Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1545089
PHOTOS: (ABOVE) PARAMOUNT/EVERETT COLLECTION; (INSET) SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AMERICAN HISTORY I C O N S By Andrea Napier Aaaaaaay! Aaaaaaay! The names Arthur Fonzarelli, Fonzie, or the Fonz, conjure images of an ultra-cool character clad in a white T-shirt, jeans, and his signature dark brown leather bomber jacket. But Fonzie's iconic leather jacket almost never happened. In the dawn of Happy Days, Garry Marshall, the show's creator, intended for Arthur Fonzarelli to be a relatively small role. According to Marion Ross (Mrs. Cunningham), Marshall's vision for the character was "a blond 1950's matinee idol type." It was not the Fonz, a cool leather jacket-wearing James Dean-type, until Henry Winkler auditioned and Marshall's ideas changed. Yet for the pilot episode of Happy Days, and most of the first season, Fonzie wore a cloth zip-front windbreaker of either stone or light blue. As Henry Winkler tells it, "I was not allowed to wear leather in the beginning. I had to wear cloth because ABC thought I would be associated with crime … [it's] very hard to be cool in cloth. I'm not kidding. The collar did not stay up." Marshall, understanding the character Winkler was creating and wanting to support those ideas, went to ABC to negotiate. Marshall and ABC would go back-and- forth over the leather jacket. Eventually, a compromise was achieved. A cloth jacket being inappropriate for motorcycle riding, Fonzie could wear his leather jacket only when he was on or near his bike. Otherwise, he would wear a cloth jacket. Marshall, ever the rule follower, henceforth, instructed the writers to have Fonzie on or with his motorcycle as often as reasonably possible. Remember the episode when Fonzie brought his bike into Arnold's Diner? Very clever. By the end of the second season, the "loyal friend" and upstanding citizen who embodied the character of Fonzie was well established. No longer a threat of being perceived as criminal, ABC capitulated, and Fonzie could wear his jacket regardless of the location of his motorcycle. This created some of the best images in television history: Fonzie wearing his leather jacket with his T-shirt and boxers for a military physical or Fonzie wearing his leather jacket with swim trunks when he water-skis over a shark. The Fonz was never without his signature jacket. According to Winkler, there were seven leather jackets purchased or made for the show. In 1980, while Happy Days was still in its heyday, a jacket cataloged as being from the Western Costume Company was donated to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Two jackets were in Garry Marshall's possession. Winkler had two jackets, one of which he auctioned off for charity in 2021, the other he kept. Another jacket was destroyed while filming the "jumping the shark" stunt." And regrettably, the very first jacket ever worn by the Fonz was stolen from the costume department at Paramount. On the jacket's display description at the National Museum of American History, curator Eric Jentsch wrote, "Fonzie was representation of cool at a time when you were learning about what cool was." Fonzie's jacket was, without a doubt, instrumental in creating that cool. "He was a leather-jacketed, motorcycle-riding loyal friend." —Henry Winkler 48 SUMMER 2026