Erin Moran, the former child star who played Joanie Cunningham in the sitcoms Happy Days and Joanie Loves Chachi, has died.
She was 56, and the cause of death has not been determined.
A statement from the sheriff’s department in Harrison County, Indiana, said the dispatcher “received a 911 call about an unresponsive female. Upon arrival of first responders, it was determined that Erin Moran Fleischmann was deceased. An autopsy is pending.”
A Burbank, California native, she began acting in TV and movies before she was 10 years old. She had nearly a decade’s worth of experience when she was cast in 1974 in Happy Days as Joanie Cunningham, the kid sister to high school student Richie Cunningham, played by Ron Howard.
Debuting at a time of nostalgia for the seemingly innocent 1950s, the sitcom was set in Milwaukee and soon became a hit. Howard and Henry Winkler, who played tough guy Arthur “The Fonz” Fonzarelli, were the show’s biggest stars, but Moran also became popular.
Howard tweeted his condolences. “Such sad sad news. RIP Erin. I’ll always choose to remember you on our show making scenes better, getting laughs and lighting up TV screens.”
Winkler also tweeted, saying “OH Erin… now you will finally have the peace you wanted so badly here on earth …Rest In It serenely now… Too soon.”
“What happened with all of us was like we were this family,” she told Xfinity in 2009. “It was so surreal with all the cast members … They were my family, get it?”
In 1981, when asked what she’d like to do after Happy Days, Moran told CNN: “I would love to do a feature [film], I’d love to do a play.”
Moran joined the Happy Days cast in 1974 when she was 13.
In 1982, she was paired off with fellow Happy Days performer Scott Baio in the short-lived Joanie Loves Chachi.
Her more recent credits included The Love Boat and Murder, She Wrote, but she never approached the success of Happy Days and was more often in the news for her personal struggles.
In recent years, she was reported to be living in an Indiana trailer park.
In 2010, she joined various Happy Days co-stars in filing a lawsuit against television network CBS, claiming they were owed money from merchandising revenues.
The suit was settled in 2012, with the actors each receiving a payout of $65,000 (£50,000).
They originally asked for $10 million.
