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After Happy Days had ended, Marion Ross would refuse new roles that she thought would ''betray'' her image as Mrs. Cunningham
"It's so valuable," the actor said.
If you play a role well enough, it can follow you for the rest of your career. For many actors, the idea of that is a nightmare, but for Marion Ross, it was a mighty achievement.
Ross played Mrs. Cunningham in the series Happy Days. There, she served as a maternal character to nearly every teen on the show, whether they played her children or not. During an interview with the Associated Press, Ross confessed that she had held on so tightly to the character that even after the series had wrapped, she refused roles that felt like a betrayal to an image of her as the perfect mother everyone had grown so accustomed to.
"I'm so beloved on the screen that people stop and kiss me," she said. "I thought, what a treasured thing! I cherish, in a sense, being that for America. Happy Days is rerunning now on Nick at Night, every night. A little girl stopped me in the market...I hugged her, and we had a little moment in the market together. It's so valuable. I wouldn't betray that."
During her time on Happy Days, Ross grew close with the youngsters on set, particularly Henry Winkler, best known as The Fonz.
"He feels a great responsibility toward those youngsters who write to him for advice, kids who have absolutely no other guidance in their lives," Ross said of Winkler in The Daily Utah Chronicle. Oddly enough, while viewers were turning to Winkler looking for advice, Winkler was turning to Ross.
"Sometimes Henry will call me at night," she said. "He'll tell me, 'I feel so small...so small.'" Ross was also close with her on-screen daughter, Erin Moran. "We go back to my dressing room and just talk [during filming]," she said. "We get so wrapped up we almost forget they're doing the show." It seems that while Ross stopped playing the role of Mrs. Cunningham after Happy Days had ended, we never stopped seeing her as our mother.
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18 Comments
Same reason the other actors didn't take certain roles after the show wrapped up.
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Playing a creepy, grasping piece-a/piece-a on Dynasty, Dallas or Miami Vice would be silly.
Also, I remember being a kid and watching Happy Days on Nick at Night. Great memories (-: