Happy Days is an American television sitcom that aired first-run from January 15, 1974 to September 24, 1984 on ABC, with a total of 255 half-hour episodes spanning eleven seasons. Created by Garry Marshall, the series was one of the most successful of the 1970s, an idealized vision of life in the mid-1950s to mid-1960s Midwestern United States, and starred Ron Howard as teenagerRichie Cunningham, Henry Winkler as his friend Arthur "Fonzie"/"The Fonz" Fonzarelli, and Tom Bosley and Marion Ross as Richie's parents, Howard and Marion Cunningham. Happy Days became one of the biggest successes in television history and heavily influenced the television style of its time.