Yes Mrs. Cunningham from Happy Days, Marion Ross is visiting today! 89 and still fabulous, she finally got her story on paper. Her book “My Days: Happy and Otherwise” just came out and her fans will now hear about her not so happy days too; an unhappy marriage to an alcoholic husband and her struggles as a single mom. But you gotta love her spirit! “I know how tough I am, how tenacious I am,” she says. “Nothing can stop me.” Marion grew up as up as a middle child in Minnesota. Her younger brother, Gordon Ross, had tuberculosis of the bone and spent time in and out of hospitals. Marion often felt invisible. “I attribute that to giving me a lot of drive,” she says. “I didn’t get any attention. But inside, there was somebody screaming, ‘Look at me!’ That makes you become an actress.”
She shocked her parents when she eloped at 21 with a fellow actor named Effie Meskimen. She went on to act with Ginger Rogers, Cary Grant, and Clark Gable. Effie became “an unmotivated, moody drinker.” They had two kids, Jim and Ellen, but Marion left him when “he began to have an affair with his secretary.” She found herself a single mom surviving on unemployment, and resiliently survived some “very, very hard” days. An audition for the disaster movie Airport, is what changed her life. A casting director there was casting a little pilot called “Love and the Happy Days,” and told Marion – Hey ‘You could play the mother’ and she got the part! She and co-star Tom Bosley had a bit of a rough start, but the cast bonded and even formed a softball team. Says Marion, “We taught Henry Winkler how to pitch”
(Gotta love a babe who taught the Fonz to pitch! )
Meet Marion at 10:20am eastern today.
