Tom Hanks Reveals Why He Was Hired for ‘Splash': ‘No One Wanted to Work for Disney’ (Video)
thewrap.comDisney is such an all-consuming, slickly mechanized corporate beast that it is easy to forget that, just a few decades ago, it was a family business that had fallen into disrepair and was painfully uncool to the rest of Hollywood.
Thankfully, Tom Hanks is here to remind us.Hanks was a guest on Sirius XM’s “The Jess Cagle Show,” and when Cagle brought up the fact Hanks once appeared on “Happy Days,” it led to a fascinating story about how that brief appearance (where Hanks played a guy who kicks Fonzie through a plate-glass window) would lead to the biggest break of his nascent career – his role in “Splash.” Watch above.As it turns out, Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel were the head writers on “Happy Days” when Hanks filmed his episode.
Ron Howard had already left “Happy Days” and was working on what would be the 1984 hit “Splash” with the film’s writers. “It was at Disney.
No one wanted to work for Disney and no one would take the job,” Hanks said, appearing on the show to promote his new movie “A Man Called Otto.” And it’s true.
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