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I remember a short-lived sitcom called Out of the Blue. It was in Marshall's universe and was kind of a spin-off of Mork and Mindy. The first episode came out before the character, an angel, was introduced on Mork and Mindy. Or was it that Mork guest-starred on the show?
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I honestly don't know anything about OUT OF THE BLUE. I couldn't tell you if it were a spin-off of MORK & MINDY or where it came from.
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The first episode guest-starred Mork and the angel from Out of the Blue guest starred on Happy Days. The show didn't last too long.
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R.I.P Cindy Williams
Shirley Feeney and Laverne Defazio are both in heaven now.
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Hard to envision a world without “Schlameel” and “Schlamazel” both in it.
R.I.P. Feeney and DeFazio
R.I.P. Feeney and DeFazio
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I've been rewatching LAVERNE & SHIRLEY for the first time in at least a decade. The show fell apart earlier than I recalled. The first season is solid and the second season is great, so I'm surprised at how quickly my patience is breaking during the third season. I'm only a half dozen episodes in, and I'm growing weary of it. Although the "Jump the Shark" moment of the series is undoubtedly the move to California in S5, the decline set in earlier. The show's physical comedy is Lucy-esque, but with a lowbrow twist: symbolically substituting beer for chocolate and wine. The comedy in S3 got far more implausible: L&S dangling from the side of a building; becoming lady wrestlers; or landing an out-of-control airplane. (Worth noting that even I LOVE LUCY has a few dud episodes where the comedy strains credulity: i.e., climbing to the top of the Empire State Building dressed as a Martian.) In S3, any pretense at '50s style is dropped; fashions & hairstyles look straight up '70s.
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Ron Howard told 'Happy Days' producers he'd leave the show if they changed name to 'Fonzie's Happy Days'
Henry Winkler's quick rise to fame as "The Fonz" in "Happy Days" had producers contemplating changing the name of the show. Ron Howard reveals he nearly quit due to the idea.
www.foxnews.com
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I can definitely see the producers side of it here. Fonzie had become the breakout star of the show at this point. Ultimately I’m glad they didn’t do it though. If it would’ve caused Ron to leave the show that early on then the show probably would’ve ended a lot sooner. It was a great show with an equally great cast and tinkering with it too much would’ve been a huge mistake.Ron Howard told 'Happy Days' producers he'd leave the show if they changed name to 'Fonzie's Happy Days'
Henry Winkler's quick rise to fame as "The Fonz" in "Happy Days" had producers contemplating changing the name of the show. Ron Howard reveals he nearly quit due to the idea.
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Would it have attracted new viewers, though? Even people who weren't fans would probably know of Fonzie, and if they weren't already watching I don't see how the name change would attract them.
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I think it might’ve attracted new viewers at first but ultimately if it caused Ron Howard to leave earlier it would’ve been a detriment to the show. I’m not saying it couldn’t have still stayed a hit show but I don’t think it would’ve had the run it did.
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I've been watching THE ODD COUPLE on Paramount+ recently. They don't have the complete series (but I do on DVD, they're just boxed up right now), but they have enough episodes for the casual viewer.
Last night I watched the third season episode "Password" (long considered one of TV's best half-hour sitcom episodes) that guest stars Betty White, Allen Ludden, and Elinor Donahue. The episode was well-written and it had several solid and well-deserved laughs.
Jack Klugman and Tony Randall play off each other wonderfully, and the sophistication of the humor makes THE ODD COUPLE perhaps Garry Marshall's best-produced TV product -- even if HAPPY DAYS, LAVERNE & SHIRLEY, and MORK & MINDY were bigger hits in the ratings.
I've been breezing my way through THE ODD COUPLE without any apparent goal in mind. I will say the first season seems a little stiff with its laugh track, while the following seasons seem to breathe life into the comedy with the production change-up being before a studio audience now.
Last night I watched the third season episode "Password" (long considered one of TV's best half-hour sitcom episodes) that guest stars Betty White, Allen Ludden, and Elinor Donahue. The episode was well-written and it had several solid and well-deserved laughs.
Jack Klugman and Tony Randall play off each other wonderfully, and the sophistication of the humor makes THE ODD COUPLE perhaps Garry Marshall's best-produced TV product -- even if HAPPY DAYS, LAVERNE & SHIRLEY, and MORK & MINDY were bigger hits in the ratings.
I've been breezing my way through THE ODD COUPLE without any apparent goal in mind. I will say the first season seems a little stiff with its laugh track, while the following seasons seem to breathe life into the comedy with the production change-up being before a studio audience now.
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I know it wasn’t the biggest hit compared to some of the other sitcoms of the era but I always found it very enjoyable. The basic premise of the obnoxious neat freak living with the slob and struggling to get along was ingenious.
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Apparently, it's renewal was called into question at the end of every season. Yeah, it's ratings were that low, which fairs in sharp contrast to the Top 5 ratings Marshall's shows would enjoy in the late-70s.
I mean, LAVERNE & SHIRLEY was #1 for like two years straight, and HAPPY DAYS held that title for a season itself. MORK & MINDY was #3 for its inaugural year, but the network big shots couldn't leave it alone -- which caused its ratings to plummet almost immediately into its second season.
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Sadly it never even cracked the top 30. The reasons it wasn’t canceled sooner was because the summer reruns always seemed to do well and the show wasn’t costing much to make. The final season featured a lot of guest stars in the hopes of improving the ratings but obviously it didn’t help.
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LAVERNE & SHIRLEY premiered 50 years ago this month. It was a smash immediately.
I have a certain fondness for the TV version of THE ODD COUPLE (the movie had all the charm of Walter Matthau in the late-'60s -- which is to say: none at all.... Have you seen photos of how hunky he was at, say, 21?? It's amazing all these cute-as-buttons character actors in their twenties who looked like they pined for death by their forties, unrecognizable and depleted and probably alcoholic).
Anyway, the first season of the TV series version of ODD COUPLE is a bit hard to sit through (although, as a child, I was there for it in real time) because Season 1 is a one-camera show without a live audience, and, in retrospect, it doesn't entirely work). By Season 2, they're in front of a live audience, and so the show clicks nicely, Tony Randall and Jack Klugman exuding a comic freshness impossible in the Matthau/Lemmon film from 1968 (based on a play by Neil Simon).
I have a mild fondness for this Season 5 scene with Randall and guest star John Fiedler (Fiedler did two episodes and was also in the Lemmon/Matthau movie)... Not that this was a huge event in my life, but I saw, a few days apart in December 1984, both Tony Randall and John Fiedler -- at 30 Rock, Rockefeller Center in NYC -- as Randall was headed down the steps into (believe it or not) the subway, and Fiedler coming in the SE entrance from the plaza.
Somehow, despite my not being a celeb gawker in any way whatsoever -- their eyes found mine; they both looked at me and smiled. (So did newsman Tom Brokaw that same month). No matter how crowded the Christmastime bustle, they always see me through the tide of people for some reason, look at me and smile... I have numerous, stupid, pointless celebrity sightings where this has happened.
I have no idea what this means, but I apparently have a face; someone once told me I had a "pleasant alertness" (which I'm assuming means nothing at all):
I have a certain fondness for the TV version of THE ODD COUPLE (the movie had all the charm of Walter Matthau in the late-'60s -- which is to say: none at all.... Have you seen photos of how hunky he was at, say, 21?? It's amazing all these cute-as-buttons character actors in their twenties who looked like they pined for death by their forties, unrecognizable and depleted and probably alcoholic).
Anyway, the first season of the TV series version of ODD COUPLE is a bit hard to sit through (although, as a child, I was there for it in real time) because Season 1 is a one-camera show without a live audience, and, in retrospect, it doesn't entirely work). By Season 2, they're in front of a live audience, and so the show clicks nicely, Tony Randall and Jack Klugman exuding a comic freshness impossible in the Matthau/Lemmon film from 1968 (based on a play by Neil Simon).
I have a mild fondness for this Season 5 scene with Randall and guest star John Fiedler (Fiedler did two episodes and was also in the Lemmon/Matthau movie)... Not that this was a huge event in my life, but I saw, a few days apart in December 1984, both Tony Randall and John Fiedler -- at 30 Rock, Rockefeller Center in NYC -- as Randall was headed down the steps into (believe it or not) the subway, and Fiedler coming in the SE entrance from the plaza.
Somehow, despite my not being a celeb gawker in any way whatsoever -- their eyes found mine; they both looked at me and smiled. (So did newsman Tom Brokaw that same month). No matter how crowded the Christmastime bustle, they always see me through the tide of people for some reason, look at me and smile... I have numerous, stupid, pointless celebrity sightings where this has happened.
I have no idea what this means, but I apparently have a face; someone once told me I had a "pleasant alertness" (which I'm assuming means nothing at all):
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