{"id":8606,"date":"2024-11-13T09:15:32","date_gmt":"2024-11-13T09:15:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=8606"},"modified":"2024-11-11T14:57:41","modified_gmt":"2024-11-11T14:57:41","slug":"how-a-love-of-sports-made-garry-marshall-a-comedy-legend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=8606","title":{"rendered":"How a love of sports made Garry Marshall a comedy legend"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Happy-Days_1876859b\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By Ray Bennett<\/p>\n

LONDON \u2013 Garry Marshall, who was born 90 years ago today, said one of the reasons he became one of the most prolific and successful producers of TV sitcoms was because he was a sports nut.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m into sports, you see, and so I approach everything from sports,\u201d he told me. \u201cThe farm system has always fascinated me and I feel it should be applied to show business. With series, I was always putting together the farm teams that would come up and take over once the other guys moved on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"garry<\/a>He also believed that it was important to ring the changes: \u201cLife does not stand still and I think to do the same thing on a show for a long time is not creatively rewarding to anybody. You have to keep coming up fresh and new to sustain in this rather competitive business.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I interviewed Marshall (left) in 1982, he was busy with a spinoff from \u201cHappy Days\u201d (top picture) titled \u201cJoanie Loves Chachi\u201d starring Scott Baio and Erin Moran. It wasn\u2019t unprecedented. He\u2019d successfully spun off \u201cLaverne & Shirley\u201d and \u201cMork & Mindy\u201d before.<\/p>\n

That was largely because he had an aversion to pilots: \u201cI\u2019ve been very anti-pilot all my career. I think pilots are a waste of time. Most of my successes have come without pilots.\u201d<\/p>\n

With \u201cJoanie Loves Chachi\u201d, he did four episodes initially: \u201cIt\u2019s to see what the reaction is, see if there\u2019s a series there. Usually, the public will tell you and we\u2019ll see. Everyone asks, \u2018What if it doesn\u2019t work?\u2019 well, if it doesn\u2019t work, they\u2019ll go back to \u2018Happy Days\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

The show ran for just 17 episodes and they were back on \u201cHappy Days\u201d. But Marshall said the two leads had been happy to have their own show: \u201cI have a policy in my organisation that nobody is made to do anything. Scott and Erin said they wanted to a show very much. People who want to something else, they have rights. I recall back in the old days, the network insisted that Henry Winkler do his own show. Henry said he didn\u2019t want to do it so I refused to do it. There was quite a fight about it but there was no \u2018Henry Winkler Show\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Odd<\/a>He also paid attention when his stars wanted to quit, including Tony Randall and Jack Klugman (left): \u201cI usually try to run my shows with a certain democracy. I recall on \u2018The Odd Couple\u2019, after five years I sat down with Tony and Jack and said, \u2018Well, what do you want to do?\u2019 They said, \u2018We did all that we were going to do, we both are ready to do our own shows so why don\u2019t we pack it in?\u2019 So we packed it in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Afterwards, Randall reportedly had second thoughts and Marshall said, \u201cSometimes you\u2019re in a place and you\u2019re going along pretty well and you think something\u2019s wonderful out there but then you get out there there and it\u2019s not quite what you thought. I think the atmosphere we created on that show, I don\u2019t think Tony will ever find again, or Jack, or me for that matter, the kind of chemistry we had. It was a very easy show to do in the sense of making a product each week with every member interested in the product, not interested in their dressing room, what billing they get or how much money they make.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also was prepared to see \u201cHappy Days\u201d end: \u201cMy dream was to do 10 years on \u2018Happy Days\u2019 and the fact that we finally got 10 years has been very rewarding to me. I felt 10 years should be it. But again, I respect the feelings of all the people involved and after the 10th year, if it\u2019s still there and in the ball game \u2026 I keep changing the characters and making new angles, they change jobs, change lifestyles \u2026 if people want to go on then I certainly won\u2019t say no, I\u2019ll go on with it. I talk like I go there every day and do every single thing. I don\u2019t. But I do go in there and shake it up a lot so they\u2019ll stay awake. They seem to fall into the doldrums and say, \u2018Everything is fine, let\u2019s just make the same kind of stuff, and nothing lasts like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The series lasted for one more season and then Marshall took his finely honed comic sensibility to the big screen but aside from \u201cThe Flamingo Kid\u201d (1984) and \u201cPretty Woman\u201d (1990), it\u2019s for his TV shows that Garry Marshall will be remembered. He died in July 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ray Bennett LONDON \u2013 Garry Marshall, who was born 90 years ago today, said one of the reasons he became one of the most prolific and successful producers of TV sitcoms was because he was a sports nut. \u201cI\u2019m … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,1263,2257,15],"tags":[4357,4359,4358,4356,4360,4362,4361],"class_list":["post-8606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews","category-memory-lane","category-recalling","category-television","tag-happy-days","tag-joanie-loves-chachi","tag-the-odd-couple","tag-garry-marshall","tag-henry-winkler","tag-jack-klugman","tag-tony-randall"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8606"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11397,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8606\/revisions\/11397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}