Podcast Tuesday: "Stacking Paper to the Ceiling"

Jed Cooper, Ron Howard, and Ted Gehring on Happy Days.

I honestly don't remember the first job I ever had. Does doing chores around the house count? I once edged the front lawn -- with manually-operated clippers, no less -- in exchange for a Green Lantern action figure. I put off doing any actual work for as long as I could in life. I never had afterschool or summer jobs when I was in high school. Eventually, when I was in college, I took a job as a Spanish tutor. (Don't ask me to speak any Spanish. It's long since vanished from my mind.) That was probably my first regular gig.

I've had plenty of jobs since then -- some fun (writing), most not (customer service). I've never been one to see work as anything more than a necessary evil. You wanna live, you have to work. That's all there is to it. Incidentally, I've tried not working. It's fun, but the pay is lousy. Following my dreams also proved to be enjoyable but unprofitable. So far, joyless drudgery has been the most reliable way of paying my bills.

In this week's episode of Happy Days, "Richie's Job," our man Richie Cunningham (Ron Howard) takes a job on the loading docks at The Milwaukee Journal so he can earn money for Shirelles tickets and a new raincoat. Unfortunately, a coworker named Frank (Jed Cooper) immediately takes a dislike to him and begins threatening and bullying him whenever the boss (Ted Gehring) isn't looking. Would you believe that Fonzie (Henry Winkler) actually sides with Frank?

Find out why when you listen to our review of "Richie's Job" on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast. A new episode is available right now! 

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Ed Wood Summit Podcast #19 by Greg Dziawer

Reunited and it feels so good!

Has it really been nine months since the inaugural episode of The Ed Wood Summit Podcast? Yes, somehow, it has been that long. A lot can happen in that time, so I decided to reconvene the panel from that first video—myself, Joe Blevins, Keith Crocker, James Pontolillo, and Mike H—and ask them what they've been up to since then.

This week on The Ed Wood Summit Podcast, my guests and I talk about a wide variety of topics related to Edward D. Wood, Jr., ranging from his earliest Westerns to his prolific porn career. It's a fun, lively discussion I think you'll find entertaining. As a bonus, try to guess which panelists survive the entire show and which will drop out. You may just be surprised!

Panelist Mike H shared some photos of Ed Wood's personal copy of Tales for a Sexy Night, featuring his short story "The Devil and the Deep Blue-Eyed Blonde."

Just as a reminder, you can find all previous episodes of The Ed Wood Summit Podcast right here.

Podcast Tuesday: "Marion's Life Goes Downhill"

Marion Ross and Marcia Lewis on Happy Days.

Fans of The Simpsons will undoubtedly remember the classic 1993 episode "Marge in Chains" in which the family's sensible matriarch goes to prison for a short stint after absentmindedly stealing a bottle of bourbon from the local Kwik-E-Mart. So many great moments in that episode: "I'll miss Sheriff Lobo!" "What kind of slime would I marry?" "He's history's greatest monster!" There's a brilliant court sequence featuring Phil Hartman as incompetent lawyer Lionel Hutz. And it ends up being a really sweet story about how much the Simpson family and the entire town of Springfield rely on Marge.

Fourteen years earlier, Happy Days did a very similar episode called "Marion Goes to Jail." The plot has Marion (Marion Ross) getting locked up for a slew of traffic violations after her car rolls downhill and crashes through the wall of Arnold's restaurant. The incident ultimately serves to make Marion's husband Howard (Tom Bosley), who'd previously been behaving like a jerk, appreciate her all the more. In a weird coincidence, when this episode originally aired on ABC, it was up against Homer's favorite show, The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo. I'm not sure if Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein, the authors of "Marge in Chains," ever saw "Marion Goes to Jail." They're very pop culture savvy, though, so it's likely they did. Maybe it was a subliminal influence on them.

And what did we think of "Marion Goes to Jail"? Well, you can find out on the latest installment of These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast.

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Ed Wood Summit Podcast #18 by Greg Dziawer

This week, we'll learn some new things about Valda Hansen.

Despite appearing in only one of Ed Wood's movies, namely the supernatural thriller Night of the Ghouls (1959), actress Valda Hansen remains one of the most beloved stars in the entire Wood coterie. This week on The Ed Wood Summit Podcast, it's my special privilege to talk about Valda with writer Robert Monell. 

I've long been a fan of Robert's work, especially his writing on Euro exploitation films. He knew Valda before her untimely passing, and he shared stories and information heretofore unknown. Join us for a fascinating discussion!

I noted in our conversation that Valda won a beauty contest at a movie ranch and was selected Queen of Corriganville, right around the time she was working with Ed Wood. That's noted in the newspaper article featured here. 

From The Van Nuys News and Valley Green Sheet, August 14, 1958.

That article also mentions that Valda was working with Ed Wood on something called Trial by Error, surely a typo and referring to the ill-fated Trial by Terror.

Be sure to check out Robert Monell's great work here. And if you want more of The Ed Wood Summit Podcast, you can find all the past episodes right here. 

Podcast Tuesday: "Is This Even a Nostalgia Show Anymore?"

Henry Winkler and Deborah Pratt on Happy Days.

Happy Days can trace its roots back to a fateful 1971 meeting between two TV executives, Paramount's Tom Miller and ABC's Michael Eisner, who were snowed in at the Newark Airport and decided to use that time to brainstorm a new series. Miller and Eisner decided that a nostalgia-themed show might be a good idea, since the clothes and hairstyles wouldn't look dated just a few years later in reruns. They handed off the idea to Odd Couple producer Garry Marshall, who decided to set it in the 1950s. A half-hour pilot aired in early 1972 as part of the anthology series Love American Style, but ABC passed on the project.

The very next year, however, the movie American Graffiti and the stage musical Grease proved that nostalgia could be a potential goldmine, so ABC regained interest in Marshall's series. Happy Days finally joined the network's prime time schedule in January 1974. By this point, it had already changed rather drastically from the original pilot. Cast members Ron Howard, Anson Williams, and Marion Ross remained, but they were joined by Tom Bosley, Erin Moran, Donny Most, and, perhaps most significantly, Henry Winkler as greaser mechanic Arthur "The Fonz" Fonzarelli, the epitome of cool. Also, while the pilot was set in the gentle, pre-rock years, the new, more raucous Happy Days was chockablock with oldies by Bobby Darin, Fats Domino, Bill Haley, and more.

Winkler's character ultimately became the focal point of the series, and Happy Days gradually moved away from its roots. In the first two seasons, the characters could barely get through a conversation without making references to fads, fashions, and pop culture icons of the 1950s. But this aspect of the show grew less and less important over time. After a few seasons, the action of the show was shifted to the early 1960s.

By 1979, Happy Days was in its seventh season and was scarcely recognizable as the show it once was. It bore only a passing resemblance to that Love American Style pilot. Apart from Fonzie's leather jacket and the oldies emanating from the jukebox, you could barely tell Happy Days was supposed to be taking place in any other time than the late '70s. A perfect example of this phenomenon is the episode "Fonzie Meets Kat" from September 25, 1979. The far-fetched plot involves a mysterious woman named Kat Mandu (Deborah Pratt) who breezes into Milwaukee from parts unknown and intervenes during a bar fight between Fonzie and a sailor named Rico (John Papais). None of this seems designed to evoke a sense of nostalgia in viewers, unless they spent a lot of time at dockside bars getting into martial arts battles.

But what did we think of "Fonzie Meets Kat"? You can find out by listening to the latest episode of These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast.

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Ed Wood Summit Podcast #17 by Greg Dziawer

This week, Greg attempts to untangle another mystery about Ed Wood.

It ain't easy trying to ID the adult paperbacks and magazine articles that Ed Wood may have written nearly 60 years ago. This is a largely neglected body of work, and the rabbit holes run deep (no pun intended).

Last week on The Ed Wood Summit Podcast, I took a dive down one of those rabbit holes with my friend and fellow Woodologist Rob Huffman. Together, we autopsied what might have been some of the earliest examples of Ed Wood's adult magazine work, dating back to the early 1960s. Some of you asked to see the actual texts, so this week, I'm doing the first ever Ed Wood Summit Podcast story time! The story "It Takes Four to Tangle" was identified many moons ago as possibly being Wood's work, and in this podcast, I'll read it out loud to you.

Have a listen and tell me what you think!

As a reminder, all episodes of The Ed Wood Summit Podcast are available here.

Podcast Tuesday: "For Sale: One Soul, Never Used"

Richard Levin on Happy Days.

There has to be one. If you have 255 episodes of a prime time American sitcom, one of those episodes will have to be the lowest-rated on the Internet Movie Database. In the case of Happy Days, it's the Season 7 episode "Chachi Sells His Soul," which first aired back on September 18, 1979 and which now rates a miserable 5.8 according to IMDb users. Does it deserve this dubious distinction?

Well, to be frank, this episode has a lot going against it. First of all, it's about Fonzie's smart-alecky cousin Chachi (Scott Baio), who has long been one of the more divisive characters on Happy Days. Secondly, it ventures into wild fantasy territory, with Chachi agreeing to sell his soul to a wisecracking demon named Melvin Scratch (Richard Levin) in exchange for being loved by the world. Third, it's basically a glorified commercial for another ABC sitcom, Out of the Blue, starring comedian Jimmy Brogan as an angel named Random trying to earn his wings on Earth.

But does that add up to "worst Happy Days episode of all time"? It's tough to say. It's a silly, gimmicky show, for sure, and many viewers will find Melvin annoying after a few minutes. He's a hyperactive, giggling nerd in the grand TV tradition of Horshack, Urkel, and Screech. Also, he wears very tiny shorts. In contrast, when the angel Random shows up near the end, he's so casual and low-energy that he barely makes an impact on the viewer. "Chachi Sells His Soul" is an obvious ripoff of the Season 5 classic "My Favorite Orkan," but neither Melvin nor Random is in the same league as Robin Williams' lovable alien Mork.

On the other hand, this episode certainly isn't boring. And it isn't overly sentimental and mawkish, the way Happy Days sometimes can be. There's a lot to unpack here. This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we talk about all the good points and the bad points of "Chachi Sells His Soul." I really hope you'll join us.

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Ed Wood Summit Podcast #16 by Greg Dziawer with Rob Huffman

This week, Greg and Rob explore Ed Wood's work for a company called France.

Ed Wood's fans know that their hero wrote numerous adult books, stories, and articles for Pendulum Publishing in the 1960s and '70s. Earlier this year, however, I stumbled upon an LA Weekly article by Tony Mostrom suggesting that Eddie also wrote for another adult publisher called France. According to Mostrom, Wood "penned cruddy porn paperbacks" for the company in the "dreary" early 1960s. Ed's work for France is much less known than his work for Pendulum, and I was eager to learn more about it.

I reached out to my friend and colleague Rob Huffman, who subsequently shared a few more details with me, gleaned from crime-fiction author John Gilmore's 2011 memoir Laid Bare. Rob then realized he had learned about Ed Wood working for France years ago, so we started digging for texts to review.

The results of our endeavor comprise this week's edition of The Ed Wood Summit Podcast.

During our conversation, Rob and I made our surmises about Red Garter #1, a magazine published by France (aka International Publications, Inc.) in 1962. You can find a scan of that magazine right here. What do you think? Is this the work of Edward D. Wood, Jr.? We have additional thoughts on this topic, so there will be much more to come!

Meanwhile, all episodes of The Ed Wood Summit Podcast can be found here.