Henry Winkler Reminds Fans of His First TV Role, a Scene-Stealing Guest Spot on“ The Mary Tyler Moore Show”

Victoria EdelTue, February 24, 2026 at 8:35 PM UTC

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Henry Winkler in August 2025 (left); Mary Tyler Moore on 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show' (right)

Frazer Harrison/Getty; Photo Archive/Getty

Henry Winkler reminded fans of his appearance on The Mary Tyler Moore Show

It was his very first TV role after spending years training in the theater

Just a year later, Winkler debuted as the Fonz on Happy Days

Henry Winkler might have gotten his big break on Happy Days, but his first primetime role came on another iconic comedy: The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Winkler, 80, reminded fans of his time on MTM on X on Feb. 23. He reshared a post that read, “Mary Tyler Moore paved the road for so many women. I loved this show so much. Did you?” Winkler wrote above it, “My first TV appearance in Hollywood.”

Winkler appeared in season four, episode 10, titled “The Dinner Party.” It aired in 1973. The episode saw Mary Tyler Moore’s Mary Richards throw a dinner party for a congressman she had just interviewed at work, even though she throws famously wretched dinner parties. The episode also marked the second appearance of Betty White on the series as Sue Ann Nivens; the role would ultimately win her two Emmys and make her a major TV star.

From left: Ted Knight, Ed Asner, Valerie Harper and Henry Winkler on 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show'

CBS via Getty

Mary’s friend Rhoda (Valerie Harper) brings an unexpected date to the dinner party: Winkler’s Steve Waldman. Steve is Rhoda’s coworker who’s been recently fired, and Rhoda brings him to cheer him up.

Winkler reflected on how he landed his part on The Mary Tyler Moore Show in a 2022 interview on The Jess Cagle Show. “I talked to Ed Weinberger. He was the producer,” Winkler remembered. “. . . I showed him the pictures of all the plays I’ve done at Yale.” Winkler had done theater for years while training to be an actor at Yale's famed school of drama. Weinberger, 80, told him, “Who cares?”

“I did,” Winkler said with a laugh. “Hey, this is the reason you should hire me.”

Weinberger told him he didn’t have a script to have him audition with, but he knew “one line” from the script. “You're going to sit at a table by yourself. You're going to ask for the salt from the main table where all of the stars of the show are having dinner,” the producer told him.

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Winkler took a big swing. “I took a glass, filled with pencils on his desk — I don't know where I got the nerve — emptied it, picked up one pencil, clanged,” he said. He mimicked the “clink clink” noise. “I looked up at Ed Weinberger. I said, ‘Sir, do not bother yourself. When you get a second, could you pass the salt?”

Henry Winkler on 'Happy Days'

ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty

Winkler said by the time he got to back to the hotel where he was crashing on a friend’s couch, he had the part. Cagle noted that they kept that line in the episode, too.

Cagle asked if everyone was nice to him. “They were lovely,” Winkler said, but he also “learned a big lesson.” When lunch was called, the cast “scattered” in different directions. “I didn’t know where to go,” he said.

“And I thought at that moment, ‘If my career blossoms, this will never happen to a young person who comes to a set I'm on,’ ” he said. He decided he would “always let them know” where to go and how to get food.

White, who died in 2021, days before her 100th birthday, once reflected on Winkler’s performance in an interview, “He not only held his own, but you found yourself watching him and not necessarily the action at hand.”

Just a year after his Mary Tyler Moore Show debut, Winkler was starring on Happy Days as the Fonz. He soon became the show’s breakout star. He told PEOPLE in 1976, just before Happy Days’ third season premiered, "My career has gone so fast my brain hasn't absorbed it all. Fonzie is not me. Henry is me. The Fonz is my fantasy and I want people to know there is a Henry Winkler and who he is."

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”