Entertainment has numerous iconic duos: Laverne and Shirley, Starsky and Hutch, Benson and Stabler – and perhaps most meaningful of all, Fonzie, played by Henry Winkler, and his beloved motorcycle. Recently, Winkler got to reunite with the vehicle that was an extension of his coolest character yet – and one that has quite the history of its own.
For a decade, Winkler was the face of Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli, the cool guy on the block of Happy Days who exploded in popularity. All the while, Winkler battled each day of filming with dyslexia, which made his easy persona a battle to maintain as he struggled with learning his lines. But just as Winkler has since established a sweeping career for himself, his iconic motorcycle has been around a few blocks too.
Henry Winkler reunites with Fonzie’s motorcycle
In the morning over on FOX 8 News, Winkler reunited with his trusty motorcycle while reflecting on his history with the volatile vehicle. “Okay here’s the truth. Honesty is the best policy. I have never ridden a motorcycle,” he admitted to the news crew.
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“So they put me on the motorcycle,” he shared of his experience filming. “We’re inside, and I have to ride 5 feet and a very slow roll into five feet. And I don’t know what happened, but I let go of the brake — the thing with the boom and the bim. We were going so fast the director of photography jumped out of the way. I put the bike down, I slid under the sound truck and they came running.”
But the concern wasn’t for him – not totally, anyway: “They wanted to make sure that the bike was fine because it was rented.”
Riding down memory lane
Fonzie’s motorcycle had seen use in other films, but back in 2017, it found a new home at the San Diego Automotive Museum, which also housed the leather jacket Winkler wore as the Fonz. Perhaps the most well-known model used was the 1949 Triumph Trophy TR5 Scrambler Custom. But, notes Riding Vintage, during the first season when filming on location, they used a 1947 Knucklehead Bobber.
Although the leather jacket today feels like an iconic part of the full package, when Happy Days first started out, ABC was adamantly against allowing Fonzie to wear one. Fortunately, series creator Garry Marshall managed to talk his way around this rule.
“Garry went to ABC and he said, ‘Ya know? He could be hurt if he’s riding a motorcycle and he falls off and he’s not wearing leather. He could be scraped,'” Winkler revealed. So, the leather jacket got the green light – but only when Fonzie was on his bike. To make sure they always had the leather jacket as an option, Marshall immediately contacted the show’s writers and told them they could never write a plot where Fonz his separated from his bike. The network eased up on this restriction when it was clear the show was a new cultural phenomenon, though.