Henry Winkler smiling in a tan plaid blazer and green tie at a red backdrop event.
Tommaso Boddi / Getty Images Entertainment via Getty Images
TV + Movies

Henry Winkler, 80, Still Remembers the One Happy Days Guest Star Who Let Fame Go to His Head and Got Shut Down on Set

By

Winkler says one Happy Days guest star kept bragging about his fan mail until Winkler put him in his place. His reply: he gets 50,000 letters a week, and nobody talks about that on this set.

The guest star played a character named Eugene and kept bringing up his fan mail on set. “You don’t want to talk to me about fan mail, I get 50,000 letters a week,” Winkler recalled telling him, before adding, “We don’t talk about that on the set. We are all here as one.”

Older man with white hair wearing a tan plaid blazer and green tie smiling in front of a red step-and-repeat backdrop.
At Hollywood American Legion in Los Angeles, Henry Winkler smiles for cameras during arrivals at the April 15, 2026 premiere of Magnolia Pictures’ ‘Normal.’ Photo by Tommaso Boddi / Getty Images.

The actor didn’t take the hint. “He kept doing it, and he was an a–back,” Winkler said, calling the guy the one exception to a set that otherwise had “no stardom.”

Winkler, 80, played Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli from 1974 to 1984 and shared the story at a fan expo in Tennessee alongside co-stars Anson Williams and Don Most. He never named the guest star, though Parade notes that Denis Mandel played Eugene Belvin in seasons 8 and 9 before leaving acting.

Young man with brown hair wearing a brown leather jacket over a white t-shirt and jeans, smiling on the set of Happy Days circa 1977.
A publicity still from around 1977 captures Winkler in character as the leather-jacketed Arthur ‘The Fonz’ Fonzarelli on the set of ‘Happy Days.’ Photo by Silver Screen Collection / Getty Images.

Ron Howard, who played Richie from 1974 to 1980, has said he and Winkler hit it off right away. “Henry Winkler and I clicked immediately, on a kind of professional level, but I also looked up to him,” Howard told People last year.

Winkler told a version of the story in his 2023 memoir, Being Henry: The Fonz… and Beyond, noting the character was eventually written out. He added that he wasn’t saying it was because of that.

Thanks for reading Thought Catalog. Join us on Facebook, or keep reading on our website.