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Kara Kovalchik <\/strong>and Mental_Floss<\/a> <\/strong>present 14 Nostalgic Facts About Happy Days<\/em><\/a>. <\/strong>Here are three of my favorites…<\/p>\n 1. IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE SET IN THE 1920S, NOT THE 1950S. 4. HAPPY DAYS<\/em> ACTUALLY PREDATES AMERICAN GRAFFITI<\/em>.<\/strong> 5. FONZIE WAS ALMOST A MONKEE.<\/strong> Kara Kovalchik and Mental_Floss present 14 Nostalgic Facts About Happy Days. Here are three of my favorites… 1. IT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,65,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebs","category-trivia","category-tv","comments-off"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13122"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13123,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13122\/revisions\/13123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n<\/strong>When Garry Marshall was first approached by Paramount executives Michael Eisner and Tom Miller in 1971 to create a new sitcom, they envisioned something set in the 1920s or \u201930s. Marshall told them that he knew nothing about flappers, but he could write a show about the era in which he spent his teen and young adult years\u2014the 1950s. He put together a pilot about a Midwestern family that just purchased their first TV set (the first one in the neighborhood!) and how the teenaged son planned to use it as a chick magnet. The series didn\u2019t sell, and the pilot ended up as a vignette on Love, American Style<\/em>\u2014\u201cthe dumping ground of failed pilots\u201d according to Marshall.<\/p>\n
\nGeorge Lucas\u2019s Oscar-nominated 1973 film American Graffiti<\/em> launched a craze for 1950s nostalgia (even though the movie was set in 1962). Casting director Fred Roos had worked with Ron Howard on The Andy Griffith Show<\/em> and recommended him to Lucas for the role of Steve Bolander. Lucas dug out the \u201cLove and the Happy Days\u201d episode of Love, American Style<\/em> to determine whether Howard could play an 18-year-old high school student convincingly. Once American Graffiti<\/em> became a runaway success, ABC decided that the time was ripe for a 1950s-era sitcom and Garry Marshall\u2019s project was resurrected.<\/p>\n
\nWhen Henry Winkler got the callback after his first audition for the role of Arthur Fonzarelli, he was taken aback when he saw that the other contender was former Monkees drummer Micky Dolenz. According to Dolenz, Winkler admitted to him later that he had thought, \u201cOh crap, Micky Dolenz is here. I\u2019ll never get it!\u201d Dolenz was Marshall\u2019s original choice to play Fonzie, on the strength of a recent guest appearance he had made as a biker on Adam-12<\/em>. But at six feet tall, Dolenz towered over the five-foot-nine Ron Howard, so Winkler was deemed a better fit.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"