Who Knew? 'MorkFrom Ork' Was Essentially Created By Gary Marshall's Son!?!

[Brian Damage]

Mork from Ork, who showed up on Happy Days before getting his own show, was inspired inside Marshall's own home. His daughters loved Happy Days, he explains, but his young son wasn't interested. Why? "There are no space people," Marshall remembers his son complaining. The show being set on ... well, Earth, and in the '50s, it wasn't immediately obvious how to make it happen. So Mork's appearance was a dream sequence at first. And then came the show Mork And Mindy, which made Mork — played by a very young Robin Williams — real. "The dream was so funny, it suddenly wasn't a dream anymore," Marshall says. Chalk another one up for something Garry Marshall believes is often a smart place to start in entertainment: "Please the people in your house."

http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2012/04/28/151543940/garry-marshall-on-his-happy-days

http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2012/04/27/ap080911024265_custom.jpg?t=1335592432&s=15

[robyrob]

well, I knew it of course - originally John Byner had been hired to play the alien (and he's almost as goofy as Robin Williams is), but he was being demanding and hard to get along with and either quit or just didn't show up so they hired Robin Williams at the last minute.

...which is why the red spacesuit was so small and tight on him.