09/23/2025
Add this one to the “who knew?” department.
One of the motorcycles that Henry Winkler’s Fonzie rode on “Happy Days” also had a great place in movie history.
“One of my favorite facts about Fonzie is that the bike I finally wound up with, the Triumph — the Harley-Davidson was just too big for me — was the bike that Steve McQueen used to jump the fence in ‘The Great Escape,’ ” says Winkler. McQueen’s character, PoW Virgil Hilts, was trying to leap to freedom over a barbed-wire fence at the German border.
Winkler wound up meeting McQueen but never discussed the bike.
Photo: Henry Winkler as Arthur "Fonzie" Fonzarelli on "Happy Days" and Steve McQueen in "The Great Escape."
