Part of what makes Airplane! so funny is that they had a number of well-known, established “serious” actors – Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack, Peter Graves, Lloyd Bridges – in an over-the-top comedy; most of them played to their serious personas through deadpan deliveries of their funny lines.
Nielsen, in particular, relished being able to finally do comedy, and most of his roles from that point forward were in comedies.
Fess Parker: Davy Crockett (I know, it was a TV mini-series, but an abridged version was given a theatrical release), then Daniel Boone.
Yes, she did. Not exactly the same characters but pretty close.
I feel like I’ve seen Christopher Lloyd in a number of “eccentric egghead” cameos as nods to his Doc Brown character… I just can’t think of any specifics.
Neil Patrick Harris has said Barney Stinson is the result of him playing “Neil Patrick Harris” in Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle.
Well he did go from One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest to Taxi without a huge change.
And movie to movie, we have Robert Vaughn going from Magnificent Seven to Battle Beyond the Stars
I don’t know if it counts, but I remember when he hosted SNL and he spoke about his career. “I used to be a dramatic actor who said unfunny things in an unfunny way. Now I’m a comedic actor who says unfunny things in an unfunny way.”
Joe Pesci in ‘Goodfellas’ is not much different than Joe Pesci in ‘Casino’. On TV he voiced ‘the Dogfather’ on a bunch of Pink Panther cartoons.
Wouldn’t the best example from Happy Days be Henry Winkler’s casting to play a similar character to his Butchie from Lords of Flatbush?
Well, when they turned Doc Brown into a 2D character named Rick Sanchez, they certainly didn’t change much…
Ok, to sum all that up…Happy Days started as a Love American Style skit…Fonzie, Shirley (sorta) and Richie were all inspired by movie characters and sort of ported over.
And thats not even getting into how Mork was set in present time but initially was a dream (?) of Richies and what even happened to Chuck??
A bit later than the 50s. Miller shut off the radio when “that surfer shit” came on and they have Where were you in '62? right on the poster.
No disagreement about the similarities with Happy Days though.
Oh and i see to make things even weirder, the same artist, Mort Drucker, drew the American Graffiti poster AND the Mad Magazine parody American Confetti.
And Jack Davis did It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and It’s a World, World, World, World Mad.
They said it was best left unsolved.
Even the old man accepts that. He says the family has only two children.
In the musical version (it was awful and never made it to Broadway), the point was brought up and Howard just said, “We don’t talk about him.” It was the funniest line in the show.
I’m picturing him looking like Norman Bates’ mother only sitting on the toilet. They don’t use the upstairs bathroom.
We don’t talk about Chuckie, no, no, no!
We don’t talk bout Chuckie
He must have defected to the USSR
“Diana” from National Lampoon’s Movie Madness got a gig as a daytime movie co-host.
How have I not even heard of National Lampoons Movie Madness??
And I’ve seen Up the Creek!!