Mork & Mindy

Did You Know?

• For its first season, Mork & Mindy was nominated for two Primetime Emmy Awards: Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for Robin Williams.
• A subsequent animated series titled Mork & Mindy/Laverne & Shirley/Fonz Hour ran on ABC from 1982 to 1983.
• In the United Kingdom, a long-running comic strip version was written by Angus P. Allan and printed in Look-In magazine.

History and episodes

Mork first appeared in the Happy Days season five episode "My Favorite Orkan", which aired in February 1978. The episode was a take on the 1960s sitcom My Favorite Martian, and the producers wanted to feature a spaceman to capitalize on the popularity of the recently released Star Wars film. In the initial broadcast, the encounter turned out to be a dream of Richie Cunningham's, but when Mork proved popular, the syndicated version was re-edited with a scene showing Mork erasing the experience from everyone's minds. The character was played by then-unknown Robin Williams, who impressed producer Garry Marshall with his quirky comic ability. Dom DeLuise and Roger Rees were offered the role but passed; Richard Lewis and Jeff Altman were considered. When Williams was asked to take a seat at the audition, he sat on his head, and Marshall cast him on the spot. Mork & Mindy is set in Boulder, Colorado, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, as opposed to the Happy Days setting of Milwaukee in the mid 1950s and early 1960s.

Characters

Mork is an alien from the planet Ork, played by Robin Williams, who is sent to Earth to study human behavior. He often explains that Orkan scientists grew him in a test tube. Mindy McConnell, played by Pam Dawber, is the human woman who discovers Mork and guides him in understanding human customs; she eventually falls in love with him, they marry, and together they raise an Orkan child. Mindy's father, Fredrick "Fred" McConnell, portrayed by Conrad Janis, is a conservative widower. During the first season, Fred co-owned a music shop with Cora, and by the third season, he became the conductor of the Boulder Symphony Orchestra. Grandma Cora Hudson, played by Elizabeth Kerr, is Mindy's less-conservative, rock-loving grandmother and Fred's mother-in-law. Franklin Delano Bickley, played by Tom Poston, is Mindy's downstairs neighbor who works writing greeting cards; he starts as a grumpy complainer about noise but eventually becomes a friend to Mork, Mindy, and the others. Mearth, portrayed by Jonathan Winters, is the child of Mork and Mindy and the godson of Orson. Due to Orkan biology, Orkans age backward, beginning with elderly adult bodies while having a child's mind, and then regressing into feeble "old" children. Remo DaVinci, played by Jay Thomas, and Jeanie DaVinci, played by Gina Hecht, co-owned The New York Delicatessen in season two and DaVinci's Restaurant in season three; both characters were removed after season three. Nelson Flavor, played by Jim Staahl, is Mindy's strait-laced, driven, yet aloof cousin with political ambitions, and he was also dropped after season three. Glenda Faye Comstock, played by Crissy Wilzak, is Mindy's friend and a recent widow who becomes Nelson's love interest, appearing only in season three. Orson, voiced by Ralph James, is Mork's mostly unseen superior who sent Mork to Earth to get him off the planet, as humor is forbidden on Ork.

Connections to other shows

The character of Mork originated from a dream sequence on The Dick Van Dyke Show, an episode Jerry Paris directed called "It May Look Like a Walnut," where Rob Petrie imagines aliens who eat walnuts and steal human thumbs and imaginations. Paris later directed Happy Days and brought Mork into that show's fifth season with the episode "My Favorite Orkan." In it, Richie claims to have seen a flying saucer, but nobody believes him. Fonzie explains that people invent UFO stories because their lives are humdrum. Mork then appears, freezes everyone except Richie with his finger, and says he needs a humdrum human to take back to his home planet, Ork. Mork challenges Fonzie to a duel of finger versus thumb. Fonzie loses, so Mork decides to take him instead of Richie. Richie wakes up to find it was all a dream, but a man who looks just like Mork, dressed in normal clothes, knocks on his door asking for directions. When Mork & Mindy went into production, an extra scene was added to that Happy Days episode for reruns. In it, Mork tells Orson he let Fonzie go and plans to travel to 1978. The Mork & Mindy pilot shows Orson assigning Mork to study Earth, and Mork recalls his earlier visit, saying he had to throw back the specimen he collected—Fonzie—because it was too small. Fonzie and Laverne from Laverne & Shirley both appear in the first episode of Mork & Mindy, where Mork tells Mindy about his date with Laverne, set up by Fonzie in 1950s Milwaukee.

Filming locations

The exterior of Mindy’s house in Mork & Mindy is a real Boulder home at 1619 Pine Street, just a short walk from the Pearl Street Mall. That address was used as Mindy’s in the episode “Mork Goes Public.” The same house later appeared on Perfect Strangers in season 5’s “This Old House” and on Family Matters as Myra’s home in three episodes. Interior filming for Mork & Mindy took place on Paramount stage 27, which had previously housed The Insider. As of June 2024, the Pine Street property was valued at $3.1 million; it was last sold in 1974 for $80,000. The show’s opening credits show Robin Williams and/or Pam Dawber driving a convertible Jeep along Boulder Canyon, passing the Pine Street house, stopping at a Pearl Street Mall music store, and at a goalpost scene at CU Boulder’s Folsom Field.