When the Happy Days were over: the tragic final years of Erin 'Joanie' Moran

There is nothing new to the story of Erin Moran. Be it her early stardom, her struggles with post-heyday employment, the fetishistic reporting of her personal woes, or her untimely death. Somewhere along the line, Happy Days actress Erin Moran became Troubled Erin Moran, yet another casualty of the Hollywood child star machine, whose death in an Indiana trailer park at the age of 56 would be shocking if it weren’t so cripplingly inevitable.

Moran was at one point in time a sitcom superstar, playing the nosy little sister of Ron Howard’s Happy Days lead Richie Cunningham, who blossomed into one half of the show’s Ross and Rachel prototypes Joanie and Chachi. The pair were so popular that they were granted their own spin-off series during the sitcom’s post-shark jump years, though its fate seemed to precipitate a change in fortune for Moran herself.

Joanie Loves Chachi only lasted 17 episodes until it was axed, though Moran always insisted that the series was meant to run for just a year. The characters were then rolled back into Happy Days for that show’s final season. As the series ended, however, Moran had difficulty finding work. She acted on-screen just twice over two decades, in episodes of Murder, She Wrote and Diagnosis Murder, but regularly appeared in regional theatre, headlining plays like Lost in Yonkers and They’re Playing Our Song. She also played herself in the 2003 film Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star.

When acting work seemingly dried up for good, she became something of a reality show fixture. On an episode of the Scott Baio reality show Scott Baio is 45… and Single, the former Chachi actor reunited with Moran, claiming her mocking of his small genitalia during their brief real-world relationship subsequently ruined his love life. It was difficult to decipher who came off worse.

She followed up her Baio appearance by joining the cast of Celebrity Fit Club, and appeared on series that played off her lack of work: shows like Where Are They Now?, Totally Tracked Down and Whatever Happened to...

Moran’s final TV appearance was on a 2012 episode of Celebrity Ghost Stories, a show inspired by the strange and terrifying phenomenon of ghosts who seem to only ever haunt Hollywood’s D-list. Moran appears healthy and lucid on the show, recounting a tale of being haunted by the ghost of a dead mother in the California home she shared with her husband.

Whether Moran’s experiences with the great beyond were legitimate, her ownership of the house in question was not to be long for this world. A TMZ report in 2010 revealed that Moran’s home had gone into foreclosure due to unpaid bills to the tune of $315k. Moran and her husband Steven Fleischmann were reportedly refusing to leave the property despite the foreclosure, and had to be evicted.

The couple then moved into an Indiana trailer park to live with Fleischmann’s ailing mother. While Fleischmann worked a day job at Walmart, Moran took care of her mother-in-law. News of Moran’s move unsurprisingly brought out the vultures, who descended upon the small town of New Salisbury to capture the fallen star. Inside Edition trailed her as she walked around the park premises, Moran claiming she was “doing great” as photographers aimed a video camera in her face.

It was then reported that Moran had been thrown out of the trailer by her mother-in-law, who had apparently grown tired of Moran’s “hard-partying ways”, forcing her to take up residence at a series of motels. The story quickly spread internationally, filling a gap in the ‘troubled former child star’ canon left vacant since Amanda Bynes stopped getting DUIs that same year.

“Moran, who has not aged well, is seen walking in a grey T-shirt and plaid shorts, a cigarette hanging out of her mouth,” wrote one tabloid. Outlets subsequently cycled through more of the ‘troubled star’ playbook. There was the drunken encounter caught on camera phone by locals, the rumoured lesbian fling, the on-again/off-again marriage, the speculation about a tell-all memoir (apparently to be called Happy Days, Depressing Nights).

She had also reportedly blown through the $60,000 awarded to her and four other Happy Days cast members in a 2011 lawsuit seeking compensation for show merchandising over the years. They had all initially requested $2.5 million each.

In the wake of Moran’s death (Mail Online claimed she died of a suspected heroin overdose in her mother-in-law’s trailer, but an official autopsy concluded that she likely died of stage-four throat cancer), it was reported that many former child stars had reached out to the Happy Days star in recent weeks. Fonz actor Henry Winkler had too, in 2012, reportedly sought out a role for Moran on the Netflix reboot of Arrested Development, a comedy that also featured Scott Baio.

“Erin had friends and she knew it. Abandonment was not the issue. The perversity of human frailty is at the root of this loss, not failure,” wrote Paul Petersen, who runs the child-actor advocacy group A Minor Consideration, on Facebook. “We did our best with the resources available to us, but it was a very dark room. Some don’t find the light switch in time.”

Neighbours at the New Salisbury, Indiana trailer park she called home referred to Moran as a friendly, kind woman, who had become something of a recluse in recent months.

“I recognised her when she moved in around 2011,” neighbour David Holt told People Magazine. “I said, ‘Weren’t you on Happy Days?’ and she said, ‘Yeah,’ in a way I could tell she missed it. She used to tell me how they were one big family, and talk about the possibility of a reunion coming up.

“She didn’t have an attitude, or let on that she felt she didn’t belong here,” he continued. “It was just, ‘You’re on top one day, and then you’re on the bottom.’ But I do think she was still hopeful.”

In interviews over the years, Moran spoke of her affection for her Happy Days character, and how much she appreciated her time in the spotlight. But she also made occasional references to an underlying darkness that sometimes enveloped her, like her discomfort with Joanie Cunningham’s rapid sexualisation upon turning 15, instigated by Happy Days producers, or her depression in the wake of the sitcom’s end. She also told Sitcoms Online that she had experienced “mental and physical abuse” in her childhood, though insisted that the entertainment industry had largely treated her well.

For many actors, such close identification with just one role can become a curse, the ghost of a past that seemed to vanish as quickly as it materialised. But Moran had no such hostility, telling Pop Culture Addict that she was happy to be remembered for her sitcom role.

“When somebody accidentally calls me Joanie and they apologise, I say, ‘Don’t apologise. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.’ ”

It’s a heartening sentiment, but one that can be read in two very different ways.

Culture stars who have died in 2017 Register Log in commenting policy