Finding Garry Marshall's rewritten episodes from "Hey Landlord"

MeTV published a nice article today about Laverne and Shirley. One of the items explains that Garry Marshall and his writing partner Jerry Belson re-used a script from his first sitcom—Hey Landlord!—for a Laverne and Shirley episode. There were a few more than one.

Hey Landlord! was unsuccessful compared to Marshall's later smashes, but it did run for two seasons on NBC from 1966 to t967. The MeTV article notes that the Hey Landlord! episode "Testing... One Two" was rewritten for Laverne and Shirley at "Guinea Pigs," in which Laverne is starved and Shirley is sleep deprived in a testing lab. The episode takes a different turn but the concept--and the scientist--is the same.

Another Laverne and Shirley episode rewritten from Hey Landlord! was "By the Sea, or at Least Rent It." It became "Malibu Mansion" in which a beach house becomes filled with uninvited guests. "The Dinner Who Came to Man" was adapted into "A Nun's Story." Three young ladies became one old school friend with a wild past who became a nun.

On Garry Marshall's beloved hit series Happy Days, Ron Howard's character promised tickets to a rock and roll concert from an old friend fronting the back in "Fish and the Fins." On the largely forgotten Hey Landlord!, Will Hutchins' lead does the same, except the friend is a football star (played by a young Fred Willard) in "The Big Fumble."

Fonzie donned a policeman’s uniform and talked his old gang out of a rumble in "Fonzie the Flatfoot," and Hey Landlord! costar Sandy Baron (later Jack Klompus of Seinfeld) did the same in "A Legend Dies."

Tony Randall, Marlyn Mason and Jack Klugman

Marshall and Belson even rewrote a Hey Landlord for their classic sitcom The Odd Couple. The memorable "Don't Believe in Roomers," in which the wonderful Marlyn Mason played a drifting free spirit who stayed with Felix and Oscar was a Hey Landlord! called "Same Time, Same Station, Same Girl."

Of course, stealing is wrong. A direct act of plagiarism is not condoned here, but the recycling scripts and concepts is nothing new, nor is it ever going to stop. The policy on Everybody Loves Raymond was that a script could be rewritten only if the episode was at least five years old. Listen to classic radio drama or comedy and the stories and scripting, though perhaps sometimes dated, might ring familiar.

There are only a limited amount of storylines in any genre. How many recent tentpole films could be traced—however inadvertently—back to The Twilight Zone, the original Batman or even Lost in Space? How much do we owe to Dickens, Shakespeare, Andersen and the Brothers Grimm? You be the judge.

Special thanks to Matt Mignone for clarification on this post.