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The ducktailed doppelgänger of Arthur Fonzarelli has dogged Henry Winkler for five years now. He's tried disguise—letting his hair down and gluing on a mustache as a wacko Vietnam vet in Heroes. Audiences bought the act (the film with Sally Field has grossed more than $20 million), but critics advised Winkler to stick to the malt shop. Instead, daringly, he's chosen a new and even more bizarre incarnation. As the egomaniacal antihero of The One and Only, Henry dons pink tights and a marcelled platinum wig to play a wrestler like Gorgeous George—a part Dustin Hoffman is said to have turned down because he thought he was too old. Or was it because the role was too odd?

"I knew I had to play this guy," says Winkler, "but if I played him as a total asshole, it would have been curtains." To Winkler's credit, he gloriously brings off the risky, if sometimes sophomoric, role—winning adjectives like "extravagant" and "intelligent" from reviewers. So, having submerged the Fonz again to his satisfaction, Winkler re-upped for a sixth and possibly last season of greasy kid stuff on ABC's Happy Days. "It's a fulfilled dream," Henry exults of his schizoid careers. "I haven't busted, and that makes me feel terrific."

But if Henry Winkler has found happiness at 32, the box office is only part of the reason. Just as important—maybe more so—is the woman who shares his Hollywood Hills refuge. Not so long ago Winkler mooned about finding "someone who is intellectual enough to have her own life, and open enough to be in love with me." He restlessly dated women like Lisa Mordente, Chita Rivera's daughter, and actress Cindy Williams. Now, for a year, despite the diverting attention of female fans ("Sex is one of the fringe benefits when you're featured in a series"), Henry has been living with publicist Stacey Weitzman, 30. "Stacey is a very important part of my life," Winkler says, "and I'm having a great life."

They met in Jerry Magnin's clothing shop in Beverly Hills. Stacey, a USC graduate who started her own fashion public relations firm (with clients like Van Cleef & Arpels and Jag), was checking an account when Winkler sauntered in to buy a jacket. "Hey, there's Fonzie," someone whispered, and they were introduced. When Henry came back a week later to pick up his jacket, Stacey was in the store again, "so I asked her to go out for a 7-Up," he recalls. Stacey had seen Happy Days only once and "didn't even know what he was supposed to be like. But I was smart enough to know that someone isn't what he's like on TV." She had boned up by their next date and five months later moved in with her two Yorkies, Amanda and Percy. (She has a 6-year-old son, Jed, the result of a five-year marriage that ended in divorce in 1975.)

By all accounts, the redheaded Stacey is letting some air into Winkler's self-conscious world. "I'm growing up," Henry asserts. "I'm not as naive as I was about people. I'm not as scared. And I have rugs now." His blue-patterned Orientals, to be sure, are his most substantial furnishings. A bean-bag chair contributed by Happy Days pal Ron Howard shares one room with a 19th-century English doctor's desk. A carpenter friend made their step-up, inlaid-wood bed. On one wall is tacked a "FOR GOD, FOR COUNTRY AND FOR YALE" banner left over from Winkler's college years. The dresser tops are crowded with Stacey's collection of rabbit figurines. Among Henry's few concessions to luxury are a redwood hot tub and a new BMW that's replaced his old Audi. A maid, Martha, comes in daily to help cook and clean.

Henry and Stacey dip into the Hollywood party scene but also enjoy watching TV with a curious collection of friends, including a painter and a psychiatrist, called "The Meatloafers." Otherwise, Henry fiddles with such introspective hobbies as his rock garden.

Together, the two of them are warmly affectionate. "Even when he's under pressure," Stacey says, "he is pleasant. He's very giving of himself." When she was recently hospitalized with a back problem, Henry was a cheerful bedsider. "You can't hold her down," he says. "Stacey is a very active, very smart lady. She has a will of iron." As a sure sign of her importance to him (though they lived together so discreetly that their romance wasn't public knowledge until three months ago), Winkler took Stacey home to New York for Hanukkah last December. They spent it with his lumber-importer father, Harry, mother Use and his married sister Beatrice. (Winkler faithfully celebrates the Jewish High Holy Days and once raised $3,000 in an afternoon for his own New York Congregation Habonim.) "Everyone who meets Stacey likes her," he says. A home-movie freak, he shot the whole family on Super 8 "with lots of kissing and love."

If such domesticity implies a marriage in the making, the suggestion makes Winkler nervous. Last December he confided to Barbara Walters—and an ABC audience of some 40 million—that "I don't want to be married at this moment. That is a larger commitment than 'Let's play house.' When I'm ready, I'll pop the question." A cautious person not given to rash moves in his life or finances, Winkler agonizes over even modest decisions. "I think a lot about what I'm going to do," he says. "I struggle with it."

Stacey is not ecstatic about public speculation on their future, but maintains that Winkler "needs space, somewhere to cool off, to be alone." She adds, "The best thing about Henry is that he's honest. I can ask him any question—but I'd better be prepared to hear the truth." "Even when it's painful," Henry says, "we're honest."

If that sounds deadly solemn, so is Winkler, who fights stuffiness the way some people battle fat. "He has a sense of humor," Stacey insists. "I think he's trying not to be so serious all the time." Yet Henry's determination "not to worry so much about every piddly-diddly little thing" may be a losing campaign. His admiring One and Only director, Carl Reiner, reports that Winkler stiffly called him "Mr. Reiner" for the first few days and shook hands with everyone on the set each morning. Winkler has also conscientiously kept his teetotaling image among the young by refusing to be photographed drinking in either of his movie roles. (He does, however, smoke Vantage cigarettes in the privacy of his home.) "He worries himself more than he has to," says Reiner. "You have to keep reaffirming to him that he's doing well."

Winkler's new TV deal with Paramount is designed to serve all his ambitions. While around 10,000 fan letters continue to pour in to the Fonz every week, Winkler has organized his own movie production company. One of his first projects will be written and directed by Ron Howard. Winkler further claims to be "looking like a bandit" for a new movie himself. "I am no longer a newcomer," he says—and yet, incredibly, he is still star-struck. Stacey reports that after one encounter he ingenuously blurted, "Imagine, Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty and I were all standing there talking together!"

If that's the kid in Winkler emerging, the fact is that much of his empathy is reserved for youngsters. His Henry Winkler Meets William Shakespeare special on CBS was one of the season's more successful pro bono publico efforts. Last Thanksgiving weekend he narrated Peter and the Wolf to an audience of 10,000 in the Hollywood Bowl. And while making The One and Only, director Reiner enjoyed watching "the relationship he has with Stacey and her little boy. He's gotten to be a major celebrity, but he's still a family man."

"We try to live as private a life as we can," explains Henry. Stacey, too, feels "devastated" when fans or reporters pry. "You have to have some kind of a core," she believes, "and if you have it, you can survive almost anything." He concurs. "The stars who last have a strong sense of who they are."

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