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#30. The Substandard on the Unhappy Days of Erin Moran
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Dudes Chatting — the death of Erin Moran: This micro-episode is a tribute to Erin Moran, who played Joanie on Happy Days and Joanie Loves Chachi, and who died at 56. The hosts trace Happy Days' history as a foundational sitcom of the '70s and its extraordinary spinoff web — Laverne & Shirley, Mork & Mindy, and Joanie Loves Chachi — before settling into the sadder subject of child-star trajectories. Vic tells a story about seeing Erin Moran on a Maury Povich episode where Debbie Reynolds also appeared and Rip Taylor crashed the stage with a birthday cake, a detail that somehow makes the whole thing more melancholy. The hosts draw a comparison to Corey Haim as a parallel case of '80s fame curdling badly, and JVL adds an incongruous anecdote about spotting Corey Feldman at the DNC 2000 Playboy Mansion party.
Full transcript
Sonny00:00:00Five, four, three, two...
Vic00:00:03Hello and welcome to another micro-episode of The Substandard. I'm Victor Matus along with Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Just a quick reminder that full episodes of TheSubstandard are available every Thursday at 11 a.m. and Substandard show notes are posted by Jonathan Last every Friday at weeklystandard.com. Today we are talking about the perils of stardom at an early age and specifically the death of Erin Moran, who played Joanie from Happy Days. Moran was only 56 years old and died over the weekend. And for 10 years, America got to see her as Richie Cunningham's younger sister on that wholesome Gary Marshall show on ABC, Happy Days. But her life was less than happy. In fact, it was downright awful, turbulent. She was living in a trailer park and got kicked out of that. Meanwhile, Richie Cunningham or Ron Howard became Hollywood royalty. So he survived a Hollywood childhood, but she apparently did not. Were you guys Happy Days people, Sonny? It went from 1974 to 1984. Do you have any memories of this?
Sonny00:01:24So I was technically alive when the show was on, which is good to know. Yes. I thought it was. I thought it was actually off the air by the time I was in the world committing horrible acts of two-year-old depravity. I did not watch. I mean, I watched it some in reruns. TV Land?
Vic00:01:41Is that where it appeared?
Sonny00:01:42Well, not when I was, you know, eight and watching the reruns. I mean, it was like syndicated. It was on, you know, it was like early afternoon, you know, NBC or whatever. I don't know what people used to watch before the cable networks. But I am aware. I'm aware of the show. And this is obviously a very sad story, you know.
Vic00:02:02How about you, JVL?
JVL00:02:04I never watched it first run. I watched it in syndication. Interesting. Because it was syndicated while it was still in first run. Yes. So, and I was not allowed to stay up. At that point in my life, not allowed to stay up that late to watch the new episodes. Really? And so, when it ran on our UHF channels in southern New Jersey, Victorino, it was about dinnertime. Oh, yeah. No, that's acceptable. And so, I would often get Happy Days as my, like, seven-year-old dinnertime
Vic00:02:28TV. It was a fantastic lineup that I remember watching from the late 70s into the 80s. The best Happy Days episodes were clearly, like, the first three or four seasons. I mean, it went on for ten seasons. And the original Happy Days had the Rock Around the Clock, Bill Haley and the Comets song. And then they changed that to that very artificial and sugary theme song that we can provide.
JVL00:02:53Yes, that's right.
Vic00:02:54Goodbye, gray skies, hello, blue. There's nothing that holds you when I hold you or something like that. And then, like, you know, Patsy was leading the band as a singer and the whole thing. And then, of course, I mean, and famously, Jump the Shark, which is what we... Yes, right. This is where the... This is where Jump the Shark comes from.
JVL00:03:10That's exactly right.
Vic00:03:11And we'll provide that in the show notes.
JVL00:03:14And generated how many spinoffs? I mean, this was a huge, huge hit. Right. I'm going to say three. It was a monster hit at the time. On the spot.
Vic00:03:20Mork and Mindy. Mork and Mindy, Laverne and Shirley. Right. And then, of course, Joni Loves Chopchie. That was one season that Aaron Moran... Aaron Moran said was awful. I would say it's probably not Gary Marshall's shining moment, as opposed to the other shows, which did very well. How long was Laverne and Shirley on?
JVL00:03:38That had a very good... That had a very, very good run. It was Critical Darling.
Vic00:03:42It was at the time. People really loved it. So, Happy Days was from 8 to 8.30, and then Laverne and Shirley was from 8.30 to 9 on ABC. That's what I remember. It was a power lineup on ABC, and they both took place in Milwaukee. And then, Laverne and Shirley, you could probably say that they jumped the shark. They jumped the shark when they moved to California. And then, I think Shirley got pregnant, and then it was just Laverne, and that was short-lived.
Sonny00:04:05This is a very surreal discussion for me, because honestly, the only thing... So, was it Laverne and Shirley that they were parodying in Wayne's World? Yes. Remember the opening? The opening scene. Yeah, where they do that. So, that's my only, literally my only memory of Laverne and Shirley is through the lens of the ironic detachment of Mike Myers and Dana Carvey. And also, like, frankly, my lasting memory of Happy Days is the Weezer video. Oh, it's a great video. Which is a great video, which is like a weird, which is a weird kind of early progenitor of remix culture, taking the, you know, images from Happy Days and kind of setting it in this milieu of the poppy, you know, kind of new, not like the post-grunge, but pre, you know, whatever, whatever Weezer actually was. I don't, I don't really know how to...
JVL00:04:51I don't know, it was in the 90s.
Sonny00:04:52But it, but it, but it, like, so anyway, my, my, my knowledge of this, these shows kind of come through the lenses of other later objects.
Vic00:05:00And that video actually blended it perfectly between the old set and the new. What made it really confusing is the ending where Weezer talks to Al from Al's Diner, and he actually was playing, he was still alive, so he was playing, and he didn't look that much older, so that was like, what's happening? Is this really real or not? You know, it was so crazy. The weird thing about Happy Days is, and Laverne Shirley was very successful at the time, but there's no way that kind of thing, if you watch it now, it just doesn't work. I mean, it's just so corny and silly. But, you're thinking about a show that was being made in the late 70s, reflecting a time that was 20 years earlier, in the 1950s, and I think that's why people just liked it, because it sort of brought them back. I mean, it's a weird generational span, the way that 70s show was done in the 90s to reflect the 70s, and then there was a show in the 70s that was done in the 50s, people missed that time.
Sonny00:05:4920 years. So, what is the 1990s show? That's next. Where's our 90s nostalgia?
JVL00:05:54And don't forget how terrible. How terrible things were in the late 1970s. Yes.
Sonny00:05:58I mean, this is the time of gas lines, the Iran contra, not Iran contra, the Iran hostages.
JVL00:06:02Yeah. That's right. The malaise. I mean, this was, these were really, really awful. Awful. So, something looking back to happy days. Yeah. Really looked attractive.
Vic00:06:10Even though they themselves, after a while, didn't care or seemed to worry about them not really looking like the 50s, at some point, Erin Moran came out with a perm, and she just did not look that part. And, again, she had a good run there for 10 years, but I always thought she had these kind of crazy eyes. And, in fact, she was crazy. She had, there was a lot of problems, and what happened was, sometime in the early 90s, my buddy Todd Palladino tells me, hey, you know, on a lark, let's go up to New York City. I got tickets to go to the Maury Povich show and sit in the live audience. I don't think I, I did one live audience before that for the McLaughlin show in Fort Lee, and that wasn't even the McLaughlin group. It was the show where he's, you know, hosting his own thing. For CNBC, I think, at the time. So I went up there, and you sit in the audience, and it's mostly old ladies there, and the first guest was Erin Moran. And she comes out, and talking about what happened on Happiest, because Maury wants to find out. He wants to get down to, you know, the truth here. You know, how come she wasn't at the various reunions, and what happened. And she just started crying, and then they had to, you know, they took a break, and they gave her the tissue, because she was very upset. And she was trying to express that. You know, they were her family, as opposed to her real family. And something terrible happened with her real family at home, but she didn't get into those details either. And then she said, I just loved my Happy Days family, but I'm very unhappy that they didn't help me. And so Maury said, did they know you were in need of help? No, they didn't know, but they should have known. And it was just this crazy, sort of all-over-the-place interview. And then during the break, earlier she had given a shout-out to her husband, who was a slight baby. Big, tough Italian guy sitting there. And then the husband demanded to be on the show during commercial. He said, I want to chair up there, and I want to be there with my wife. And Maury, there was a big thing blew up, and Povich was like, no, that's not going to happen. You know, we're only having one guest.
JVL00:08:11And so it was kind of a mess. So it was just her for an hour?
Vic00:08:16No. She was there for half the show, and in the second half was Debbie Reynolds. And she came out, Jonathan, you're going to love this, she came out talking about, of course, being the mother of Princess Leia. And then they were taking questions from the audience. And so while they're getting ready for that, my buddy Todd says, oh, I got a question. I want to ask her about Postcards from the Edge. And, you know, how does she feel about it? Because, you know, daughter is a reflection of the mother and daughter thing. And Maury turns to Todd and goes, yeah, that's a good question. Ask that. So he asks the question, and Debbie takes complete offense. And she says, well, that's fiction. It has nothing to do with me and my daughter. And Maury turns to my buddy Todd and goes, yeah, the question is that. Anyway, the whole show gets interrupted by Rip Taylor. He comes out pushing a birthday cake. And he comes out pushing a birthday, because apparently it was Debbie Reynolds' birthday. He pushes the birthday cake out on a cart and starts reaching into his coat pocket and throwing confetti. I got to say, the Rip Taylor shtick.
JVL00:09:16I don't know the genesis of it. All I know is that I would see him on shows like Hollywood Squares when I was a kid. And for me, it was magic. I just thought... Yes, yes, yes.
Vic00:09:27As hacky as it is, it just works. Well, I hope Erin Moran stuck around for the cake, because that was like the highlight, and then the rest of it is very hard. And as you know, there's all these terrible stories about kids in Hollywood.
JVL00:09:40Well, she just seems unlucky in life. I mean, she comes out of that series, which should have been... The royalties are so big on a hit TV show, especially with Magnan. You can live off of them for forever, if you're smart about it. She's the only person... to really, really fall off the wagon. Even Donnie Most isn't as bad off as she was. And then she gets her own spinoff, and the other two spinoffs work. Mork and Mindy and Lola just really work, and she gets the one that doesn't work. It's just bad, bad luck. Sonny.
Sonny00:10:11Just very quickly, I will say that the only sadder story that I can think of is Corey Haim.
JVL00:10:17Yes! Unfortunately, also no longer with us.
Sonny00:10:20Of the two Corys. I mean, you have two Corys. I would have guessed the other one. Hosted by Michael Jackson or something. And then Corey Haim, who, you know, had his own demons. But, you know, sad, sad, sad story.
JVL00:10:35Do you know who Corey Feldman looks exactly like? Matt Labash. Yes. Oh, boy. This is a true story. I was out at the, whatever Democratic convention was in Los Angeles, was it 2000? 2000, maybe. And I was at a party at the Playboy Mansion, and...
Sonny00:10:53This feels like it should be its own episode. Yes, that's a good one.
JVL00:10:55And I see Corey Feldman. Matt Labash is there. And so I go running to find Matt Labash, because I want to bring he and Corey Feldman together, because Vic and I have joked for years that they look like the same person. He hated it. So I go to the grotto, I go to the trampolines, you know, there's like 4,000 people there. And I come back, looping, and there they are, together, standing. And Labash has, like, a homing radar come to his doppelganger, and the two of them are deep in conversation, and it was the funniest thing I've ever seen. This is the age before iPhones. Otherwise, I would have had a picture,
Vic00:11:27and it would have been Instagram sensation. That was like matter and anti-matter. It was amazing. But anyway, it was... Well, there you have it. That's the story of Erin Moran. I was just thinking about, you know, when she got that script from Gary Marshall for Joni Loves Chachi, and she had a lot of reservations about how successful this was going to be, because she wanted to stay on Happy Days. And all I could think of is Gary Marshall telling her, I'm sure it's fine.
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