October 3, 1960: "The Andy Griffith Show" Premieres

Left to right: Andy Griffith,

Ronny Howard (as he was then billed),

Don Knotts and Jim Nabors

October 3, 1960: The Andy Griffith Show premieres on CBS, after Andy Griffith had played Sheriff Andy Taylor of Mayberry, North Carolina on an episode of The Danny Thomas Show that served as a "backdoor pilot."

Andy Samuel Griffith -- his birth certificate really did say "Andy," not "Andrew" -- was born in Mount Airy, North Carolina, on June 1, 1926 -- the same day as another beloved show-business legend, Marilyn Monroe. He became famous in 1954 with a comedy recording, "What It Was, Was Football," starred in the comedy stage and film version of Ira Levin's No Time for Sergeants, and played a villain in the 1957 film A Face in the Crowd. 

Don Knotts also appeared in the 1958 film version of No Time for Sergeants, beginning a lifelong friendship. Knotts played Sheriff Taylor's well-meaning but bumbling deputy, Barney Fife.

The show ran for 8 seasons. The opening theme, "The Fishin' Hole," was written by Earle Hagen (who also did the whistling) and Herbert Spencer. What few people know is that is has lyrics, written by Everett Sloane, who played Mr. Bernstein in Citizen Kane.

The show went to color in 1965, and, as a result, a new version of the opening sequence was shot, with Ron Howard (then listed as "Ronny") as Andy's son Opie Taylor now 11 years old instead of 6, appearing much taller.

By that point, Anita Corsaut had debuted as Helen Crump, Opie's teacher, and Andy's girlfriend and eventual wife. Also, Jim Nabors had left to star in the spinoff Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., and Gomer had been replaced as Mayberry's mechanic by his cousin Goober, played by George Lindsey. In 1968, Griffith left, and the show was continued as Mayberry, R.F.D. until CBS' "rural purge" of 1971. By that point, Howard McNear, who played barber Floyd Lawson, had died (in 1969).

In 1986, the TV-movie Return to Mayberry aired -- on NBC. Francis Bavier, who played Beatrice "Aunt Bee" Taylor, was retired from acting, and did not appear. She died in 1989. The other surviving major actors did: Griffith, Howard, Nabors and Lindsey (the cousins now running the service station together), Corsaut, Don Knotts as Deputy Barney Fife, Betty Lynn as Barney's girlfriend and now wife Thelma Lou, and Hal Smith as "town drunk" Otis Campbell.

Smith died in 1994, Corsault in 1995, Knotts in 2006, Griffith and Lindsey in 2012, Nabors in 2017, and Lynn in 2021. Howard later starred as Richie Cunningham on Happy Days, and became one of Hollywood's top directors. 

The cable network TV Land dedicated statues of Andy and "Ronny" in Griffith's hometown of Mount Airy, on which Mayberry had been based.

*

October 3, 1960 was a Monday. Baseball was between the end of the regular season and the World Series, which the Pittsburgh Pirates would win over the New York Yankees. Football was in season, but there would be no Monday Night Football for another 10 years. And it was too soon for the basketball and hockey seasons. So there were no scores on this historic day. 

August 11, 1973: "American Graffiti" Premieres

August 11, 1973: American Graffiti premieres. It takes people's minds off Watergate and the post-Vietnam hangover, and boosts the nostalgia wave for the 1950s.

Which makes it odd that the film does not take place in the Ike Age. The tagline is, "Where were you in '62?" It had been only 11 years. It would be a film in the Trump years celebrating... the 2nd term of George W. Bush. Something tells me that's not the period they mean when they say they want to "make America great again."

There was already a nostalgia wave for the Fabulous Fifties. Music promoter Richard Nader had been producing "Garden Party" shows at the new Madison Square Garden in New York since it opened in 1968. He sold the place out. One of the surprisingly popular acts at Woodstock in 1969 was Sha Na Na, a bunch of intellectuals from Columbia University who stylized themselves as greased-up doo-woppers. The Hippies loved them. And, of course, 1969 was also the year that Elvis Presley, who owned 1956 and 1957, took over Las Vegas.

That was only 12 and 13 years earlier, but it was nostalgia. People wanted to forget Watergate. They wanted to forget Vietnam. They wanted to forget race riots. They wanted to go back to the era when Dwight D. Eisenhower was America's grandpa, or at least to the era when John F. Kennedy was America's big brother. When the biggest thing they had to worry about was whether they had a dime for the jukebox at the malt shop after school.

And while the film was set in 1962, it leaned heavily on the original rock and roll music of 1955-59: "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley & the Comets, "Ain't That a Shame" by Fats Domino, "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" by Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers, "That'll Be the Day" by Buddy Holly & The Crickets, "Johnny B. Goode" by Chuck Berry; plus a cover of "At the Hop" by Danny & The Juniors, done by a group brought together for the film, Flash Cadillac & the Continental Kids.

George Lucas, with science fiction in the back of his mind, directed a film set in Modesto, in central California, with 3 interconnected stories. Ron Howard had already played Opie Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show, but this was before he was cast as Richie Cunningham on Happy Days, which took the nostalgia wave to television a year later.

Also in the cast, and later becoming stars, were Richard Dreyfuss, Harrison Ford, Mackenzie Phillips, Cindy Williams, Kathleen Quinlan, Susan Richardson, Kay Lenz, Debralee Scott, Joe Spano, and, most iconically, listed in the credits only as "The Blonde," Suzanne Somers. Wolfman Jack, based out of Los Angeles, was already a well-known disc jockey in the West, but the film made him widely known in the East. Soon, he would be a regular guest-host of NBC's late-night music show The Midnight Special.

Hot rods. Diners. Rock and roll. It was a sanitized version of 1962, with no Cold War, no worry about getting drafted, no civil rights struggles. And, since it was California, you didn't have to worry about the local baseball team moving: The team had already moved, and had come to you.

The Baby Boomers still embrace American Graffiti, now that they actually are old. But their initial embrace of it, when many of them were still in college, showed that, even then, they were lamenting a lost youth, and afraid of getting old. They were the generation that JFK told to look to the future. Instead, they have spent half a century looking backward.

I don't blame George Lucas, any more than I blame Richard Nader, Wolfman Jack, or any other person who actively benefited from, and promoted, the late 1950s and early 1960s nostalgia wave. Let's be honest: Even the surviving members of that generation of the Kennedy family did that. But it does seem like, through their devotion to nostalgia, the Baby Boomers (the elder half of them, anyway), if not betraying their former forward-looking ideals, certainly have let them down.

*

August 11, 1973 was a Saturday. This was also the day that DJ Kool Herc hosted a party in The Bronx that has become known as "the birth of hip-hop." I have a separate entry for this event.

Kind of a strange combination of events: It's like the past, the present and the future all collided.

These Major League Baseball games were played on that day:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Oakland Athletics, 7-3 at Yankee Stadium. Vida Blue outpitched Mel Stottlemyre. Gene Tenace hit a home run. Reggie Jackson went 3-for-4 with a walk and an RBI for the A's. He would, of course, later star for the Yankees. It was Old-Timers Day, and 46,293 fans came out. I don't know how many were at Herc's party a few hours later.

* The New York Mets lost to the San Francisco Giants, 8-7 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Bobby Bonds singled home Garry Maddox, off Tug McGraw, with the winning run in the bottom of the 13th inning. Bonds had also hit a home run. Don Hahn and John Milner hit home runs for the Mets.

Running out the string for the Mets, Willie Mays doubled to lead off the 9th in a pinch-hitting appearance for his former team. It was the 3,286th hit of his career. There would be only 7 more, plus 3 more in the 1973 postseason.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the California Angels, 2-1 at Fenway Park in Boston. Roger Moret outpitched Nolan Ryan. Carl Yastrzemski went 2-for-3 with a walk and an RBI. Frank Robinson went 1-for-3 with an RBI.

* The Atlanta Braves beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 9-3 at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh. Dusty Baker hit 2 home runs, Darrell Evans 1. Hank Aaron went 1-for-4, but it was a single, not a home run. Willie Stargell went 2-for-3 with a walk.

* The Kansas City Royals beat the Baltimore Orioles, 9-4 at Royals Stadium (now Kauffman Stadium) in Kansas City. Brooks Robinson went 1-for-2 before being replaced by a pinch-runner. George Brett had made his major league debut for the Royals 9 days earlier, but did not play in this game.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Chicago White Sox, 4-2 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. Al Kaline went 3-for-3 with a home run, a walk, and 2 RBIs.

* The Houston Astros beat the Chicago Cubs, 6-4 at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

* The Milwaukee Brewers beat the Minnesota Twins, 7-6 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Tony Oliva went 2-for-4 with a home run, a walk and 3 RBIs. Rod Carew went 1-for-5 with an RBI. Harmon Killebrew did not play.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 7-5 at Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis. The Reds led 4-1 going into the bottom of the 9th, but Lou Brock's 3-run home run sent the game to extra innings. The Reds scored 3 in the top of the 10th, including an RBI triple by Johnny Bench. The Cards were only able to respond with 1 run, on a home run by Ted Simmons. Pete Rose went 3-for-5 with an RBI.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Texas Rangers, 5-2 at Arlington Stadium in the Dallas suburb of Arlington, Texas.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 3-1 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.

* And the Montreal Expos and the San Diego Padres were not scheduled. 

May 19, 1977: The Self-Conviction of Richard Nixon

May 19, 1977: PBS broadcasts the 3rd of a 4-episode installment of David Frost Interviews Richard Nixon. It includes a statement made by Nixon that was defined by those putting the series together as what they had been looking for: A confession of a crime, or a "self-conviction."

Nixon had given public speeches, but not any interviews, since he resigned the Presidency on August 9, 1974. At these speeches, often at college campuses, he would, inevitably, be asked about the scandal that led to his resignation, one step ahead of impeachment and removal: Watergate. He was tired of these unvetted accusations from the audience, and wanted to address them in a controlled environment.

So he turned to David Frost, who had interviewed him for Frost On America, a special that aired shortly before Christmas 1970. After playing youth soccer well enough to be offered a contract by East Midlands team Nottingham Forest, Frost graduated from the University of Cambridge, and was on television regularly from 1958. "The first time I stepped into a television studio", he once remembered, "it felt like home. It didn't scare me. Talking to the camera seemed the most natural thing in the world."

He became widely known in Britain by hosting the satirical show That Was The Week That Was. He hosted an American version, and became popular on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. TW3 was a precursor to the "Laugh-In Looks at the News" segment on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, the Weekend Update segment on Saturday Night Live, and shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. 

But by 1976, Frost was in a rut, and wasn't especially popular in either country anymore. And Nixon wanted a more controlled environment for expressing his views. These two very different men needed each other.

So they set up David Frost Interviews Richard Nixon, a set of 5 interviews, for broadcasts 90 minutes apiece. Nixon was paid $600,000, plus a 20 percent share of the profits, which had to be funded by Frost himself, after the "Big Three" U.S. television networks (ABC, NBC and CBS) turned down the program, describing it as "checkbook journalism." Frost's company negotiated its own deals to syndicate the interviews with local stations across the U.S. and internationally, creating what actor-director Ron Howard would later describe as "the first fourth network."

At first, the interviews were attempted at La Casa Pacifica, Nixon's post-Presidency home in San Clemente, California, about halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego. But nearby navigational equipment from the U.S. Coast Guard interfered with the recording. Harold H. Smith, a Nixon supporter, offered the use of his house, 10 miles up the coast in Monarch Bay, and the interviews were done there.

Frost taped around 29 hours of interviews with Nixon over 4 weeks. When they aired, they were broken up into 4 episodes: "Watergate," broadcast on May 4, 1977; "Nixon and the World," on May 12; "War at Home and Abroad," on May 19; and "Nixon, the Man" on May 26. On September 10, an additional episode aired, with material that Frost wanted to include, but had to drop for time.

Most of what aired really wasn't worth the effort to watch. Saturday Night Live parodied this, when guest host Eric Idle, of Monty Python fame, interviewed Dan Aykroyd as Nixon. As Aykroyd's Nixon plodded on, Idle's body language, depicting how bored his version of Frost seemed, got funnier and funnier.

But in the May 4 episode, Nixon, who had previously avoided discussing his role in Watergate, expressed contrition saying, "I let the American people down, and I have to carry that burden with me for the rest of my life." But the May 19 episode contained the key line, which the interviews' producer, Bob Zelnick of ABC News, said was what the American people demanded: A "trial" and a "conviction."

Frost asked Nixon whether the President of the United States -- anyone who held the office, at any given time -- could do something illegal in certain situations, such as against antiwar groups and others. He brought up the "Huston Plan," a 43-page report on what could be done against antiwar activists and other "radicals," written up by White House aide Tom Charles Huston, which Nixon approved on July 23, 1970, but rescinded 5 days later, realizing that it was not a good idea to allow unwarranted searches and seizures, in violation of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Frost: So, what, in a sense, you're saying, is that there are certain situations -- the Huston Plan, or that part, was one of them -- where the President can decide that it's "in the best interests of the nation," or something, and do something illegal.

Nixon: Well, when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.

Frost: By definition?

Nixon: Exactly. Exactly. If, if, for example, the President approves something, approves an action, because of the national security, or, in this case, because of a threat to the internal policing order of a significant magnitude, then, the President's decision in that instance is one that enables those who carry it out to carry it out without violating the law. Otherwise, they're in an impossible position.

Nixon's reply was very methodical, and showed no emotion whatsoever. He took no visible offense to Frost's assessment. Nor did Frost express any shock, or anger, at the implications of Nixon's reply.

One of the implications became clear right after it aired. People saw that Nixon didn't care about the Constitution -- which, as all Presidents must do upon assuming the office, he had sworn to "preserve, protect, and defend" -- as long as he got what he thought was best for the country.

When Nixon said, on November 17, 1973, "People have gotta know whether or not their President is a crook!" he was right. When he followed this with, "Well, I am not a crook!" he was right about that, too. The term "crook" connotes petty crimes. The Watergate burglars were crooks. His 1st Vice President, Spiro Agnew, who had to resign the office over tax fraud, was a crook.

Richard Milhous Nixon was not a crook. He was an arch-criminal. And, however inadvertently, David Frost got him to confess to it.

The reaction of the viewing audience was nearly universal. Even staunch Republicans, who supported him until his resignation, maybe even supported him still, saw that he had gone too far, and had admitted to actions that had gone too far, even if he, himself, did not agree that they went too far.

(Let's face it, the word "staunch" goes so well with "Republicans." I've never heard anyone described as a "staunch Democrat.")

This was "Nixon's trial." The verdict: Guilty as charged. The sentence: Forever doomed to being considered one of the worst Presidents of all time, which, to that point, also included Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Warren Harding and Herbert Hoover.

The events surrounding the interviews were fictionalized for a play, Frost/Nixon, written by Peter Morgan. Nixon was played by Frank Langella, who had already played a few villains in his time, from Count Dracula to an ambitious White House Chief of Staff who replaced an incapacitated President with a physical double in the 1993 film Dave.

Frost was played by Welsh actor Michael Sheen, who had already played the man then Prime Minister of Britain, Tony Blair; and would go on to play a very different 1970s British icon, a man that Frost had interviewed: Football manager Brian Clough, in the film The Damned United.

The play premiered in 2006, and Langella and Sheen reprised their roles for a 2008 film, directed by the aforementioned Ron Howard. That film told a very fictionalized version of the events, and, while entertaining, should no more be taken as historical fact than the play-turned-film Amadeus should be accepted as the true story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

And the key exchange is very different. Frost was asking questions about the involvement of Nixon's chief aides, White House Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman and White House Domestic Affairs Advisor John Ehrlichman, and the questions got under Nixon's skin. As Nixon, Langella seemed to be getting angrier, and trying in vain to hide it.

• Nixon: I have always maintained what they were doing, what we were all doing was not criminal. Look, when you're in office you gotta do a lot of things, sometimes, that are not always, in the strictest sense of the law, legal. But you do them, because they're in the greater interest of the nation.
• 
  
• Frost: All right, wait. Wait, just so I understand correctly. Are you really saying that, in certain situations, the President can decide whether it's in the best interest of the nation, and then do something illegal?
• 
  
• Nixon: I'm saying that when the President does it, that means it's NOT illegal!
• 
  
• Frost, stunned, pauses, and finally: I'm sorry?
• 
  
• Nixon: That's what I believe.

And then, Langella's Nixon realizes what he's said. Then came the admission that he had let the country down.

Nixon died in 1994. Frost, who was still alive at the time of the debuts of the play and the movie, interviewed every Prime Minister of Great Britain from Alec Douglas-Home to David Cameron, and every President of the United States from Lyndon Johnson to George W. Bush. He died in 2013.

UPDATE: On July 1, 2024, a date which will live in infamy, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that Presidential immunity from criminal prosecution presumptively extends to all of a president's "official acts," with absolute immunity for official acts within an exclusive Presidential authority that Congress cannot regulate, such as the pardon, command of the military, execution of laws, or control of the executive branch.

The vote was 6-3. Voting for this position, which essentially makes the President of the United States a dictator who is above the law, were Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. All were appointed by Republican Presidents. All but Thomas were appointed by Republican Presidents who won the Electoral Vote, but not the popular vote, and had evidence of cheating against them. Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett were appointed by Trump himself; at the very least, those 3 should have recused themselves.

Voting against this position were Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. All were appointed by Democratic Presidents. All were women. Sotomayor is Hispanic, Kagan is Jewish, and Jackson is black. Only they stood up for the rule of law in America. 

Richard Nixon faced a vote of 8-0 against him, with 3 of the 4 Justices that he had appointed having the integrity to uphold the rule of law, and the 4th having the integrity to recuse himself. Donald Trump got a vote of 6-3 in his favor, with all 3 of the Justices that he had appointed saving him.

One wonders how many expletives would have to be deleted from Nixon's comments on that.

*

May 19, 1977 was a Thursday. Baseball player Brandon Inge was born.

Football was out of season. The NBA Playoffs were between the Conference Finals and the Finals. The Portland Trail Blazers would beat the Philadelphia 76ers in 6 games.

The NHL season had ended 5 days earlier, when the Montreal Canadiens completed a 4-game Stanley Cup Finals sweep of the Boston Bruins, thanks to an overtime goal by Jacques Lemaire. The World Hockey Association Finals were between Games 3 and 4. The Quebec Nordiques would beat the Winnipeg Jets in 7 games.

And these Major League Baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees beat the Baltimore Orioles, 9-1 at Yankee Stadium. Ed Figueroa pitched a complete game, outpitching Mike Flanagan. Thurman Munson went 3-for-5 with a home run and 4 RBIs. Reggie Jackson went 1-for-3 with a walk.

For the Orioles, Al Bumbry had a single and a double, but the rest of the team combined had just 4 singles and no walks. Eddie Murray, who would be named American League Rookie of the Year, went 0-for-3. Brooks Robinson, in his final season as a player, did not appear in the game.

* The New York Mets beat the San Francisco Giants, 4-3 at Shea Stadium. John Milner and Lenny Randle hit home runs, in support of Jackson Todd.

* The San Diego Padres beat the Montreal Expos, 5-2 at the Olympic Stadium in Montreal. Dave Winfield went 1-for-5.

* The Atlanta Braves beat the Chicago Cubs, 6-0 at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. Phil Niekro pitched a 3-hit shutout.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 6-5 at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh. Rennie Stennett singled Ed Kirkpatrick home with the winning run in the bottom of the 10th inning. Willie Stargell went 0-for-3 with 2 walks.

* The Chicago White Sox beat the Kansas City Royals, 8-3 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. George Brett did not play.

* The Milwaukee Brewers beat the Toronto Blue Jays, 5-3 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Robin Yount went 1-for-3 with 2 walks.

* The Houston Astros beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 3-2 at the Astrodome in Houston. Mike Schmidt went 2-for-5.

* The California Angels beat the Minnesota Twins, 5-3 at Anaheim Stadium (now Angel Stadium of Anaheim). Nolan Ryan went the distance for the win, striking out 12, but also walking 8. Rod Carew went 2-for-4.

* And the Seattle Mariners beat the Oakland Athletics, 3-0 at the Oakland Coliseum. Dave Pagan pitched the 1st shutout in M's history, allowing the A's only 6 hits.

* And the Boston Red Sox, the Cleveland Indians, the Detroit Tigers, the Texas Rangers, the Cincinnati Reds and the St. Louis Cardinals were not scheduled.

March 9, 1984: "Splash" Premieres

March 9, 1984: The horror film Children of the Corn, the sex comedy The Hotel New Hampshire, and Splash premiere. Tom Hanks was already a star, but Splash made a legend out of Daryl Hannah. Ron Howard directed, proving he was more than just Opie Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show and Richie Cunningham on Happy Days.

In 1964, Allen Bauer, 8 years old, is swimming off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and sees a girl about his own age, a mermaid. In the present day, he's a small businessman depressed over the latest of his many breakups. He returns to Cape Cod, falls out of his boat, but is rescued by the same mermaid. She finds his wallet, and tracks him down to New York.

She comes ashore at the Statue of Liberty, with her now-dry tail becoming human legs. But she's naked, and is arrested for indecent exposure. Looking at the wallet, the police track him down, and release her to him. She learns English from watching television, but can't say her real name in human language. She sees a street sign on Madison Avenue, and chooses the name Madison. She tells Allen she must return home within 7 days.

She gets exposed as a mermaid, and taken to a secret lab by government agents. Allen smuggles her out. She tells him that if they stay together, neither can ever return to their own home. He chooses to live in the sea with her.

Nipsey Russell, a comedian who specialized in poetry, once said:

Men fantasize about mermaids.

But I don’t know the reason why.

There’s not enough woman to make love to

and too much fish to fry.

*

March 9, 1984 was a Friday. Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. There were 7 games played in the NBA:

* The New Jersey Nets lost to the Detroit Pistons, 122-118 at the Silverdome in the Detroit suburb of Pontiac, Michigan.

* The Philadelphia 76ers beat the Seattle SuperSonics, 92-84 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia.

* The Portland Trail Blazers beat the Atlanta Hawks, 104-101 at The Omni in Atlanta. Dominique Wilkins scored 36 points in defeat for the Hawks.

* The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Dallas Mavericks, 121-120 in double overtime at the Reunion Arena in Dallas. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar scored 32, Magic Johnson 30, and Mark Aguirre 38 in defeat for the Mavs.

* The Boston Celtics beat the Milwaukee Bucks, 129-128 in double overtime at the Milwaukee Exposition, Convention Center and Arena, or "The MECCA." Since 2014, it has been named the UW-Panther Arena. Larry Bird scored 30, while Marques Johnson scored 36 in defeat for the Bucks.

* The Phoenix Suns beat the Indiana Pacers, 130-110 at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix.

* And the San Diego Clippers beat the Denver Nuggets, 134-126 at the San Diego Sports Arena (now the Pechanga Arena). Kiki Vandeweghe, in defeat, led all scorers on the night with 39 points.

And there were 4 games played in the NHL:

* The New York Rangers beat the Winnipeg Jets, 6-5 at the Winnipeg Arena. Mark Osborne scored the winning goal, 53 seconds into overtime.

* The Washington Capitals beat the Quebec Nordiques, 5-3 at the Capital Centre in the Washington suburb of Landover, Maryland.

* The Buffalo Sabres beat the Los Angeles Kings, 7-3 at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium.

* And the Vancouver Canucks beat the Chicago Black Hawks, 4-3 at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver. Rick Lanz scored the winning goal, with 2:42 left in overtime.

January 15, 1974: "Happy Days" Premieres

Top row, left to right: Henry Winkler, Tom Bosley, Anson Williams.

Bottom row, left to right: Donny Most, Erin Moran,

Marion Ross and Ron Howard.

January 15, 1974: Happy Days premieres on ABC. The situation comedy is designed to ride the nostalgia wave for the 1950s, and becomes one of the most successful shows in the network's history.

The show was set 19 years in the past: When the show began, it was definitively in 1955; when the show was finally wrapped up in 1984, characters were wearing decidedly 1980s-looking T-shirts that said, "Kinks '65 World Tour."

The show was based around the Cunninghams, who lived in a suburban part of Milwaukee. Howard (played by Tom Bosley) owned a hardware store downtown. His wife, Marion (Marion Ross), was a housewife. They had a pair of teenage children, Richie (Ron Howard) and Joanie (Erin Moran). They often found it difficult to change with the times, but they were good parents, never going too far and alienating their kids.

(Originally, there was another son, Chuck, played first by Gavan O'Herlihy, then by Randolph Roberts. He appeared in only 11 episodes over the 1st 2 seasons. In the show's final scene, Howard mentions his 2 children, not 3. The character's disappearance gave rise to the term "Chuck Cunningham Syndrome," used to describe TV characters that disappear from shows without an in-universe explanation and are nowhere to be seen or mentioned again.)

Richie has 2 best friends: Ralph Malph (Donny Most) and Warren "Potsie" Webber (Anson Williams), and they're typical suburban 1950s teenage boys, discovering that they're not quite cool enough to have the adventures they want.

Never in the history of television has a "breakout character" more succeeded. Enter Arthur Fonzarelli (Henry Winkler), a.k.a. "Fonzie" or "The Fonz." He was the coolest man on television, with his perfect hair, his T-shirt, his leather jacket, his motorcycle, and his mannerisms. Catchphrase? He had "Sit on it," which, in hindsight, sounds like a safe way to say, "Shove it up your ass." But the Fonz was so cool. How cool was he? He was so cool, he didn't need no catchphrase: He just gave a thumbs-up sign, and said, "Ayyyy!"

He was so cool, he could get any girl he wanted. He was so cool, he would walk into Arnold's, the local malt-shop hangout, and turn on the lights by pounding his fist on the wall. He could start the jukebox the same way.

In spite of his "hood" image, Fonzie showed the elder Cunninghams sufficient respect, to the point where Marion considered him part of the family, and Howard let him rent the room above the garage. He looked after Richie, and, later, Joanie.

Arnold's was owned and operated by Matsuo Takahashi (Pat Morita). He bought it from a man named Arnold, and kept the name when he realized how much it would cost to have the name changed to "Takahashi's." In Season 4, Arnold's was bought by "Big Al" Delvecchio (Al Molinaro). In spite of the name, he was not a mobster, and became an extra father to the show's "kids."

Eventually, Richie got a steady girlfriend, Lori Beth Allen (Lynda Goodfriend), whom he married. After Season 7, in 1981, Ron Howard left the show, to focus on his directing career. Don Most (as Donny now preferred to be called) also left. They returned to for a reunion episode in the final season, and in the final episode.

So, rather than cancel the show, the writers shifted the focus from Richie and his friends, including the Fonz, to Richie's sister, Joanie and her friends, including the Fonz and his younger cousin, Charles "Chachi" Arcola (Scott Baio), whom Joanie dated, and finally married in the show's final episode, on July 19, 1984.

The show never really recovered from the shift from the focus on Richie to the focus on Joanie. Such a moment in a show's history -- often attributed to a marriage, a birth, a death, a major character leaving, a shift in location, and so on -- is often called "jumping the shark." The expression comes from the finale of the 3-part Season 4 opener, "Hollywood," when the gang goes to Los Angeles. Fonzie makes a water-ski jump over a penned-in area with a live shark in it.

Except Happy Days was still high in the ratings for another 4 years, until the Richie/Joanie shift. So the show's "Jump the Shark Moment" was not when Fonzie jumped the shark.

In 1976, Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams guest-starred. Penny was the sister of series creator Garry Marshall, and had previously played recurring characters on The Odd Couple and Chico and the Man. Cindy -- as well as eventual Three's Company star Suzanne Somers, Jaws star Richard Dreyfuss, and Star Wars icon Harrison Ford -- appeared with Howard in the film American Graffiti. Their appearance proved so popular, a spinoff was created, Laverne & Shirley, also set in Milwaukee in the late 1950s, before moving to Los Angeles in 1981 (1965, show-time, and that was their "shark-jump"). 

In 1978, Robin Williams guest-starred as an alien, Mork from Ork. His appearance was so popular, it led to a spinoff, taking place in the present day, Mork & Mindy, which lasted 4 years. Another spinoff, Joanie Loves Chachi, in which those characters left Milwaukee to become stars in Chicago, failed as much as the characters did, and they returned for one more season, reconciling and marrying in the final episode.

Anson Williams was not related to either Cindy Williams or Robin Williams. He was, however, related to the inventor of the anti-choking maneuver: His birth name was Anson William Heimlich.

Pat Morita died in 2005, Tom Bosley in 2010, Robin Williams in 2014, Al Molinaro in 2015, series creator Garry Marshall in 2016, Erin Moran in 2017, Penny Marshall in 2018. As of January 15, 2022, Ron Howard, Henry Winkler, Marion Ross, Don Most, Anson Williams, Cindy Williams, Lynda Goodfriend and Scott Baio are still alive. (UPDATE: Cindy Williams died in 2023.)

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January 15, 1974 was a Tuesday. Baseball was out of season. Football season ended 2 days earlier, when the Miami Dolphins beat the Minnesota Vikings, 24-7 at Rice Stadium in Houston, in Super Bowl VIII.

There were no games in the NBA. There was 1 game in the American Basketball Association: The Utah Stars beat the Memphis Tams, 89-87 at the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis.

There were 4 games in the NHL:

* The New York Islanders beat the Atlanta Flames, 4-2 at the Nassau Coliseum.

* The Los Angeles Kings beat the Montreal Canadiens, 2-1 at the Montreal Forum.

* The Minnesota North Stars beat the St. Louis Blues, 5-3 at the St. Louis Arena.

* And the Vancouver Canucks beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 4-2 at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver.

And there were 2 games in the World Hockey Association. The Edmonton Oilers beat the Minnesota Fighting Saints, 4-1 at the Edmonton Gardens. And the Los Angeles Sharks beat the Quebec Nordiques, 6-4 at the Los Angeles Sports Arena.