Trivia / Mork & Mindy

• Acting for Two: During one episode, Mork and Mindy interview Robin Williams.
• Corpsing: Often. It's really hard to keep a straight face when Robin Williams is around. One especially noticeable example is in "It's a Wonderful Mork": Mork is supposed to be invisible and inaudible as he observes Mindy's life without him, so Pam Dawber makes a valiant but ultimately futile effort to keep a straight face to Robin's antics. Apparently, Robin liked to do this deliberately. In an interview, Pam mentioned one time where he stood offstage completely naked just to mess with her.
• Directed by Cast Member: The Series Finale, "The Mork Report," marks the only time Robin Williams went behind the camera (if you don't count the first HBO Comic Relief concert).
• Executive Meddling: The new time slot, plus the second season onward featured major changes to try and appeal to a younger crowd. Not to mention trying to make Pam Dawber add more jiggle to the show, which she fortunately refused to do, with Williams' support. Ratings plummeted, and suits were sent scrambling to fix things.
  • Show retoolings included "resetting" Mork so that he forgot everything he forgot about humanity and Earth, and later had the most bizarre Cousin Oliver ever with a middle-aged Jonathan Winters.
  • The addition of Winters to the cast was an attempt to placate Robin Williams, who was becoming increasingly unhappy with said meddling. It was well known that Williams idolized Winters and it was thought that getting to work with him would improve his morale.
• Harpo Does Something Funny: Robin Williams' improvisation proved to be so persistent and good, it was actually better than what the writers could do, so they budgeted minutes in the script with "Robin goes off here."
  • Dave Itzkoff's biography Robin, published after Williams's death, tells of one particular aversion; Robin tried one improvised joke that fell flat with the audience, and requested another take. When that attempt also didn't go over, Robin requested a third take, and this time stuck to the script. This joke got the big laugh from the audience, and the take was used in the finished episode.
• I Am Not Spock: Robin Williams joked that after he won the Oscar for Good Will Hunting, it only took a few weeks for people on the street to begin calling him "Mork" again.
• Late Export for You: The first (and only) time the show aired in France? 2008.
• Prop Recycling: Mork's red spacesuit is the same jumpsuit worn by Col. Green in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Savage Curtain", and in an episode in which Mindy and Fred pretend to be aliens to throw off a nosy reporter, Fred wears a spacesuit helmet seen in the episode "The Tholian Web".
  • Appropriate, given that they were both Paramount shows.
• So My Kids Can Watch: Mork visited Happy Days because Garry Marshall's 5-year-old daughter only watched shows about outer space.
• Star-Making Role: Robin Williams launched into the stratosphere from here.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Continuing with the Cliffhanger ending from "Gotta Run", Season 5 would have featured Mork and Mindy traveling through time, escaping from Kalnick the Neptunian, while meeting historical figures such as Abraham Lincoln and Benjamin Franklin.
  • Jay Leno auditioned for the role of Remo DaVinci. According to Leno, he was told by an ABC executive that his face would "frighten little children".
• Working Title: Garry Marshall originally suggested Mork from Ork as the title, but ABC didn't like that. He then suggested The Mork Chronicles, the network didn't think that most viewers would know what a chronicle was. Finally, he suggested Mork and Mindy and they went for it.
• Written by Cast Member: Jim Staahl, who played Nelson Flavor in seasons 2 &3, co-wrote the episode "I Heard it Through the Morkvine."
• You Look Familiar: Jonathan Winters appeared in season 3's "Mork and the Family Reunion" as Mindy's miserly uncle, before becoming Mearth in the final season. At one point during the episode he actually talks in the voice he uses for Mearth.

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