people.

They were playing. They were playing down. Calm. It was a quieter show. It was a moodier show in the beginning. And there are people on the cast who insist that the first season is the very best, by the way.

FOG!: Well, in the first season, there seemed to be a lot of, you know, Howard going to talk to Richie in his room about…

BL: Right! And that’s what the show was designed to be, a throwback, a throwback about families and friends. Going in front of the audience, unleashed just a fireball of energy. Tom, Marion…They lived for the stage. Donny had a lot of experience, Anson had substantial stage experience by this time. The only one who’d never been in front of an audience… was Ron, who was terrified! I mean, he did a couple of state fairs with Don Knotts and Andy Griffith when he was, like, seven, you know? To say the show took off is an understatement.

FF: It was skyrocketing.

BL: Yeah. An international sensation overnight, basically. And by the end of the third season…the MIDDLE of the third season… they’d already spun off Laverne and Shirley, which premiered at number one, the highest premiere in the history of ABC. Now they had the biggest one-two punch in the history of television. Can you tell me what was a companion piece with I Love Lucy? Can you name one?

FOG!: No, I think the only show that came close to Happy Days is All in the Family in terms of spinoffs.

BL: Yeah, for spinoffs, yes. But, you know, when it was All in the Family and Maude, that was a good one-two punch. And then they split it up and put Maude up against Happy Days.

FOG!: Unfortunately, they’re only streaming season two on Paramount Plus. Nothing else is streaming at all anywhere but I vividly remember the news picking up like when the Fonz went and got a library card.

FF: Right!

BL: That was my second episode. Yes, it spurred…Fred’s good friend, Lee Margulies, who was a TV critic for the for The L.A. Times for a long time, wrote a blurb that the publisher didn’t use, but he said something really interesting, that it was desirable in those days to make shows that appeal to a four quadrant audience. This is before the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon and, you know, the cable shows that split off the adult audience. And we were so successful in doing that. That’s how you get 30 million people a week.

FOG!: This is kind of my whole theory when it comes to Generation X and pop culture, because that’s what I’m a part of, is that there’s something very special about the time I grew up in the sense that even though you watched a show like Happy Days with your family, it was a shared experience because all your friends were watching with their families. And you had a limited number of channels, so you all watched the same exact things.

So when Fonzie jumped over the trash cans, everybody experienced, “Will Fonzie be OK?”

FF: Right, right.

BL: And he wasn’t, which was really good.

FOG!: Now, one of the things I’m curious about… When I mentioned the familial aspect, how much of that do you think came from the cast and crew bonding over, like, the softball team? I mean, was it a real draw? Because in the book there seemed to be some pictures where people who left the show were back for the games and stuff.

BL: Oh, yeah.

FF: The softball just brought us closer together. We had incredible trips in major league ballparks, USO tours.

BL: Yeah. The team played on, what? Three, four continents?

FF: Yeah, it really was… And we’d have these USO tours and we’d be playing, you know, young troops, in their 20s or 18, 19. And I’m sure they thought, “These are Hollywood people. We’ll just destroy ‘em.” And yet we won most of the games.

BL: I believe I believe the touring team lost five or less games over a decade.

FOG!: That’s pretty impressive.

BL: Remember, there’s a line in the book. It’s so funny. Marion Ross. “I’m a 53-year-old woman and I have to tell my friends that I can’t I can’t go shopping with them because I have baseball practice.”

FOG!: It’s interesting that on both the shows and on your other jobs, you both have worked as creative consultants and story consultants and actual writers and producers. One of the things about Happy Days that’s always been fascinating to me is that when you look at the first season, when it’s shot on film, it’s very much set in the ‘50s. And then when it kind of opens up, it becomes a little more of a generic ‘50s, and then by the end, like, the series was set in the 80s, and they just pretended it was the ‘50s.

BL: Well, no, we ended the series in 1965.

FOG!: But I mean, like, the haircuts were more modern.

BL: Well, in the book Anson talks about how he wasn’t getting paid enough to cut his hair. Ron Howard says to him, “You look like you’re in the Partridge Family.”

FOG!: I remember when he became a teacher on the show, he had a full beard and mustache.

FF: Yeah, the one episode, right.

BL: He wanted to keep it. He wanted to keep it. And they let him for one show.

FOG!: That’s crazy because I have this memory of being like that for a long time. And that’s just the crazy…

FF: I think he was vacationing in Italy and grew the beard. Then he came back and…

BL: Yeah, then he was very Fonzarelli about it.

FOG!: You were both there during Season Eight when Don Most and Ron Howard both left?  At that point, was the show had evolved into a different setting? I mean, it would no longer seem to be about Richie growing up. It just seemed to be about the Cunninghams …

BL: Well, you know, there were people on the show who thought when Ron and Donny left that that should be it, that the plug should have been pulled. It was about Richie growing up. Richie left. Goodbye. But Lowell Ganz said he and Garry Marshall never discussed that. They just pivoted and said, OK, let’s bring Joanie and Chachi more to the forefront. Let’s bring Chachi and Fonzie’s relationship to the forefront. And then we came in and tried to even expand further and say, let’s get Fonzie into a serious romantic relationship, you know, and I think it forced the show to pivot. I think it was successful. The eighth season concluded with an unheard of two-season, 44-episode pickup for the show.

FOG!: Yeah, that’s amazing. It is.

BL: And you when Joanie and Chachi debuted in in Laverne and Shirley’s time slot two years later, you know, they got very, very strong numbers, which I think was a credit to their growth on the show and as performers, you know, that they really very confidently moved to their own series. ABC kind of blew it.

FOG!: It’s amazing because if you watch that episode where Fonzie brings Laverne and Shirley over for dates for him and Richie, they’re different characters completely. It’s much more of like an R-rated encounter than what their show kind of became.

BL: But Lowell also said they wanted to go further, and Garry sensed that there was something more long-term and kept… To protect them, you know? Don’t have them saying “Leave the money on the dresser.”

FOG!: In the “Milwaukeeverse” that you guys both participated in, did you have a favorite character to write for? Either one of you?

FF: God, that’s an excellent question. It sounds like a copout, but I just enjoyed writing for everyone. I mean, it was such a kind of a team effort thing. Brian, remember the time…? One time Brian and I were talking on the stage and Marion Ross came up to us and said, “Now, who writes MY lines?”

BL: And this is like the fifth season! I always loved writing for Ron and Henry, especially because through them, you could do some killer stuff, you know?

FF: Yeah, we really did.

BL: And Fred and I adore Marion Ross, one of the most wonderful, kind, energetic, lovely people.

FOG!: And she’s still going today!

BL: She is so great and we love her so much. But, you know, but you’re just not going to get the same laughs you’re going to get from Henry and Ron.

FF: Yeah, Henry and Ron are just so great together.

BL: And then poor Ted McGinley. He’s confessing to us, you know, when he came on the Eighth Season, he said, “One week I’m at home watching the show on TV and the next I’m on it with no training. I felt sorry for Henry Winkler because he had to work with me instead of Ron Howard.”

FF: Ted was a very quick learner and really studied and did a great, great job.

FOG!: And he looks pretty much exactly the same. He’s currently on Shrinking. So… you both also wrote a huge number of episodes or at least contributed to a huge number of episodes. Is there one that you’re particularly proud of that stands out as, like, this is the work I’m proud of in my career?

FF: There’s so many. I think, Brian and I did an episode called “Welcome Home,” a two-parter. Brian, you take it away.

BL: You know, when Ron Howard’s four-year exclusive deal with NBC expired, he expressed some interest in paying a visit to the family. So, we were able to…We wrote an hour show that ABC chose to do over two episodes and then later confessed that they’d made a bad mistake by not making it a bigger hour special. And even though we shot both episodes in the week, and then I think the following Monday they came back and did some pickups because (there were) so many people on the set, couldn’t cover everybody!

But it was Ron Howard, Don Most, Lynda Goodfriend as Lori Beth—pregnant with their second kid— coming home and Richie confronting this dilemma that much like Ron Howard’s life dilemma that he wanted to be a director but he was kind of on this really, really successful show. And so, the choice for Richie Cunningham was, you know, take the job that he always wanted on The Milwaukee Journal and build a life in his hometown for his young family and with his friends or toss it all away and go to Hollywood and try and be a writer.

FOG!: And become Garry Marshall!

BL: Yeah, there were so many emotional moments and great highs during that week and the show is exceptional. and you know, Fred wrote the “Jump the Shark” episode and we’re always defending the series post show 91 out of 255.

FOG!: And I gotta tell you, it’s become a great catchphrase to put down a show but when I saw that episode when I was like eight or nine-years-old, that was the greatest thing you’d ever seen in your life.

BL: That’s right. But we always say… We always look to shows like “Welcome Home” to show that not only had Happy Days not jumped the shark but was capable of giving you these beautiful human and emotional moments and high comedy. And you know, you just said you, as a kid, you were captivated because we did something. You know, believe me. And Barney Miller. Yes, Wojo’s learned respect for a cross-dresser.  Compare to the rodeo, the demolition derby, the jumping the shark, the fights, the rumbles…

FOG!: Pinky and Leather Tuscadero.

BL: Yep. But Garry insisted that episodes not only be about something but that they built to something and that’s what this group always executed well, the block scenes. This is what you’re building toward, and it’s usually visual, and physical, and fun.

FOG!: Because Garry Marshall shows are always very memorable and they have a certain tone to them that kind of goes throughout them. But it seems like you guys were putting together shows that the audience and TV in general hadn’t caught up to yet. A lot of times if you watch a sitcom, it was a repetitive joke, Kramer gets the same laugh when he walks in, always. I love Seinfeld. But, you know, the thing is people are playing these characters and they basically become caricatures. And, you know, it would be very easy, I think, for a character like the Fonz to become a cartoon.

BL: And he did. But I think a lot of people, there are people who worked on the show kind of looked down their nose at it, that it was kind of lowbrow entertainment.

FOG!: Maybe it’s just different because my relationship with the show is obviously very different than yours.  The other thing is when I was a kid, there was no such thing as kids’ TV versus adults’ TV. Families watched TV together.

BL: And there was one set in the house!

FOG!: Right. I mean, I can understand now looking back, like when my dad would come home from work and say, turn off The Brady Bunch because it’s garbage and turn on Barney Miller. But Happy Days resonated with me for many, many years and it continues to do. This kind of leads to my next question, which is why do you think a series launched in the seventies, but looking back at the fifties, still resonates with viewers in 2024, almost 2025? And I think it does.

BL: I think initially, part of the attraction was that it was a distraction. It was in the middle of Watergate, you know, oil prices were… Very much like today, it was kind of an escape valve, and I think that somehow, it also kind of helped usher in the Carter AND Reagan presidencies.

FF: I think also… When I talk to fans, they always say, “Man, I sure wish my family was like that.”

BL: I think Erin Moran felt that way!

FOG!: I was in the generation that was the first generation where there’s so many kids growing up in divorced homes.

BL: Yes.

FOG!: And here they’re seeing a nuclear family that was genuinely inclusive.  Even Fonzie became part of that family! In that Christmas episode where Fonzie is in his garage apartment eating the canned ravioli by himself. At that point he joined the Cunningham family. And this actually leads to a question this applies to both of you, but it’s a direct question for Fred. A few years ago, I was  on YouTube doing a deep dive and wound up on Happy Days and I came across a clip from an episode I had never seen. And it startled me. I’ve never seen anything like it. And as it turns out, when I was researching, you wrote the episode.

FF: Oh, wow. Which one?

FOG!: “Kiss Me Teach.”

BL: “Kiss Me Teach.” Is that a Joanie show?

FOG!: It was one where Joanie is almost sexually assaulted by a student. And Fonzie bursts into the room. The guy sees Fonzie, gets so scared, he jumps out the window. Fonzie looks out the window and says, “Hey, we’ll get him when they take down the flag.” The question is, what was the genesis of that? I mean, Happy Days was a very familial show, but it was not like a “very special episode” kind of series. That one really came out of nowhere for me. I just had never seen it, never knew that one existed. What was the reaction behind the scenes and also the audience response to that at the time?

FF: To start with, the audience reaction was incredible. Like, I think they reacted how you did and just, you know, they screamed and applauded.

BL: They loved to cheer.

FF: Yeah, right. We had a great cheering audience. As you know, we all discuss the story and then someone writes the episode, but it was, we just felt people loved Joanie in there and obviously Fonzie and it was like Fonzie saves the day, but in a different way than we had done it before.

BL: And it worked. Definitely. But you’re right. It’s all about Fonzie saving the day. That’s what you’re building towards.

FOG!: Yeah, but, it’s one of those episodes where I’ve talked to people who are my age who watched the series. I say, “Have you ever seen this episode?” And they’re in shock because no one in the show, none of the characters, are out of character. It’s all of a sudden like you’re adding a danger that they’ve never experienced before.

FF: Right. Yeah. That was, I think one of the reasons we did it because we hadn’t seen Fonzie in that. I mean, he saved the day before, but with Joanie it was kind of special. Sure.

BL: Shortcake! Shortcake. But, you know, Happy Days did a lot of very different episodes.

I was part of “Southern Crossing” where Fonzie and Al went, you know, became Freedom Riders to integrate a diner. Fred did a couple of beautiful episodes. “The Mechanic” where Fonzie, a harried garage owner, makes a hire over the phone and then discovers that the guy’s in a wheelchair and doesn’t think he can do the job.

FOG!: Right.

BL: And Fred did a beautiful show where Fonzie’s dating a hearing-impaired woman.

FF: I didn’t do that one.

BL: He did all the great romances on Happy Days, the love stories.

FOG!: Fred, one of the things that was interesting is the book mentioned that you were very involved with the performing arts theater for the handicapped.

FF: Right, right.

FOG!: Has that been something that’s been a passion of yours to keep in all of your work?

FF: Yeah, it was interesting. When we were doing Happy Days, there’s a gentleman named Robert Cole who started PATH, Performing Arts Theater for the Handicapped. Anson and I think Tom, too, and myself, were on the board of directors. And I think the intent of that, you know, first of all it’s so hard to get an acting job in the auditions and especially more so for quote-unquote disabled people.

So, we wanted to try to change that. For example, if we were casting a lawyer, why not have a lawyer with, you know, one arm or in a wheelchair just to show that. And a lot of shows that did have handicapped people would have, you know, regular able actors. So, we wanted to, you know, try to help. It’s really interesting. When I spoke at one of them, there were maybe 13 actors in the class and, you know, blind and wheelchair. And the first time I spoke to the class you’d notice that. But then after a while, it just…

FOG!: It was, you’re just talking to your students or your people.

FF: Right.

BL: But remember Anson Williams and Ron Howard collaborated on Skyward…

FOG!: I read about that in the book, yeah.

BL: …which was really, as Ron said, his calling card to movie studios because it had Betty Davis in it. It was a really good movie, but they got in a big fight with Brandon Tartikoff who wanted to get the little girl from Little House on the Prairie. And Anson and Ron had found this 14-year-old wheelchair bound girl, Susie Gilstrap, who gave them a really good audition and did a fine, fine job in the movie. And they did a sequel!

FOG!: Like anything else of that time period, you know, a show like Happy Days and just a lot of those shows that were family shows, I think showing other sides of the world, you know, be it handicapped, be it different race, be it…

BL: Even opening people’s eyes to you can get a library card! Happy Days took this job seriously.

FOG!: But at the same time, you never felt like you were getting preached to. Like that’s the really important part.

FF: We were never didactic. The library card is so interesting because it wasn’t a story about that. He just kind of, he’s exiting the living room and he was just so…He announced he had got a library card and he was just so proud.

BL: “Everybody can get one. Did you know that?”

FOG!: When Happy Days ended and you guys both kind of went off, you did some collaboration, but Fred, you worked on Family Matters and It’s Your Move, which I used to love, with Jason Bateman.

FF: I’m so glad people know that. It kind of became a cult classic, I think.

FOG!: Yeah. I remember him because he was smart-alecky. That was back when that was his persona in everything. He did that on Silver Spoons and he was great.

BL: Oh, wait, wait, wait. They fired him off Silver Spoons because he was always beating up Ricky.

FOG!: Well, Ricky seems like a strange character these days. And then, you know, Brian, you went and directed The Flintstones films and you did Jingle All the Way.

BL: Well, first we collaborated on My Secret Identity.

FOG!: That’s what I’m getting to, yes.

BL: We went to Toronto and ran, and ran right into an International Emmy for Best Children and Young People series.

FOG!: Now, was that before or after The New Leave It to Beaver?

BL: That was during.

FF: During. Yeah, Brian was very nice. He said, you know, I’m going to do this pilot, My Secret Identity, and we did it together. And then when it got picked up, Brian stayed and ran The New Leave It to Beaver and then I went to Toronto.

BL: And as soon as it ended, he came back to Beaver and helped us get across the finish line.

FF: That was great.

FOG!: You know, My Secret Identity was another show that I have very fond memories of.

FF: Oh, thanks.

FOG!: What is the experience like to create basically a beloved, but cult series that has kind of like disappeared from being able to see it. I don’t know why it hasn’t streamed anywhere.

BL: Which is weird because it used to.

FOG!: Yeah.

BL: It was on Nickelodeon on Saturday mornings for a while.

FF: For a short time.

BL: That’s exactly the kind of thing that would be on Peacock. As well as The New Leave It to Beaver.

FOG!: Right. Well, that’s the thing that drives me crazy with, streaming platforms like MAX.  Why aren’t all the old shows, like The Courtship of Eddie’s Father on there, all these things that they actually own, you know?

BL: Probably because they have existing licenses with people. Ron Howard always said the only way we’re ever going to get true residual payments is when you get a phone book and you can just pick anything you want. And we’re almost there. I think these people, they’re in such a race for new content that they’re not as interested in mining what they have in their libraries.

FF: But I think, yeah, My Secret Identity. I’m just very proud of that show.

FOG!: Well, especially the world we live in now is a very superhero friendly audience that did not exist when that show aired.

FF: Oh, yeah.

BL: Actually, we tried to revive it last year with Jerry as the scientist.

FF: Yeah.

BL: And I think Jerry’s management, you know, we had to make sure Jerry was in. He’s in and tell all his people, you know, said, wouldn’t you rather, wouldn’t you rather do the talk? And get paid every day.

FOG!: It’s interesting because there are so many like programs and that were so culturally important in the time that, you know, we live in a world where everything supposedly is available, but yet the stuff you want to see is gone and it’s not streaming anywhere. It’s not available for purchase.

FF: Brian, also The New Leave it to Beaver would be great.

BL: Absolutely. I believe that the master tapes burned in the 2001 backlot fire.

FOG!: In syndication, do they have copies or it’s just… it doesn’t really matter?

BL: Well, you know, here’s the thing. Nick Abdo, who was associate producer of Happy Days and later Laverne and Shirley, who developed the show with me, and he, you know…They gave us a number and he said, okay, here’s how we’re going to make that number. We’re going to shoot on 16-millimeter film. We’re going to transfer it to video. We’re going to be the first show to edit digitally. And because we got the equipment and the editor for free because they wanted someone to use it. And they let us out of Universal’s strict negative requirement so that we only had to deliver on a two-inch master, video master. And I believe that’s what was burned.

FOG!: So it would have to be completely remastered.

BL: Right.

FOG!: If it still existed, it would have to.

BL: Who knows? Who knows? I mean, it’s sad. It’s sad. And you know, those kids were really good and whatever Jerry’s shortcomings, occasionally he could be very charming and he WAS the Beaver. There was no denying that. Barbara Billingsley, like Marion, the most incredibly joyous, wonderful giving people. You know, these, all these TV moms that everybody loves, loves? There’s a fucking reason!

FOG!: That’s the thing. Again, the period where I grew up, you had Marion, you had Florida Evans, you had all these people that were just, regardless of any other differences of race or background, they’re maternal. And they have a very wonderful aura that they present. Not everyone was Shirley Partridge, you know, playing on the trombone or the, uh…but they were fitting, in some cases, a very outdated “mother at home” ideal. For instance, obviously for Marion Cunningham, it did take place then. That WAS the time period.

BL: But here’s the thing. Barbara Billingsley, Marion: same boat. They were working mothers. They had careers, they had young kids.

FOG!: Yeah. I hate to be one of those people where it’s like, well, TV used to be so much better, but there were aspects that I think are missing from television and from entertainment in general today.

BL: It’s a different business and comedy is very different. In the book, we make note that in 1978, nine of the Top 10 shows were situation comedies. In the 1983-84 season, there are zero comedies in the Top 10 and two in the Top 20. Things changed, you know, and it was the development of the more adult drama and it was the starting of the fractionalizing of the audience through different cable brands.

FOG!: But it’s interesting because the last time I spoke to you, Brian, we talked a bit about your directing work and your movies are, are basically family movies. It’s almost like a dirty word sometimes. It’s a very wonderful thing to have something that’s not…Your movies are, well… The Flintstones is a little bit different, but they’re trying to market the hell out of something.

BL: Yeah. You know that family entertainment in the films now has been totally co-opted by the CGI market for better or worse. They’re not making the $35 million family film that Disney made, that Universal made, that Fox made, you know, that was my bread and butter as a filmmaker. It’s just not there. I don’t even think in 10 years you’re going to have anything but revival houses.

FOG!: As far as movie theaters, I think movie theaters at this point are only going to show tent pole films. You know?

BL: But how long do you think that’s going to last?

FOG!: Well, I mean, for instance, everything now comes out on digital in two or three weeks.

BL: Yeah. Yeah.

FOG!: It’s ridiculous. I think COVID was a wakeup call. I saw an interview with Quentin Tarantino who’s with a bunch of different directors, including Ridley Scott and one of the things he said was, he’s like, we have failed. Cinema used to be entertainment for the masses such as during the great depression. It was an equalizer. Everyone could afford it.

FF: Right.

FOG!: Now you’re looking at $15 a ticket.

BL: And a sitter, and dinner…

FF: Right.

FOG!: Then you have people talking or on their phones and it’s not a pleasurable experience. And it’s unfortunate

BL: No, we love to go to the movies. I got a theater a mile and a half from my house—eight screens, and usually we’re the only people in it.

FF: It’s just, it’s heartbreaking.

FOG!: The other thing too is, Brian, you produced mostly family films. I mean, I grew up on that kind of stuff too.

BL: This is what I grew up watching. I grew up, strangely enough, watching Leave It to Beaver, The Flintstones, and The Dick Van Dyke Show.

FOG!: I remember when Disney used to put out stuff like… You know, after Star Wars, their science fiction movie was The Cat from Outer Space.

BL: Well, no, no. They did The Black Hole. They did Tron.

FOG!: But I’m saying in general, like they were not worried. You didn’t think about it, like that’s a stupid movie. You were a kid!  Seeing a movie was fantastic! It didn’t matter what the film was.

BL: Well, if you remember at Disney when Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner, who were Paramount executives, came over, they weren’t trying to hit home runs. They were trying to hit doubles there, you know, $30 million movies that grow 60 or 70 million dollars for them. That was their business. Then the world changed and it all became about corporate funneling of assets into properties that could be merchandised or licensed throughout their other product lines. That’s been the big change in the business and then streaming is upsetting that model.

FOG!: The other thing too, is that no streaming network commits to anything. Like, they’ll show a show and they’ll get you into it and then they’ll be like, “Oh yeah, we canceled it.”

BL: Well, Jenji Kohan, who did Orange is the New Black…

FOG!: Right.

BL: And whose brother’s a writer, whose father was a writer, and she said they’re not in the same business we are. They’re really not interested in making five seasons of a show. We were trained. You’re in it to make a hundred episodes. You know, they don’t want to make… They wanna make 30, 40 and that’s all they’re really interested in.

FOG!: Well, you look at some of the old shows and they had like, you know, 25 to 30 episode seasons. And now, you know.

BL: Wait, wait, wait. When I was a kid, it was 39.

FOG!: See? But now it’s like, we got eight!

BL: Well, Young Sheldon, the top comedy, did 18 last year.

FF: What do you both have in the works? And after the release of the book, do you guys have plans to collaborate again?

BL: Well, I hope so. We have nothing on board. I keep telling Fred he should do the Family Matters book. Call it Family Matters Matters!

FF: Brian’s working on a new exciting book.

BL: Yes. With a woman in Kansas City who has the world’s greatest Archie collection.

FOG!: Oh, wow.

BL: And that’s going out to publishers very soon, I hope. And hopefully go back to teaching next year. Took this year off. And, you know, I think I’m in books. I think I’m pretty much… I think Hollywood’s done with me.

FF: And me.

FOG!: At this point in your lives, if you could do any dream project, do you have one?

BL: Oh, yes. No, I have many. Unfortunately, I thought it was going to get made. Something I created, an animated CGI musical that was purchased by Illumination with Pharrell Williams doing the music and producing. And then he went and took the job in the fashion industry and all the film projects kind of went by the wayside.

FOG!: I know that this is never accurate, but IMDb said you’re involved with a remake of Police Academy.

BL: Well, seven years ago, we wrote – me and Bennett Yellin, the Farrelly brothers’ old partner, and David Richards—the late David Richards, and a brilliant comedy mind. We did Police Academy: Taking It to the Streets, which featured three of the original characters in substantial roles, but really rolled out a new generation under the leadership of Steve Guttenberg and the others. And the vision that was doing it, they couldn’t see to spend the money, which was, yeah, you need to spend an extra $800,000, $900,000 to make something really good, guys. But they would rather – they’re very short-sighted. And like I’ve seen with many studios, poor management of their intellectual property. And look at Warner Brothers. I mean, my God, they spent $2 billion on superhero movies that no one wanted to see.

FOG!: Well, one of the things that’s shocking about Warner Brothers with their superhero products is they had one of the best Christmas movies I’ve seen in years, Merry Little Batman, an animated feature that they had sold to Amazon.

BL: Oh, I heard about this. Yeah.

FOG!: It’s great. It’s streaming on Amazon Prime. And it’s like, why would you sell this off?  I mean, like, it’s not for your regular Batman audience. It’s made for families and kids, and it’s a fantastically charming film.

BL: You see, they just don’t know. They just don’t know. I did – the Altier brothers – I did the live action direct to video Scooby-Doo movies, from the cartoon.

FOG!: You do the young ones, right?

BL: Yes, well, they’re in high school, yes. I wanted them to be in college. They wanted high school. We did a kick-ass Munsters movie, which was really what would have been the pilot for The Munsters, where they get driven out of Transylvania and come to America and buy the house on Mockingbird Lane, which is inhabited by ghosts. The ghost, in order to get rid of them, kidnaps Eddie and they have to go into the afterlife to catch him—Grandpa and Herman. We loved it. Everybody there loved it. It goes to the head of it, and he goes, but this is the old Munsters. Shouldn’t we be doing the new Munsters? And that’s how they end up doing Mockingbird Lane, which was $15 million of garbage, and the one that they let Rob Zombie make.

FOG!: Which is also not very pretty.

BL: No, bad. And we had Brad Garrett! His Herman Monster is Fred Gwynne! You could put the two soundbites together. You’d never know the difference.

FOG!: That’s too bad.

BL: And he’s 6’8”!

FOG!: Right. Did you ever see the film with (Brad Garrett) as Jackie Gleason?

BL: Yes, where everybody else had to wear big shoes.

FOG!: Right, or props for a giant size so he would look normal. And that’s the thing. I get this weird impression that people don’t know what funny is or what entertainment should be anymore and I think that there’s such a drive to adapt… Now, Fred, you also adapted Happy Days for the musical, right? You wrote the book for that.

FF: Oh, right. In 1999, a British entity wanted to do a musical. Henry sent me the script and asked if I’d look at it. So I rewrote it and got caught up in it. Then we went just outside of London. And I thought it was a very…

BL: But how close was it to Happy Days as you knew it?

FF: Pretty close. And then also we toured in Australia.

FOG!: But it never played like Broadway here or anything?

FF: No, no. And then you asked what I’m working on recently. Years ago, I wrote a children’s book with Ray Bradbury, which was a thrill. But he passed away before we could… I mentioned to Brian I’m really upset that I haven’t pursued it because Ray Bradbury won an award from NASA in, like, ‘66 or so. He wrote kind of a thank you editorial in LIFE Magazine.

It stayed with me for years. I sent a letter to Ray Bradbury’s agents saying I think this would make a great children’s book. Didn’t hear back for a couple months. Then my agent wrote me and said, “Oh, I’m so sorry. I lost your letter to Mr. Bradbury. I’ll send it to him.” In three weeks, the phone rings and it’s Ray Bradbury. I nearly fainted. But just working with him was amazing. Then a gentleman named Peter Michels, who directed Family Guy and The Simpsons, did the illustrations. So, I’d like to get that going. And then I co-wrote a musical.

FOG!: I can’t imagine a publisher wouldn’t want to publish a book written by Ray Bradbury.

BL: That’s what I keep telling him. So would the estate. They want money coming in.

FF:  I wrote a spec movie I’d like to kind of get out. It was optioned years ago. It was comedy action with a big twist. So, you know, it’s getting back. And then we always wanted my father to write a memoir. I don’t know if you know, but he wrote for Bob Hope, Red Skelton, Lucille Ball and George Burns…

BL: I don’t know if you know.  His dad and his partner got an Emmy nomination for writing The George Burns One-Man Show. How old was he?

FF: In his late seventies.

FOG!: That’s the best thing about writing is that there’s no age limit.

FF: Exactly.

BL: Well, I don’t know about that. I mean, Bob Brunner, the man who hired me and always was wonderful to me and to Fred on Happy Days, got to be 50 and he said, “That’s it. They don’t want me anymore. I’m too old.”

FF: Yeah. Even in Garry Marshall’s first book, he talks about ageism, which is too bad.

BL: But if it weren’t for ageism, young bucks like us would have never gotten an opportunity, you know, to be working on a number one show other than the fact that we were cheaper than established writers.

FOG!: But the other thing, too, is you guys had a background in… From just being a viewer of sitcom structure and all these things that newer viewers don’t necessarily have, because who then?

BL: Well, you know, I knew what I wanted to do since I was literally four years old. I’m not exaggerating. I actually have a thing in my baby book, a card my mother saved from the nursery school. “Brian’s going to end up being a TV impresario like Sol Hurok.” Everything I ever did was, you know, to get there, as opposed to Fred, who grows up with his father writing for Lucy and Bob Hope and George Burns and all this, and he never gives a thought to it.

FOG!: But to him, that’s his dad’s job…

BL: Yeah, I know, yeah.

FF: Looking back after graduate school, why in the hell didn’t I go to him and say, “Hey, dad, this looks really fun.”

BL: Yeah, you laugh all day and you make good money. In those days, that’s a problem now, you know? People can’t make a living working on a show anymore.

FOG!: The residuals also are a huge deal that they don’t pay people in multiple drafts.

BL: I’m glad that, I believe, one Jeffersons and one Happy Days were under the contract where you got 13 and then goodbye, and everything else was in the perpetuity category. So definitely a beneficiary of a number of strikes over the decades by the Writers Guild and the Directors Guild to ensure that your work would be rewarded in the future, especially as new mediums kept popping up.

FOG!: Right. It’s sad because television used to be such a comfort for… It was everything for people. It was everything from comfort to a friend to where you stay connected with one another.

BL: Just think about America’s relationship with Walter Cronkite. Does that figure exist anymore?

FF: No.

FOG!: No. Tom Brokaw was the closest.

BL: He’s 84 now.

FOG!: And he’s been retired for some time. There doesn’t seem to be any statesman of any kind in that role anymore, where you used to have people like Walter Cronkite who was the trusted voice of the nation.

BL: Yeah. Actually, remember that Hollywood luncheon once we went to Fred where Garry was speaking, and he said, “Who’s the grand old man of television?”

FOG!: Right.

BL: There isn’t one. Everyone wants to get their money and get out.

FF: Yeah. Brian and I were very fortunate to do it when we did.

BL: The whole Garry Marshall school, and it was a school because he did take raw talent and nurture it and provide guardrails and guidance… And the year I started, on the lot the same year, Marc Sotkin, Judy Pioli… who also started that year on Laverne and Shirley and ended up running The Golden Girls for years. And Chris Thompson, who created a number of wild series, and the show (Shake it Up) for the Disney Channel.

FF: And Bosom Buddies.

BL: Yeah. Right. There was just so many people who started there and earned their stripes and continued. Lowell Ganz hired Ron Leavitt, who created Married… with Children, and Richie Rosenstock, who was the creative consultant on Cheers, and producer for years on The Big Bang Theory. I mean, literally, they were training people. It was like the army.

FOG!: You had Jerry Paris, right? Jerry Paris directed most of Happy Days.

FF: Yeah. Jerry was great.

FOG!: Again,78 I think there’s something like the familial aspect, that you have the same director.

BL: Yeah. Right.  Jerry Paris and Garry Marshall enjoyed a 25-year collaboration,  really, until Garry started directing his own work. They both came from The Dick Van Dyke Show and from the Carl Reiner School, where the curriculum had basically been passed down through a combination of Sheldon Leonard’s work on shows like Make Room for Daddy and Carl Reiner’s experience on Your Show of Shows, which we should never forget who the writing staff was. There was Woody Allen and Mel Brooks. There was Neil Simon. There was Larry Gelbart, who did M*A*S*H and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. And (Lucille Kallen), who was the model for Rose Marie’s character on The Dick Van Dyke Show.

FOG!: Oh, wow. Okay. I didn’t know that. That’s pretty cool. It actually reminds me of a movie, one of my favorites, My Favorite Year, which is that.

BL: Yeah, yeah. Great movie! And remember the Neil Simon play, Laughter on The 23rd Floor.

FOG!: Yeah. I do think there’s something lost in today’s audience. Well, because they’re not getting exposed to it. Younger audiences aren’t exposed to humor in the same way. Everything seems to be either a TikTok video or a meme. It’s get in, get out, without there being…

BL: A punchline, you mean?

FOG!: Or a setup. Out of curiosity, has there ever been involved with or has there been any talk about a Happy Days revival or remake?  Do you think it would work?

BL: Well, Fred did the play that he was very happy with. Garry Marshall tried several times to launch a Happy Days musical, and it never quite clicked. I think the better approach, instead of rebooting Happy Days, look at That ‘70s Show, where it was a show that 20 years earlier, that reflected the culture, and they created wonderful, wonderful characters.

FOG!: Yeah. Would anyone today care about watching a show set in 2004?

BL: I don’t know how you would define the era.

FOG!: It doesn’t really have one.

BL: You know, I think there’s always a market for nostalgia. I think if you try to recreate it, sometimes it’s great. Look at the remakes and sequels. I always think of The Fugitive. The movie is so much better than the TV show. You never know where you’re going to strike gold.  If it does happen (Happy Days reboot), I hope it’s done well and not badly. That’s always my mantra. Too often, I see things that are remade by people whose goal is to change things, rather than to try and figure out what is the essence and bring that to it. And I think that’s we always had a good knack for on Happy Days of being the audience and knowing what you want to see from these people and delivering on that week after week. And when you do a reboot, you don’t know if you’re going to have the same kind of people in front of you or behind you.

FOG!: If you look at the Marshall shows in general, they never seemed to be afraid to hire people that had their own sense of genius. Where Michael McKean and David Lander had done Lenny and Squiggy for years, and Robin Williams is Mork. Things like that. There’s no possessiveness, like, “It’s MY show. You can’t play that character.”

BL: A beautiful illustration of the generosity of the Happy Days cast is the Robin Williams story, where he walked in at 11:30 on a Wednesday and you’re shooting Friday night at 7:30. And he just goes nuts. Instead of throwing him off the lot, which, hey, Taxi threw Andy Kaufman off the lot a couple of times when he was Tony Clifton.  Most people would have expelled him and said, “Get somebody we can work with.” Instead, they ceded the spotlight to him. And Jerry Paris, it brought him to life. And the cast was elevated by working with Robin. And I mean, once again, who is going to let a guy they’ve never seen in their life who’s getting 800 for the week take the spotlight and run with it?

FOG!: And on one of the most successful shows currently airing.

BL: Usually people become even more possessive.

FF: As I’ve said before, usually if a guest star changes a line, we go, what the hell is he or she doing? When Robin came out for the first time and for the run-through, people were just incredulous. It was amazing.

BL: We were expecting the worst run through of all time, indeed, coming from the worst reading of all time. And instead, you walk out going, spin off. And indeed, it was.

FOG!: Right. Yeah. I think it was in the book, actually. Didn’t they spin it off? They had another pilot with Pam Dawber.

BL: Yes, Sister Terry, that Bob Brunner and Arthur Silver had written and was really lame. Yeah, no, and they got a piece of the show for that.

FOG!: Good. Unfortunately, new pieces of shows don’t mean anything for the writers. Back then they did.

BL: Well, no, in the syndication era it did.

FOG!: Thank you both for contributing quite a bit to my childhood.  To you guys, at the time, it was a job, but it was a huge influence on my life.  Thank both so much for the book, it’s truly wonderful.

50 Years of Happy Days: A Visual History of an American Television Classic
by Brian Levant & Fred Fox Jr. is available in stores and online retailers
from Insight Editions on November 14th 2024