An 1980s TV icon was spotted picking up her cake at a Gelson’s market in Los Angeles on her 71st birthday this week.
Fans of Happy Days will immediately remember her turn later in the season as a love interest of Henry Winkler’s character Arthur Fonzarelli, aka Fonzie.
She jumped from one classic sitcom to another, starring on The Office in the 2000s as the mother of Jenna Fischer’s Pam Beesley.
Dramatically, she had a role in Matlock in the 1980s as the daughter of the titular lawyer, played by Andy Griffith.
Her love life linked her to another totem of television history, in that the first of her four ex-husbands Desi Arnaz Jr. was the son of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.
Can you guess who she is?
An 1980s TV icon was spotted picking up her cake at a Gelson’s market in Los Angeles on her 71st birthday this week
Fans of Happy Days will immediately remember her turn from the final season as a love interest of Henry Winkler’s character Arthur Fonzarelli, aka Fonzie
Dramatically, she had a role in Matlock in the 1980s as the daughter of the titular lawyer, played by Andy Griffith.
She is none other than Linda Purl, best known for her role in season 10 of Happy Days as Ashley Pfister, a rare long-term girlfriend of the womanizing Fonzie.
The Daily Mail has contacted Purl’s representative for comment.
Purl raves about the “atmosphere” of a “happy home” created on set by show creator Garry Marshall and cherishes the lasting friendships she developed with Winkler and other co-stars like Cathy Silvers and Donny Most.
However, she was inundated with “hate mail” from delusional fans who were in love with Fonzie, she shared on the podcast Classic conversations.
She raved about the “amazing” and “hard-working” Winkler, saying, “I don’t think he took a moment of that extraordinary ride for granted.”
Purl had initially landed a recurring guest spot on season two of Happy Days in 1974, playing another character named Gloria, who was once a date of Ron Howard’s star-making character Richie Cunningham.
“When Ron left the show, all the side characters were left without jobs,” she explained. “Many years later, they put out a casting call for Fonzie’s fiancée. I asked if I could audition and when I got the part, it felt like coming home.’
Fonzie’s love interest Ashley was the divorced single mother of a daughter played by Poltergeist child star Heather O’Rourke, who died at age 12 from a congenital intestinal problem in 1988, five years after her run on Happy Days.
“She was a sweet, sweet girl,” Purl recalled of O’Rourke decades later Women’s world. “We became closer than if we just did our scenes together because her mother was a single mother who lived far away from the studio, worked full time and also took care of her other child.”
She is none other than Linda Purl, best known for her role in season 10 of Happy Days as Ashley Pfister, a rare long-term girlfriend of the womanizing Fonzie.
Purl found herself inundated with ‘hate mail’ from delusional fans who were in love with Fonzie, she shared on the Classic Conversations podcast
Her love life linked her to another totem of showbiz history, in that the first of her four ex-husbands was Desi Arnaz Jr (right), the son of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.
Purl added, “It was very easy to get Heather to spend a few nights with me. Heather and I would prepare dinner; I read her stories and tucked her in at night. She was a wonderful little girl. I was so honored that her mother would entrust Heather to me. I think it also helped us on set because we had that extra time together.”
Born in 1955 in Connecticut, Purl came from a family with long ranks in the world of entertainment, including paternal grandparents who played on the vaudeville circuit.
Purl’s grandmother Beatrice Saville was a founding member of America’s premier stage performers’ union, Actors Equity, which was founded in 1913.
She spent most of Purl’s childhood in Japan, where her father worked as an executive in the chemical industry and where her own acting career first took off.
Their company-issued family home was equipped with several guest rooms, becoming a magnet for the Western cultural panjandrums passing through Tokyo, including Tennessee Williams and Henry Mancini.
Purl became the only foreign student to enroll at the Toho Entertainment Academy and worked at the Imperial Japanese Theater in shows such as The King and I.
After returning to America at the age of 15, she earned her big break in Hollywood in Jonathan Demme’s 1975 film Crazy Mama, a three-generation crime caper.
Purl played the role of a pregnant woman whose mother was played by Cloris Leachman and whose grandmother was played by Old Hollywood stalwart Ann Sothern.
She also appeared on The Office in the 2000s as the mother of Jenna Fischer character Pam Beesley; Purl is pictured on the show with Steve Carrell
Purl is pictured with lead actor Andy Griffith and co-star Kene Holliday in a 1986 publicity campaign for Matlock, in which she starred as the title character’s daughter during season one.
Decades later, Purl rhapsodized that the “unique” Leachman was a “creative force” and an “engine,” while noting that Sothern was “of a different generation.” They had very different ways of working. So there was a bit of a diva thing going on.”
Having already completed her season two short stint on Happy Days, she drifted between guest shots on shows like The Waltons and Hawaii Five-O, plus films like the Canadian slasher film Visiting Hours, starring Star Trek icon William Shatner.
Her fame got a boost when she was welcomed back to Happy Days as Ashley, a job that also resulted in multiple USO tours with her co-stars.
In 1984, she starred as a blind slave in the miniseries The Last Days of Pompeii, alongside a cast that included Laurence Olivier, Franco Nero and Ernest Borgnine.
Working with Olivier “was spectacular,” Purl said. “My God, when you were hanging out with him, everyone was better. It was like playing tennis with a very good player.’
Purl guest-starred on Murder, She Wrote; Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Love Boat and then landed her role as the title character’s daughter on Matlock.
The lead actor Andy Griffith, she recalled, was “very, very smart,” with a formidable charm that allowed him to “wrap a crowd around his finger in an instant.”
Purl noted that Griffith had “found what worked for him” in the form of broad TV characters and “stayed in that alley”, but expressed her regret that he never had the opportunity to apply his “depth and insight” to more complex roles like King Lear.
She found a lasting romance later in life with Dallas star Patrick Duffy, whom she has been dating since 2020; pictured 2022
Her notable work in the 1990s included the massive gorilla drama Mighty Joe Young, in which she played the mother of Charlize Theron’s lead character.
Sitcom fans were once again treated to her gifts in a lasting role when she landed the role of Pam’s mother in seasons six and seven of The Office.
She admitted afterwards that she initially found the experience of joining the show so ‘late in their remarkable success’ ‘intimidating’.
But her colleagues “were great and I felt right at home because that’s who they were, and the atmosphere was very much like the Happy Days set,” she said.
Purl’s love life included four failed marriages, the first to Desi Arnaz Jr., with whom she exchanged vows in January 1979 and separated in January 1980.
Her next husband William Broyles Jr was the screenwriter of Cast Away and co-writer of Apollo 13, the latter directed by her longtime Happy Days co-star Ron Howard.
From 1993 to 1999, she was married to British aristocrat and television writer Alexander Cary, with whom she welcomed a son, and her last marriage was to one James Vinson Adams, a man outside showbiz, from 2006 to 2010.
She found a lasting romance later in life with Dallas star Patrick Duffy, whom she has been dating since 2020.
Although they had known each other casually for decades, their bond went beyond the platonic stage during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Stuck in lockdown, they were both part of a group text where they ended up being the only people talking to each other.
‘I loaded up my car, drove 20 hours and ended up on her doorstep to see if it was real. We haven’t been apart since,” Duffy said in November 2020 via People.
“It’s exciting to bring someone into the fabric of your life at this stage,” Purl shared Closer a few years ago, adding, “We’re not in our twenties, after all.”
