A gang of the cast from the hit television series ‘Happy Days’ are questioning the whereabouts of some money they are owed for the use of their images in merchandising for the show, nearly 40 years after the show went off the air.
In an interview with CNN, the cast claims CBS (CBS, Fortune 500), which owns the show, has not paid them for merchandising revenues they are owed under their contracts.
Under the contracts, the cast was to receive 5% of the profits for use of their single image, and 2.5% for images featuring the cast as a group.
Ansen Williams, Don Most, Marion Ross, Erin Moran and the estate of Tom Bosley who died last year claim they were cut out of profits from lunch boxes, dolls, t-shirts, books, and slot machines among other items. Says Williams in an exclusive interview with CNN “When these slot machines came out, it was like Barnum and Bailey came to town,” Williams said. “We were bombarded with, oh look at these pictures, they’d be all over the country.”
Adds Marion Ross, “But the other day someone came up to me and said, ‘You must be cleaning up on those casinos.’ And I said, ‘Well, what are you talking about?’ And he said, ‘If you get five Marions, you get the jackpot.”‘
Should CBS pay up? Where’s Ron Howard during all of this? We have a feeling he’s somehow been seeing the checks all along.
If we were the cast of ‘Happy Days,’ we’d tell CBS to “sit on it.”
Paging Fonzie!
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