Happy Days is here again.

The Fonz. Richie Cunningham. Potsie. Mr. and Mrs. C. Is there anyone over age 20 who doesn't remember watching these folks in one of the most successful shows in television history?

Happy Days, which ran from 1974 to 1984 on ABC, was set in Milwaukee in a sanitized version of the 1950s, and followed Richie and the gang through high school, college, marriage, and even kids.

Tonight they're all back in a two-hour special on ABC, Happy Days 30th Anniversary Reunion (never mind that it's actually been 31 years since the show premiered; that's close enough by Hollywood reckoning). Among those appearing are Ron Howard (Richie), Henry Winkler (Arthur "Fonzie" Fonzarelli), Tom Bosley and Marion Ross (Howard and Marion Cunningham), Scott Baio (Chachi), Erin Moran (Joanie), Anson Williams (Potsie), and Don Most (Ralph).

In a discussion led by the show's creator, Garry Marshall, cast members reminisce, yuk it up, and watch classic clips, outtakes, and behind-the-scenes pranks. There's even a piece of never-aired footage in which Fonzie embraces Mrs. C. in the middle of a scene and starts passionately kissing her. After trying to stick with the script for a few moments, the other actors in the scene finally crack up.

Happy Days stemmed from a 1972 series pilot called New Family in Town, which Marshall says was loosely inspired by a popular movie of the time, Summer of '42. The pilot didn't sell, but it wound up being aired as an episode of the anthology comedy series Love, American Style. The episode's title: Love and the Happy Days.

Not long after that, television networks began noticing a growing nostalgia for the '50s and '60s, fueled in part by the 1972 musical Grease on Broadway and a 1973 movie, American Graffiti (which also featured Ron Howard). Trying to cash in, ABC dug up Marshall's series pilot, and after a bit of tinkering and recasting, Happy Days was born in 1974.

Richie and his friend Potsie were the show's focus at first, and the viewership ratings were mediocre, but when a support-ing character called "the Fonz" was added to the cast, he became an audience favorite. The network, however, wasn't crazy about the character's "threatening" leather jacket, but Marshall prevailed and he kept wearing it. (One of the Fonz's leather jackets now hangs in the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History as a prime piece of Americana.)

With the show's popularity increasing, Winkler's role was expanded, and eventually audiences would erupt in cheers whenever his character would enter a scene.

While the show was riding high, Marshall recalls, the writers would try to come up with catch phrases they hoped would be picked up by the country. A few of them were, such as "Sit on it," and "Aaaayhh!" - which was accompanied by the Fonz's thumbs-up sign.

The trend-setting didn't always work, however. For a time, Scott Baio's Chachi tried wearing a bandana on one pants leg to see if the look would catch on as a fashion fad. It didn't.

The reunion show even laughs at itself a little while exploring its role in originating the show-biz expression "jumping the shark." The phrase - which comes from a Happy Days episode in which Fonzie jumps over a school of sharks on water skis (and in his leather jacket, of course) - now refers to any TV series that's reached its peak and is beginning a rapid downward spiral.

Marshall doesn't put too much stock in the assessment, adding with undisguised satisfaction, "Happy Days did 100 more episodes [after jumping the shark]."

The show also produced three spinoffs - Laverne & Shirley (whose stars, Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams, also pop up on the reunion show), Joanie Loves Chachi, and Mork & Mindy, which was based on a single Happy Days episode.

Happy Days lives on today in wide syndication, and its warm and fuzzy portrait of an innocent time that never really existed helps make it a nostalgic slice of our pop culture, every bit as much an artifact of a make-believe era in America as Fonzie's well-worn leather jacket.

The two-hour special, "Happy Days 30th Anniversary Reunion," airs tonight at 8 on ABC, WTVG-TV, Channel 13, in Toledo.

Contact Mike Kelly at mkelly@theblade.com

or 419-724-6131.

First Published February 3, 2005, 11:08 a.m.