Petroff’s: The Real Drive-in Behind ‘Happy Days’

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Photo by Jack Nusan Porter

Happy Days 50th Anniversary - Milwaukee Magazine Issue

In the January 2024 issue of Milwaukee Magazine, they had the 50th anniversary celebration of “Happy Days” and called it “Were Those Days Really that Happy?” plus a sub-section called “’The Rise of the Fonz and the Fall of Ritchie.” It was one of the most comprehensive analyses of that TV show and explained the inside story of those days.

Having grown up on the Northwest Side, also called the Sherman Park neighborhood, I’ve always been miffed that in public relations brochures about Milwaukee—they never mention the real “Happy Days” drive-in”—Petroff’s at 53nd and Burleigh!

They mention The Milky Way in Glendale, now a Kopp’s location, and Gilles on the West Side and Leon’s on the South Side but to me it was Petroff’s. Mr. Petroff was a dark-haired handsome man from Russia who started the drive-in as a custard stand in the early ‘50s and in the ‘60s, tore it down and built a bowling alley and restaurant. When bowling declined, it was torn down again and made into The Burleigh Enterprise Center, with office space and stores. Some of the offices were rented by Rabbi Michel (Michael) Twerski and his   Congregation Beth Jehudah, according to long-time resident Gerry Glazer.

Inspiration for Arnold’s

Garry Marshall takes most of the credit for founding the show, but he was actually one of three, along with Edward Milkis and Tom Miller, two names nearly forgotten. But actually, Tom Miller inspired the creation of “Arnold’s,” the “Happy Days” drive-in, and based it on a place he used to hang out—The Milky Way which was on Port Washington Road, south of Silver Spring,

Choosing a site for the show was a bit more complex—Garry was from New York, Eddie was from LA and Tom was from Milwaukee. Anson Williams who played Potsie on the show says that “they flipped a coin and Tom won.” Such is the apocryphal legend on how the show was set in Milwaukee.

I remember Petroff’s because every afternoon after either Steuben Junior High or Washington High, I had to trudge to Hebrew School at the Bet Am Center (Hebrew for “the House of the People”) to study Yiddish and then, after Israel was founded, Hebrew. One of the rooms was even named after the late Prime Minister of Israel Golda Meir. It was also the home of the Habonim/Dror Youth Movement, a Labor Zionist group—“labor” being a code word back then for “socialist.”

I remember Petroff as a place full of lovely temptations and filled with forbidden non-kosher food and girls and even danger—fights with “greasers,” so named because they used “grease” or Brylcream in their slick hair. They were usually Italian or Irish; I rarely saw any Jewish greasers. They wore pea-green jackets in winter and white T-shirts in summer, often with a pack of Marlboros rolled up their sleeve.

Enter the Fonze

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© American Broadcasting Companies, Inc.

Henry Winkler in Happy Days (1974)

Henry Winkler in Happy Days (1974)

Rebel Without a Cause. It’s interesting that Henry Winkler was a New York—raised and Yale-trained actor and was nothing like what Gary Marshall envisioned or the tough- guy Arthur Fonzarelli, and the Fonz, who became so more popular than  Ritchie, played by Ron Howard, that Howard quit during the seventh season.

Also, Winkler never combed his hair. Instead, in the Milwaukee Magazine article, he said that—“In the script, Fonzie’ s going to comb his hair. So (in the scene) I went to the mirror and realized I didn’t have to because my hair was perfect.”

This was the era of the automobile and as soon as a teen became 16, he got a license—the car was freedom from parents. At drive-ins, girls on roller-skates would come up to the car and ask for your order—usually a hamburger, French fries and a milk shake. They would prop up a contraption in your side window and place the food there. Some even had a   mechanism where you pressed a button and could order from a kind of telephone. The weirdest item they had was a huge raw hamburger, which to me sounded both disgusting and   unhealthy.

I return to Milwaukee one or two times a year, and whenever I walk by what was once Petroff’s, I think nostalgically about a time that will never exist again. I can go to Kopps or Leon’s, but it will never be the same.