We had a real good give-and-take, and it set the tone for Michael and Shelley. But he took right to it, made it very easy for me. Well, Henry is quite capable of challenging a director, and here we were, about to start work on "Night Shift," and suddenly ol' mild-mannered Ron has to be a leader, a vocal leader, and Henry is himself a natural leader who had never seen that side of me. Did you have qualms about becoming Henry's boss on the set?Ī. I was always willing to give Henry that space because I recognized the importance of it, and Henry went out of his way to give Michael that space. My function on "Happy Days" was to be the guy who would kind of tell the story, then the Fonz would come in and make it hot and funny and spectacular. Henry took on that kind of role and Michael Keaton came in with this flamboyant, flashy character who has to take the stage from time to time and dominate. It's been suggested that Henry Winkler plays Chuck, the morgue supervisor, as the kind of happy victim your Richie character played on "Happy Days."Ī. " The device clicked off, and Ron Howard was on the line: But, if you leave your name, number and a message after the beep, I think I can get 'em on the phone for ya. his answering machine: "Ron, his wife Cheryl, and the highly acclaimed Bryce Dallas their 18-month-old daughter can't come to the phone right now. Howard was at home in Los Angeles when an interviewer's call found. With Winkler and the fledgling but sweet-faced actress Shelley Long, he is part of "Night Shift's" "big three," who lifted the movie to considerable critical and commercial success. Newcomer Michael Keaton, as Bill Blazelowski, supplies the movie with plenty of manic comic energy. So the stage was set for "Night Shift," a fast-paced "situation comedy for the movies" that features Howard's old partner Henry Winkler as the befuddled supervisor of a city morgue that becomes the center of operations for a prostitution ring. It cost $602,000, featured an 85-minute car chase, and grossed $15 million. Howard and his actor-father Rance wrote and acted in the film. His only previous experience in feature directing had been a car-chase film written around the title "Grand Theft Auto" for cheap-flick king Roger Corman. The sitcom at one point had an average of 34 million viewers, but Howard, itchy to begin his directing career, walked away from it after seven seasons. * Richie Cunningham of ABC's "Happy Days," first as the show's focus, then as foil to Henry Winkler's Fonzie. * Steve Bollinger, the straight-arrow high-school class president in George Lucas' 1973 film "American Graffiti." * Opie, son of a salty North Carolina widower, on "The Andy Griffith Show," which ran from 1960 to 1968. But Howard says he was never troubled by the stage-family syndrome - "The term 'child star' was never used in our house" - as he took on the identities of: Throughout childhood and into adolescence, the roles kept coming. The drama was called "Frontier Woman," and Howard was 18 months old. RON HOWARD, the suddenly respectable director of the comedy "Night Shift," played his first television role 26 years earlier - cradled in the arms of his actress mother, Jean.
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