Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries - Monty: Henry Winkler

Monty aired from January until February 1994 on FOX.

The Fonz as Rush Limbaugh? That's what this sitcom with former Happy Days star Henry Winkler as both star and executive producer, wanted viewers to accept. Monty Richardson ( Winkler) was the archconservative host of a TV Talk Show on channel 35 on New York's Long Island. The title of his best selling book summarized the way he delt with anyone who didn't share his point of view-I'm Right. I'm Right. I'm Right. Shut Up. His viewers loved him as did Clifford ( Tom McGowan), his fawning yes-man sidekick, while Rita ( Joyce Guy), the cynical black producer of his show, despised everything for which he stood. Ironically Monty was happily married to Fran ( Kate Burton), a liberal grade school teacher who was used to his uneqivocal pontificating. His son Greg ( David Schwimmer), a Yale law-school dropout, had just returned from 6 months in Europe with a free-spirited girlfriend, Geena ( China Katner), and a new career goal-to become a vegetarian chef-just what his father wanted. For 14 year old David ( David Krumholtz), who wanted desperately to be accepted by his peers, having Monty for a father presented a major problem. Almost all of the kids he knew, thought Monty was a pompous jerk. So did the audience.

A Review from Variety

Monty Here Comes the Son
((Tues. (11), 8-8:30 p.m., Fox))
By TONY SCOTT

Taped at Warner Hollywood Studios by Fair Dinkum, Reserve Room Prods., Touchstone TV. Exec producers, Marc Lawrence, Henry Winkler; supervising producer, Katie Ford; producer, Ana Krewson; writer/creator, Lawrence; director, James Burrows.

Cast: Henry Winkler, Kate Burton, David Krumholtz, David Schwimmer, China Kantner, Tom McGowan, Joyce Guy, Thora Birch.

Henry Winkler returns to series sitcomville as an unrestrained, far-right-wing Long Island cable talkshow host with an open-minded wife and two sons. Writer/creator Marc Lawrence, longtime scripter for "Family Ties," draws on standard liberal/conservative lines, so there are few surprises.

NBC, which carried the Winkler project on its development slate last year, passed on it last spring. Fox reportedly then ordered 13 segs for its primetime lineup.

Monty Richardson (Winkler) does just fine at the TV studio as he shoots snide remarks about immigrants, environmentalists and, of course, Democrats. At home, he struts while his school-teaching wife, Fran (Kate Burton), tries to keep the peace.

Their 14-year-old son David (David Krumholtz) slings out wry comments. Pre-law son Greg (David Schwimmer), just back from Europe, announces he's brought home free-spirited Geena (China Kantner) and is going to become a vegetarian chef, both of which irk Monty.

Monty (and Lawrence) now have their in-house antagonist. Geena's an actress, hairdresser, writer and vegetarian, and sports a nose ring, all solid dartboards for Monty. He shoots off his vulgarities and insults at her, but his ammunition's surprisingly dry.

Best segs are at the studio, where Monty's caustic producer, Rita (Joyce Guy) , reads while he talks on the air and an 11-year-old guest (Thora Birch) ably stings the host. The hackneyed announcer (Tom McGowan) doesn't carry much comedy weight.

Director James Burrows finds funny moments among the cliches, and pacing is good.

Winkler's Monty is a one-note character, though he gets off a couple of good, quick remarks. Burton is spunky and assured as Fran. Schwimmer and Krumholtz are acceptable as the sons, while Kantner suitably plays the blatant Geena. Young Birch self-assuredly grabs her few moments and runs with them.

An Article from USA TODAY
Published on January 11, 1994

Winkler goes from cool to conservative

By Jefferson Graham
USA TODAY

HOLLYWOOD-How did Henry Winkler go from being the Fonz to playing a Rush Limbaugh-type talk show host?

Simple. He wanted to do a series again. And when producer Marc Lawrence presented him Monty, it was so " on the edge," Winkler believed he couldn't dismiss it.

" The character is so theatrical," says Winkler . " I need a big character to play. I didn't want to just be a dad."

NBC bought it, but changed its mind at the last minute. Then Fox picked it up, with one caveat: Monty could no longer have a lesbian daughter. So much for the "Fox edge" that the network likes to tout.

Winkler says Fox thought it would have enough problems with advertisers over the political content of the show and didn't want to ask for more by putting on a prime-time lesbian. Not that it has hurt the ratings or revenues at Roseanne.

Monty will premiere Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET/PT, Winkler's Happy Days time slot for so many years in the '70s and early '80s. Monty's views are quite similar to those of another '70s icon-Archie Bunker-and Winkler welcomes the comparrisons.

" I'm hoping I can be half the man Archie was in the '70s," he says. " I loved All in the Family. If we can come close to that, I'd be a very happy human."

Winkler doesn't think he's playing Limbaugh, although that's the comparrison most have made: Monty is an ultra-conservative talk show host who hates the Clintons.

Winkler's opinion of the Rusher: " It must be a remarkable thing to live with such high opinions of yourself."

Even though Winkler is one of Hollywood's most outspoken liberals , he has no problems portraying someone with opposite views. " Ultimately, the shows are balanced, fair and very funny."

Monty and Winkler are both 48, which certainly doesn't pose the challenge he faced on Happy Days when he was a 27-year-old man playing a 19-year-old Fonzie , who eventually grew up to be 24 over the show's 10 year run.

After Happy Days, Winkler lost the will to act. He moved into directing ( Cop and a Half, Memories of Me) and producing ( MacGyver, Sightings). Two years ago he ran into director Gil Cates, who asked him to star in a CBS TV movie called Absolute Starngers. Winkler liked the script-a courtroom drama about abortion-said yes and found that he liked acting again.

" I realized then that I really missed it," says Winkler.

And now that he has a few Monty episodes under his belt, " I'm feeling really fabulous. I'm really loving it."

A Review from USA TODAY

TV PREVIEW/BY MATT ROUSH

'MONTY' is more a drag than a Rush

With Monty, Fox returns to its bad ol' days , when almost no one paid attention to a network churning out some of the saddest excuses for '80s sitcoms. Only a masocist ( or TV critic, as if there's a difference sometimes) would bother to recall the TV version of Down and Out in Beverly Hills, George C. Scott's Mr. President, Patty Duke's Karen Song.

Henry Winkler's Monty upholds that tradition of schlocky banality with reckless awfullness and endless tackiness. About the only thing this has in common with other Fox shows is its irritating loudness.

The shouting comes with the territory, as Winkler plays a blustery Rush Limbaugh-type TV personality on Long Island's Channel 35. This is Monty's first and most fatal strike: Only a genius can spoof a sharp conceit like Limbaugh's own big-cheese limburger act.

Unlike Limbaugh, Monty isn't smart. Or funny.

A viewer advisory: Rush don't walk, from this turkey.

Whether at work or at home , where the rules of sitcomedy dictate he never gets the last word, Winkler overacts in perpetual high dudgeon. It only makes his solid supporting cast seem all the more charming.

Kate Burton is winsome as always, but has little to do as his schoolteacher wife. As his oldest son, gangly David Schwimmer-who played the ill-fated resident of 4B on NYPD Blue-has the endearing quality of someone long bullied who's about to forge his way to get his own manhood.

Unfortunately in the clitched living-room universe of Monty, finding himself means bringing home from Europe a vegetarian pinhead who wears a ring in her nose. Not only does Monty despise her, so will you.

Things are even worse at the studio, where Monty lobs feeble darts at the Clintons and Janet Reno while contending with an unimpressed black producer and a parasitic sidekick meant to resemble Limbaugh, but who actually involks Conan O'Brien's hopeless second banana.

The so-called biggest laughs in the pilot result when Monty invites a bleeding-heart critic on the air to find she's an 11-year-old girl who cries on cue. She turns out to be a phony.

But so's Monty. Fortunately, we shouldn't have to suffer this fool for very long.

A Review from Entertainment Weekly

TV Review
Monty

By Ken Tucker

Bellowing conservative Rush Limbaugh has inspired a sitcom, the unbelievable Monty. The hero here is right-wing TV host Monty Richardson who, in a truly extraordinary piece of miscasting, is played by Henry Winkler. While Limbaugh is a real pro as a broadcasting communicator, Winkler's Monty is a gibbering buffoon-more like an even-less-articulate Archie Bunker. Monty doesn't even have the courage of its premise. Monty pontificates in a conservative mode, but he doesn't actually express any beliefs that would offend the touchiest liberal; he's actually a middle-of- the-road bore. The only remotely funny character is Monty's son's aggressively bratty girlfriend, played with fierce bite by China Kantner (yes, the offspring of Grace Slick and Paul Kantner). For some reason, the talented Kate Burton (Home Fires) has signed on as Monty's wife. One hopes a good TV producer will watch this thing and hire her away when it's canceled. D

An Article from Entertainment Weekly
Published on January 21, 1994

Television News
NOT JUST A FONZ MEMORY
HENRY WINKLER BACK IN FRONT OF THE CAMERAS

By Bruce Fretts

Henry Winkler is back in New York City for the first time in a year and a half, and he's nervous. Not that it's unfamiliar territory-he grew up in Manhattan (where his parents still live), did commercials and theater here in the early '70s, and won his first major movie role here, as a greaser in 1974's The Lords of Flatbush.

The reason for Winkler's case of the butterflies: He's backstage at Live With Regis & Kathie Lee, waiting to promote his new Fox sitcom, Monty. ''I have known Regis for my whole career, and we always have a great repartee,'' says Winkler, 48, trying to calm himself. ''And now that I've said that, today I will fall on my face.'' This self-doubt is a surprise coming from the man who personified ''cool'' as Arthur Fonzarelli in the 1974-84 sitcom Happy Days; Winkler says he's used to people confusing him with his character. ''Cher called and invited me to one of her birthday parties years and years ago,'' Winkler recalls. ''And she said, 'Wait a minute, you don't sound like the Fonz.' I've lived through that.'' But Winkler says he has nothing but good feelings about his Happy days. ''Look what the Fonz did for me,'' he says. ''(There was) an autistic child who spoke her first word to me, which was 'Fonz.' The mother passed out. That alone is why you do what you do.'' Winkler quit acting for eight years after Happy Days, producing TV series (MacGyver, Sightings) and directing movies (Memories of Me). He started acting again in TV movies in 1992, and plays a right-wing TV host in Monty. ''It's not just based on Rush Limbaugh,'' Winkler says. ''If there were any comparisons I'd like to make, it's All in the Family. Maybe I'm the Archie Bunker of the '90s.'' Then he adds doubtfully, ''But I don't know.'' Winkler's spot on Regis goes smoothly-the crowd cheers at photos from Happy Days and at a scene from Monty-and he seems more confident as he steps into a limo afterward. He asks the driver to stop when he sees that a fan has brought a program for 42 Seconds From Broadway, Winkler's sole Broadway play, which closed in one night in 1973. ''I gotta sign this,'' he says, rolling down the window. ''The Fonz all the way!'' the fan gushes. ''I love your show.'' Winkler hands back the program as the car starts to pull onto Columbus Avenue and says a bit sheepishly, ''And now you're going to watch Monty, right?''

For more on Monty go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_(TV_series)

For the Official Site of Rush Limbaugh go to http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/today.guest.html