Chuck Cunningham was Richie’s older brother on Happy Days who famously ate sandwiches, dribbled basketballs, and then disappeared, never to be heard from again. The way his character vanished and was never mentioned again by this TV family eventually led to the name Chuck Cunningham Syndrome.
What you may not remember about Chuck, though, is that he was played by two different actors. Gavan O’Herlihy initially played the character in the series, followed by Randolph Roberts. According to IMDb, O’Herlihy appeared as Chuck during the first season in seven episodes from January to March 1974. Later in the year, during the second season, Randolph Roberts appeared in two episodes as Chuck. [Update: The clip of a show with Chuck is no longer on YouTube, but if you find the series debut episode, “All the Way,” at around the 7:40 mark you may see O’Herlihy enjoying dinner with the Cunninghams. A brief part of the clip also appears in the TMZ video below.]
Reportedly, the reason the show eventually got rid of Chuck was that he was never a big character and the producers realized that Fonzie (Henry Winkler) had become the “big brother” to Richie (Ron Howard). Several websites note that Gary Marshall, the series creator, humorously stated that his response to the question about what happened to Chuck was that the character got a basketball scholarship in Outer Mongolia.
But why were there two Chucks in the series? In the following video, O’Herlihy, who had been a champion Irish tennis player, explains at around the 4:04 mark how Happy Days gave him his big break in acting. But after he realized that they expected his character to have a limited role, dropping in from college occasionally, he wanted to go on to other work. So apparently, the producers then brought in Roberts briefly before deciding to dump the character all together.
O’Herlihy went on to appear in a number of roles in films like Willow (1988), often playing a villain such as in a standout performance in Lonesome Dove (1989). By contrast, Roberts continued in some acting roles for a little more than a decade before leaving acting and, according to Wikipedia, becoming an education supervisor for ITT Technical Institute in San Diego.
On an additional note, technically, there were three Chuck Cunninghams. In the original Happy Days pilot version that appeared as a segment of Love, American Style (discussed in another post), Chuck was played by actor Ric Carrott. As in the Happy Days series, Chuck only appeared briefly in the Love, American Style episode (eating dinner). Carrott went on to appear in a number of TV shows during the 1970s as well as in small parts in a number of films before leaving acting. He may be best known for his work as Captain Chris Gentry on the Saturday morning kid’s show Space Academy.
Regarding the TV series Happy Days, it is interesting to speculate whether or not the show would have abandoned Chuck Cunningham had O’Herlihy stuck around, as it seems likely that the loss of the first actor hastened the character’s demise. One might image that if O’Herlihy had not left the character, the writers might have kept Chuck in the family, occasionally dropping by while he was at college and then off living somewhere else. Or maybe the series occasionally would have covered him playing basketball in Mongolia.
2015 Update: After this article was posted TMZ did a short segment on the Chuck Cunningham mystery where they caught Ron Howard with the question about what happened to Chuck. Check it out.
Who is your favorite TV character who suffered from Chuck Cunningham Syndrome? Leave your two cents in the comments.
(Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)
