Happy Days was an ABC sitcom that defined the ’70s and early ’80s, helping cement Ron Howard and Henry Winkler as household names as Richie Cunningham and Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli. While Winkler stayed on for all 11 seasons of the sitcome, Winkler made his exit after Season 7.
In an interview with People, Howard looks back at his time on Happy Days and working with Howard, where they “just clicked as acting partners.” As well as the moment Winkler broke the news that he was leaving the sitcom.
“When we worked together, there was something that happens out of the blue,” said Winkler. “We had a shorthand with the script. He went where I went, I went where he went, and it became something else.”
Their time on screen together would be cut shorter than Winkler expected when he remembers a phone call on set in 1980 from Howard.
“It’s going to come out in the press in about 10 minutes, but I wanted you to know first, I’m not coming back,” said Howard to Winkler on the call. Howard’s exit didn’t come out of the blue, as he had always expressed his dream to become a director.
“My first thought was, ‘I’m going to die now,'” remembers Winkler. “My great acting partner on this show, my good friend, is no longer going to be here. My life is over.”
“And that was in the first two seconds,” he adds. “Then I said, ‘Ron, we’ve talked about this since the beginning. All you want to do is be a director. It’s in your DNA. Go and be the best you can be, and I cannot wait to see what you do.'”
Winkler stayed on Happy Days as Fonzi until its series finale, but he soon got the opportunity to reunite with Howard for his first studio film, Night Shift. For Howard and the studio, having Winkler in the movie was a “no-brainer.”
The 1982 comedy movie starred Winkler in the lead as Chuck Lumley, a timid night-shift morgue employee whose life turns upside down by a new co-worker.
“It was one of my all-time favorite experiences from then until now,” recalls Winkler. “And I’ve had some really wonderful experiences.”
“I even said to him, ‘If you were a brain surgeon, whether I needed it or not I would be your first patient.’ You absolutely knew and felt this man is to be trusted as a professional from his hair to his toes.”
