Henry Winkler is 'very proud' to be the face of the 'jump the shark' meme
"I am one of the only actors in the world who has jumped the shark twice," Winkler said.
Forty six years ago, Arthur Fonzarelli took a big jump for Happy Days — and a giant jump for TV history. The long-running ABC comedy commenced its fifth season with Fonzie's three-part trip to Hollywood, where he got his close-up in a screen test, tussled with the self-declared "California Kid"... and leapt over a shark on water skis.
The latter stunt provided the grand set-piece for the trilogy-capping episode, "Hollywood: Part 3," which aired on Sept. 20, 1977. But it truly made waves two decades later when University of Michigan alum Jon Hein booted up the now-defunct website, JumpTheShark.com, which transformed Fonzie's shark-clearing leap into a metaphor for the precise moment when a popular TV series careened off the creative rails.
As far as real-life Fonz, Henry Winkler, is concerned, his "jump the shark" moment will never jump the shark. If anything, the beloved actor has doubled down on being the face of jumping the shark... literally.
"I am one of the only actors in the world who has jumped the shark twice," he tells Yahoo Entertainment with humble pride. "Once on Arrested Development and once, of course, the original on Happy Days. I'm very proud — very proud."
According to Winkler, his dad, Harry, is the one that set Fonzie's shark-jump in motion. "My father kept telling me to tell [Happy Days creator] Garry Marshall that I waterskied," the 77-year-old actor recalls. "I said to Garry, 'My father wants you to know I waterski. Next thing I know, I'm waterskiing!"
"I did all the waterskiing for the jump, except for the jump," Winkler continues. "They wouldn't let me do stunts. Not only that, but I didn't know how to jump! I knew how to waterski, but I didn't know how to jump like they do in the show."
Cut to 1985 when Hein and some of his U of M pals were deep in conversation about their favorite shows, and the scenes and storylines that caused them to fall out of favor. "Somebody said Happy Days," Hein told his alumni magazine, Michigan Today, in 2016. "'When Fonzie jumped the shark.' There was a pause in the room because we all knew exactly what he meant."
Hein used that conversation as the springboard for his 1997 website, which went viral in the pre-social media version of the internet. "Jump the shark" quickly entered the pop culture lexicon and remains the go-to shorthand for "creative bankruptcy" now — although its supremacy was briefly threatened by the "Nuke the fridge" meme that exploded online in 2008.
For his part, Winkler has never held a grudge against Hein for the implication that his shark-jump killed Happy Days. "We were number one for years after it," he notes. "I met Jon Hein ... and did his radio show once, so here we are. We're both standing!" And somewhere, Fonzie is still waterskiing.
Happy Days is currently streaming on Paramount+ and Pluto TV
