Gavan O’Herlihy, who played Happy Days' missing eldest brother Chuck Cunningham for 7 episodes, dies at 70

The Hollywood Reporter

In Happy Days' first season, the Irish actor played Chuck Cunningham, a basketball star at Jefferson High who goes off to college. But after seven episodes, O'Herlihy had had enough. Randolph Roberts replaced him for two episodes of Season 2, but the character of Chuck famously disappeared from the show. “I pulled out of it, I didn’t want to do it,” he said in an interview. “They had me at college, I was going to grunt and bounce a basketball once every couple of weeks for probably three or four years. And at 20 years old, that’s not the gig you want to be doing. But that was my big break; that got me established around town as a kid who got hot in a hurry.” Happy Days star Ron Howard later reunited with O'Herlihy by casting him in his 1988 film Willow.