Don[ny] Most Makes A Little Moola!
April 11, 2008

Best known as class cut-up Ralph Malph on TV’s venerable Happy Days, actor/director Don Most hasn’t been spending the past decade polishing up his jokes but, rather, fine-tuning his directing skills and making a couple of feature films, beginning with the 1999 drama The Last Best Sunday and then the soon-to-be-released comedy Moola (Allumination, Street: May 6).

So what’s with the nine years lag time between the two films?

“There were a couple of projects that I almost had going, but they were fairly expensive and it’s never easy to get money,” Most told me in an interview earlier this month. “Then we started switching gears and moved our

Based on a real-life story, the film concerns the ups and downs of the owners of a small company and their reaction when a big corporation shows interest in buying it out. The idea appealed strongly to Most, who first developed the story.

“To me, the play is the thing,” Most said. “If I really like the material, then I get excited about it. It was realistic to do it in the indie world, where you have more autonomy and more freedom.”

Of course, I couldn’t let my chat with Most end without mentioning Ralph Malph and asking him about how frequently he’s identified for the role he created back in 1974.

“It’s strange--I can go days without being recognized when I’m out in public and then I’ll be recognized every day for weeks,” he told me. Of course, it’s in a nice manageable way these days and I admit that it’s still nice to get recognized. Sometimes, [Happy Days] seems like it was another life completely, and other times it feels like it was just a breath away. It’s weird how it can exist in both manners.”

Posted by Laurence Lerman on April 11, 2008 | Comments (0)