E-mail a friendHenry Winkler
airdate May 9, 2008
Best known to millions as "The Fonz" on TV's Happy Days, Henry Winkler has enjoyed an award-winning career as an actor, director and producer, spanning some three decades. He grew up in New York and began his career in commercials. Winkler works with numerous children's groups and is a founding member of the Children's Action Network. He's also written a series of best-selling children's books, inspired by his own struggle with dyslexia. The latest in the series is Hank Zipzer: The World's Greatest Underachiever.
Full Interview. (12:57)
Henry Winkler
Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome Henry Winkler back to this program. The iconic television star is as busy as ever with a new film in theaters now called "A Plumm Summer". He's also the co-author of a new book for kids called "Hank Zipzer: The World's Greatest Underachiever, The Life of Me, Enter at Your Own Risk". Love the title. Back to the movie, though, here now a scene from "A Plumm Summer".
[clip]
Tavis: First of all, you look as dapper as ever.
Henry Winkler: I thank you, sir, and I return the compliment.
Tavis: Well, you're lucky --
Winkler: -- sartorial king.
Tavis: You're lucky those shoes are about two sizes too small for me. You like brown suede?
Winkler: I do.
Tavis: That's a nice shoe.
Winkler: As a matter of fact, as my daughter pointed out, I buy the same shoe over and over and over again (laughter). I see them and I go, "I like those." I forget I've got a bunch.
Tavis: Nothing like a nice pair of brown suede shoes.
Winkler: Thank you.
Tavis: This movie looks like a lot of fun.
Winkler: You know what it is? It is a throwback. It is a family film. It is a film of redemption, a film of budding romance; two young twelve-year-olds just starting to understand each other. There's not one special effect in this movie except for the explosion of the heart.
Tavis: And based on a true story?
Winkler: Based on a true story. I play a real man. His name was Herb McAllister, Happy Herb. Was twenty-two years --
Tavis: -- you and that word happy just keep --
Winkler: -- it's true, it's true. Well, I only do things with the happy in the title.
Tavis: Yeah, I got it (laughter).
Winkler: But he was a star on Montanan television for twenty-two years. His marionette was stolen. J. Edgar Hoover sent in the FBI to find it.
Tavis: True story.
Winkler: Honest to goodness.
Tavis: Wow.
Winkler: And it's a beautiful family movie. It truly is.
Tavis: What do you make of the fact that you can even put a movie out these days and think it has a chance to do well without special effects?
Winkler: You know, I'll tell you what happened in this movie theater yesterday. We had the premier yesterday and I'll tell you what happened. Children of a lot of different ages, I mean, from young, from five-year-olds to seventeen-year-olds, were in the theater. Nobody got up to go to get popcorn, nobody went to the bathroom. The children were completely involved with the humanness of the story. They saw themselves in the two teenagers and the little five-year-old starring in the movie.
Tavis: How do you -- thirty, thirty-two, thirty-three years since "Happy Days"?
Winkler: Yes.
Tavis: I mentioned earlier in the introduction as everybody does --
Winkler: -- without wearing leather (laughter)?
Tavis: (Laughter) No, I wasn't going to say that. I suspect everybody has the same reaction when they get a chance to sit and talk to you which is, at least for me, how you have navigated this journey thirty-three years --
Winkler: -- fear.
Tavis: Yeah.
Winkler: Fear.
Tavis: I mean, when you're an iconic figure, people don't want you to ever change.
Winkler: It's true. Listen, I am still typecast. It's part of my life. One of the reasons that I started writing the book, you know, there was a lull in my career. Somebody said to me, a man named Alan Berger said, "Why don't you write books for children about your dyslexia?" I said no at first. The second time he said it, I said, "Okay." He said, "I'll introduce you to Lynn Oliver", my friend who then became my writing partner, my gift of a partner. This is our fourteenth novel. We sold over two million.
Tavis: Do you have kids or grandkids?
Winkler: No grandkids, but my oldest son got married just a short while ago.
Tavis: Congratulations.
Winkler: First one, yeah.
Tavis: Back to the book. You mentioned this is the fourteenth one.
Winkler: This is the fourteenth Hank Zipzer novel.
Tavis: Exactly, which always amazes me because you already let the cat out of the bag. You have dyslexia.
Winkler: I do.
Tavis: Which you discovered because your stepson --
Winkler: -- who just got married.
Tavis: Who just got married.
Winkler: Yes. So anybody can get married (laughter).
Tavis: He was being tested. Well, you tell the story. He was being tested one day.
Winkler: He was being tested in the third grade.
Tavis: Right.
Winkler: We went to visit the Hopi Indian in Arizona, the reservation. He couldn't write a report. However, verbally he knew everything and he was incredibly adroit and clever, so we had him tested. Everything they said to him, I went, "Oh, my goodness, that's me. I actually am not stupid, I'm not lazy, I'm trying to live up to my potential. I have something with a name. Dyslexia."
Tavis: How had you survived in a business when you have to learn material, read scripts, before you ever learned you were dyslexic?
Winkler: All right. God giveth and God taketh away. Reading is hard. Reading is hard for me now. I read thrillers, you know, by Daniel Silva or Lee Child. But reading scripts, I had to read them over and over and over again in order to get it.
Tavis: Come on, how hard is it to say "Sit on it."
Winkler: Yeah, that was easy, that was easy.
Tavis: How hard is that? Come on.
Winkler: I memorized that pretty quickly. I'm not kidding. And "Whoa" (laughter) and "Hey" was out of the question, off the chart, you know (laughter). But it was difficult and, if you want something, you just work a little harder for it.
Tavis: So what do you make then -- there are two things about your life that I'm profoundly moved by and I want to get your take on it.
Winkler: Thank you.
Tavis: One, what do you make of the fact then that you have now fourteen times been able to do this?
Winkler: I'll tell you what. I couldn't do it without Lynn, my writing partner. But the fact of the matter is, we don't write down to the children. It's funny first. So we get letters from mothers, from teachers, from librarians and from the kids who say that the parents find it funny and the kids find it funny.
My favorite letter came from a little boy in Missouri who said, "I laughed so hard my funny bone fell out of my body." (laughter). I'm not kidding, and what a great compliment. So we write the truth about where my life bumps up against, you know, dyslexia.
Tavis: The name is so catchy. Hank Zipzer.
Winkler: Hank is me, right? Except that only my best friend, Frank Dines, calls me Hank. And Zipzer comes from a woman who lived on the fourth floor of my building where Hank lives and her name is Ella Zipzer. I thought it was a zippy name.
Tavis: It works.
Winkler: You know, Zipzer because his glass is half full. Hank Zipzer's glass is half full.
Tavis: So why is your friend the only one who gets to call you Hank.
Winkler: Because I hate Hank.
Tavis: (Laughter) So I guess I shouldn't start calling you Hank?
Winkler: Well, you know what, Tav? I'll tell you --
Tavis: (Laughter)
Winkler: If you wanted to, yeah, but most people call me Henry.
Tavis: And I will call you that, Mr. Winkler. I will call you Henry, Mr. Winkler.
Winkler: Thank you.
Tavis: The other part about your life that we didn't get to last time you were here, I don't know how open you are to talking about it --
Winkler: -- let's see.
Tavis: -- but it certainly was moving to me. Yeah, we'll see. Did I read that your parents escaped the holocaust?
Winkler: Never talk about that. Never mention -- no. My parents, yes, they escaped Nazi Germany. I never had a grandparents. Most of my aunts and uncles were just friends of theirs that had survived also that became part of the family in New York City. But, yes, my father took my mother's jewelry that his -- no. My father took his mother's jewelry that his mother gave him, melted down a box of chocolate over each piece of jewelry, put the pieces back in the box, put it under his arm so that when the Nazis stopped him and said, "Are you taking anything of value out of Germany while you go on this business trip to New York?" He said, "No, you can check my bags. Check my pockets. I have nothing." He used the pieces that came out in chocolate, he pawned them and that started our new life in America and then I was born.
Tavis: If they did, how did your parents relay that story to you in a way that has empowered your life, informed your choices? I mean, how did you get impacted by parents that tell you that?
Winkler: I'll tell you. People say to me, "If you were to give me one word on living this life", I always said, "Tenacity." I promise you I've just put it together with that question. I learned from my parents the power of tenacity. There is a phrase that I got on a metal cutting from fan mail when I did "Happy Days". It says, "If you will it, it is not a dream."
I now know that that is not just a needlepoint phrase. That phrase, "If you will it, it is not a dream", which Herzl said in 1948 or 1949, it makes the world go around. It is one of the things that you know is a truth that will make the world spin, honestly. It's how do you live as a person?
Tavis: Are your parents still alive or are they deceased?
Winkler: They both died.
Tavis: Were they around long enough to see --
Winkler: -- they were short, very, very short.
Tavis: (Laughter) The little Winklers.
Winkler: As a matter of fact, you could even call them the Winks because they were really --
Tavis: -- (laughter) Did they live long enough to see you go into the acting business?
Winkler: Yes.
Tavis: What did they make of that choice?
Winkler: Here it is. Now I didn't get along with my parents very well. I respect them, I am grateful for everything, but they did not know who I was. They couldn't see me. They did not want me to be an actor. My father wanted me to in the lumber business which he brought over from Germany. When I got on television, my parents went around, I promise you, and introduced themselves as "The co-producers of Henry Winkler" (laughter).
I met people all over the world who said, "I have your parents' autograph." My parents were lobbyists. They sat in the lobby of a hotel in Miami and go, "Yeah, we are the parents of Henry Winkler. How are you? Nice to see." But when I wanted to live my dream and I would share that with them, they called me a dumb dog.
Tavis: But in the end, they were proud, even though?
Winkler: They were proud, yes. But just for parents out there, the child needs you early, not after they succeed. They need you at the beginning. You know, you don't want to save that pride for down the road.
Tavis: That's great advice, that's great advice.
Winkler: Yeah, that's what I would say.
Tavis: Before I let you go --
Winkler: -- can we hold the book up? I'll just hold it next to my face.
Tavis: Yes. You got that, Jonathan? Just rest on that for a second.
Winkler: "Hank Zipzer: The World's Greatest Underachiever", number fourteen.
Tavis: (Laughter).
Winkler: Let me just say, there's a scrapbook in here. We made a Hank scrapbook, you know. But there are also incredible pictures. Oh, here's one of me holding a fly, you know, a trout.
Tavis: Speaking of pictures, you are like an amateur photographer, maybe close to being a professional photographer.
Winkler: No, no, no. I like photography.
Tavis: I got some of your photos right quick. Hey, Jonathan, put them up. What is this, Henry?
Winkler: Okay. This is in Idaho and I took my son for the first time because I love to fly-fish for trout. We stood at the edge of this lake and I taught him how to use his rod. In that lake are beautiful trout.
Tavis: When you catch trout, do you throw them back in? Do you eat them? What do you do with them?
Winkler: Absolutely. I never have eaten a trout. They are so majestic, so beautiful.
Tavis: All right, Jonathan. Give me another one.
Winkler: Oh, I was doing a movie called "The Hermit" in Canada, and I'm on top of a mountain and I just snapped that shot.
Tavis: And, Jonathan, hit me one more again.
Winkler: Okay. That is outside the dining room of the Firehole Ranch, one of the great lodges in Montana. The Firehole Ranch where you can go and fly-fish for trout. That is about 6:30 in the afternoon just during cocktails (laughter).
Tavis: So then, if your parents were still here when your photography book comes out, they'd be saying they're the co-editors of the "Henry Winkler Photography Book".
Winkler: Absolutely. "We gave him his eye. Are you kidding? He wouldn't be able to do that without us."
Tavis: (Laughter) I got to go. Promote the book one more time. Hold it up.
Winkler: What is it called? It's called "Hank Zipzer: The World's Greatest Underachiever". My life, and welcome to it. Enter at your own risk.
Tavis: And Henry Winkler, always glad to have you on this program.
Winkler: What a pleasure.
Tavis: The pleasure is all mine.
Back to May 9, 2008