Fonzie jumps a shark on "Happy Days" - September 20th, 1977

On this day in 1977, during an infamous episode of “Happy Days,” Henry Winkler’s Fonzie jumped over a shark while on water skis.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio, Hello,
and welcome to This Day in History Class, a show
that serfs the channels of history one day at a time.
I'm Gay, Bluesier, and today we're talking about a notorious
TV spectacle that later made the leap into language, inspiring

(00:22):
a famous expression for when a show passes its prime.
The day was September twentieth, nineteen seventy seven. During an
infamous episode of Happy Days, Henry Winkler's Phonsie jumped over

(00:43):
a shark while on water skis. The stunt appeared in
the Last Act of Hollywood, the three part episode that
opened the show's fifth season. Although Happy Days was typically
said in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the gimmicky season premiere sent the
Cares on a trip to sunny California. Along the way,

(01:04):
Fonsie and his friends cross paths with an obnoxious local
bully known as the California Kid, who challenges the Fawnds
to a water skiing race. But when the race ends
in a tie, the two decide to settle their differences
another way by seeing which of them is man enough
to jump over a caged tiger shark. The outlandish plot

(01:27):
was a major departure from the show's usual focus on
suburban American life in the nineteen fifties, and while most
viewers weren't phased by the absurd stunt at the time,
it since become a defining moment in TV history. The
phrase jump the shark is now used to refer to
the point at which a beloved, long running TV show

(01:48):
or franchise begins to decline in quality. A show's jump
the shark moment can take many forms, most of which
don't involve a literal shark, but it generally hinges on
some kind of outrageous plot choice, gimmick, or casting change
that feels drastically different from what came before it. The
expression was coined in the mid nineteen eighties by two

(02:11):
roommates at the University of Michigan and has since been
embraced by pop culture fans and critics around the world,
though not everyone agrees with its usage. Created by prolific
producer and filmmaker Gary Marshall, the ABC sitcom Happy Days,
centered on the squeaky clean Cunningham family and their circle

(02:32):
of friends. The series premiered in January of nineteen seventy four,
and since it was set in the nineteen fifties, it
served as a nostalgic escape for viewers who were feeling
jaded by the Vietnam War and the other social ills
of the era. The show's catchy theme song promised charming,
harmless diversion, and the show delivered it in spades. Take

(02:54):
a listen on the Monday Happy Days. When Happy Days began,

(03:14):
the de facto lead was modest, upstanding teenager Richie Cunningham,
portrayed by the ever affable Ron Howard. But as time
went on, it was Henry Winkler's supporting character, a high
school dropout turned greaser mechanic named Arthur Fonzarelli, who increasingly
stole the show with his trademark leather jacket, perfectly quaffed hair,

(03:37):
and slick demeanor. Phonsie came to represent coolness itself to
a whole generation of young viewers. In fact, Winkler's turn
in the role was so iconic that Phronsie's jacket was
added to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in
nineteen eighty, a full four years before the series left
the air. Happy Days entered its fifth season in the

(04:00):
fall of nineteen seventy seven, and by that point the
show more or less revolved around Phonsie. The three part
season premiere was no exception. Its story began with a
pair of Hollywood talent scouts who enlist Phronsie's service as
a mechanic after their limo breaks down in Milwaukee. Believing
he could be the next James Dean, they invite him

(04:22):
out to Hollywood for a screen test, and since the
other cast members were still on the payroll, Phonsie asks
the Cunninghams to tag along on his trip to Hollywood.
Once there, the Fonzi's masculine pride is threatened by his
West Coast counterpart, the spoiled leader of a bunch of
teenage beach bums who calls himself the California Kid. Annoyed

(04:44):
by Phonsie's laid back bravado, the kid challenges him to
a water skiing competition, an activity which the landlocked wisconsinite
knows nothing about. But since the Fawns doesn't back down
from adare, he trades his genes for a bathing suit
and traps on a pair of water skis while still
wearing his leather jacket. Of course, after a bit of practice,

(05:06):
Fonsie manages to keep pace with the kid in the
big race, prompting his rival to up the stakes. He
suggests that they take turns jumping over a live shark
that's been enclosed in a netted area waiting to be
moved to a nearby tourist attraction, and while the California
kid ultimately chickens out of his own challenge, the Fawns

(05:27):
follows through and lands the jump unharmed. Afterward, he and
Richie have a heart to heart about the deeper meaning
of the stunt and why he was willing to risk
his life on a dare. Take a listen, we didn't
he did the challenge hit, But what did you really win? Oh?
Come on, Red? How often does a guy like me
get the bump off a guy like that? I mean,

(05:49):
he's got the best boat money can buy, he's got
custom skis, he's got a push, Yeah he does. He
gets everything handed to him on a silver plattern. Yeah,
everything is you and me, Red with Different with Tours
with Tours. Yeah. I knew all the time as you
were going to make it. Huh. Yeah, I did the
decision to have the Happy Days cast visit California makes

(06:12):
sense as a rating stunt. TV shows often use vacation
getaways as a way to grab attention for a season premiere,
but the choice to center a three part episode on
a water skiing race is a bit more baffling. However,
it wasn't as random as it seems, as Henry Winkler
was an avid water skier and used to be an

(06:33):
instructor before getting into acting. According to him, his father
had pressured him into telling the producers about his unusual
skill in the hope that they'd find a way to
write it into the show. The Hollywood episodes finally offered
a suitable excuse, so they wrote several scenes where Phonsie
practices the sport, culminating in his daring leap over a

(06:54):
tiger shark. As Winkler told Oprah Winfrey in twenty fifteen, quote,
I did all the water skiing except for the jump.
They wouldn't allow me to well. I also couldn't do
the jump. I don't know how to do that. On
September twentieth, nineteen seventy seven, thirty million viewers tuned in
to watch Phonsie jump the shark, but there was very

(07:17):
little commentary about it afterward. For most, it was just
a pleasantly silly stunt, not a harbinger of doom for
their favorite TV show. In fact, Happy Days was only
at the halfway point of its run. At that point.
The show would continue on for another six seasons after
the Shark Jump, coming to an end in nineteen eighty four.

(07:38):
It wasn't until a few years later that Phonsie's aquatic
escapades began to take on new meaning. As the story goes,
a group of undergrads were having a late night bull
session at the University of Michigan, discussing the inevitable dip
in quality of long running TV shows. A student named
Sean Connolly argued that Hollywood Part three was a tipping

(08:00):
point for Happy Days, and that similar off the wall
moments in other shows should be considered examples of jumping
the shark. Connolly's friend group latched onto the expression and
used it for years, but it was later popularized by
his roommate, comedy writer and radio host John Hayne. In
nineteen ninety seven, Hayne started a website called jumpthshark dot com,

(08:23):
which logged hundreds of examples of times when beloved TV
shows Jump the Shark. The website is long gone by
this point, but the phrase and the idea of pinpointing
a show's moment of decline lives on. Of course, assessing
the quality of a TV show is a subjective act.
Not everyone agrees on which episodes or storylines should be

(08:45):
considered jump the Shark moments. Ron Howard, for example, doesn't
think the Hollywood arc was when Happy Days went off
the rails, though he readily admits the story had its flaws.
When asked about it decades later, the filmmaker said, quote,
the Hollywood episode was really a jumbled mess from a
writing standpoint. I remember thinking, creatively, this was not our

(09:08):
greatest episode, but I thought it was a pretty good stunt,
and I understood why they wanted to do it. But
the thing that has to be remembered about the Jumping
the Shark idea is that the show went on to
be such a massive success for years after that, So
it's a kind of fun expression. And I get a
kick out of the fact that they identified that episode
because granted, you know, maybe it was pushing things a

(09:30):
little too far, but I think a lot of good
work was still done after that show, and audiences seemed
to really respond to it forever. The shark Jumper himself,
Henry Winkler, is of a similar mindset. In a twenty
eighteen interview, he told reporters that he wasn't embarrassed in
the slightest by the phrase or the episode that spawned it.

(09:51):
Every time they mentioned it, and it was in the newspaper,
he said, they had a picture of me water skiing,
and at that time I had great legs. I didn't
care for one minute. We were number one for five
years after that. What did I care that there was
a phrase. One person who very much did care, though,
was Fred Fox Junior, the man who wrote the much

(10:13):
maligned episode. In twenty ten, he penned an op ed
for the La Times, objecting to the idea that his
episode marked the show's downturn. He argued that the phrase
jumped the shark was reductive and misguided, especially since in
the case of Happy Days, the show continued to be
a ratings juggernaut for years afterward. Whether or not you

(10:35):
agree that strong ratings indicate high quality, Fox was right
to point out that the strangeness of his episode had
been overblown. In fact, Phonsie's shark jump wasn't even the
weirdest thing to happen on Happy Days that season. Nineteen
episodes later, the once grounded sitcom introduced Mork from Orc,

(10:56):
an alien visitor played by comedian Robin Williams. It's probably
too late to ditch the phrase jumping to the shark,
but if you ask me, meeting Morc would be much
more appropriate. I'm Gabe Lucier and hopefully you now know
a little more about history today than you did yesterday.

(11:18):
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if you have any comments or suggestions, you can always
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iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to Chandler Mays for producing the show,
and thank you for listening. I'll see you back here

(11:39):
again tomorrow for another day in history class.