Happy Days
For ten years, from 1974 to 1984, a fictional image of suburban Milwaukee brought the 1950s back to America through ABC's Happy Days. The picture of the world that was painted by this television comedy shaped a whole generation's image of the 1950s. It was world of drive-ins and leather jackets, of cars and girls, but mostly of hanging out and solving day to day problems. It was noticeably not the 1950s of McCarthy and Korea. In the first seasons of the show, a number of episodes focused on specific 1950s topics: electioneering for Adlai Stevenson, Beatniks, rock 'n' roll shows, gangs; but after that, Happy Days settled into its stride to present a more general backdrop of the period, against which the Cunninghams and Fonzie developed as characters.
In addition to Laverne and Shirley and Joanie Loves Chachi, Happy Days spawned a Saturday-morning cartoon show, The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang. Also, the much-loved 1978 sitcom Mork & Mindy was based on an episode of Happy Days. Indeed, the series was influential in setting the standard for popular comedies during the later 1970s and through the 1980s.
Happy Days was created by Garry Marshall, a veteran comedy writer who had worked on the Dick Van Dyke Show and who had produced The Odd Couple.
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