Happy Days - Spin-offs

Spin-offs

Happy Days, itself a spin-off from Love, American Style, spun off five different series, not including two animated spin-offs: Laverne & Shirley, Blansky's Beauties, Mork & Mindy, Out of the Blue, and Joanie Loves Chachi.

• The most successful of these spin-offs, Laverne & Shirley (starring Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams, respectively), also took place in early/mid 1960s Milwaukee. As Shotz Brewery workers, modeled after the Miller, Schlitz, and Pabst Breweries once located in Milwaukee, Laverne and Shirley find themselves in adventures with The Fonz, Lenny and Squiggy and even the Cunninghams also living in the midwestern city. The two starring characters eventually moved to Los Angeles in the show's later years. Penny Marshall is the sister of producer Garry Marshall.
• Robin Williams made his first appearance as "Mork" on Happy Days. In his own sitcom, Mork & Mindy, his character of Mork, the alien from the planet Ork, landed in 1970s Boulder, Colorado, to study humans and took up residence with Pam Dawber's character of Mindy McConnell. Originally, Mork's appearance was explained as a dream of Richie's. But after the spin-off was established, a new ending was tagged on to the repeat of the Happy Days episode explaining that Mork would return to Earth in 1978.
• Joanie Loves Chachi was a short-lived show about Richie's younger sister Joanie and Fonzie's younger cousin Chachi's relationship during their years as musicians in Chicago. A rumor suggests that the show was canceled due to low ratings. Actually, the program finished in the Top 20 its first season, but ABC determined that the show was losing too much of its lead-in, suggesting low appeal if the show were moved (a suggestion that came to be realized, as the show's ratings dropped dramatically after a move to another time slot in its second season). This type of cancellation seemed strange in the early 1980s, but soon became a commonplace part of TV audience research.
• Out of the Blue is a spin-off of Happy Days, though a scheduling error had the series airing prior to the main character's introduction on Happy Days.
• Blansky's Beauties (1977) starred Nancy Walker as former Las Vegas showgirl Nancy Blansky. One week before the show's premiere, the Blansky character appeared on Happy Days as a cousin of Howard Cunningham. Scott Baio and Lynda Goodfriend starred before joining Happy Days the following fall, and Pat Morita reprised his role of Arnold. Similarly. Eddie Mekka of Laverne & Shirley played the cousin of his Carmine character, while pulling double duty as a regular in both shows.