NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Garry Marshall, the noted producer and director, was talking about the best-known character in one of his best-known television shows.

“I always wanted a tall Italian boy,” he said in an oral history recorded in 2000 for the Television Academy. Instead it was a 5-foot-6-inch Jew named Henry Winkler who ended up playing the Fonz on “Happy Days,” a portrayal so distinctive that what had been envisioned as a supporting role became one of the most recognizable characters in television history.

The man responsible for that casting leap of faith was one of Marshall’s fellow executive producers on the series, Thomas Miller.

“Tom Miller was the whole key to casting Henry Winkler,” Marshall said in the oral history. Winkler, who was an unknown when he auditioned for the role in 1973, concurred.

“Tom took me to makeup, plucked my unibrow, told me what to do,” he said in a telephone interview. And it was Miller who called him that October — on his birthday, no less — and told him he had won the role. He had only just arrived in Los Angeles from the East Coast.

“Two weeks into my stay I hit the jackpot,” Winkler said. “And a lot of it was thanks to Tom, who made sure that I came across with the right image, and Garry, who changed his mind about the character.”

Miller, who produced dozens of other TV shows, including “Perfect Strangers” and “Full House,” died April 5 in Salisbury, Connecticut. He was 79.

The cause was heart disease, Warner Bros. Television, which had worked with the production company run by Miller and Robert Boyett, said in a statement.

Miller was not generally known for the kinds of groundbreaking shows that draw critical acclaim and awards. What he and his production partners did draw were viewers.

“Our award is that 30 million people are watching,” Miller told the Los Angeles Times in 1990. “To me, the goal is to entertain.”

“Happy Days,” which premiered in 1974, ran for a decade with 255 episodes. “Perfect Strangers” racked up 151 episodes from 1986 to 1993, overlapping for much of that time with “Full House” (192 episodes, 1987-95). Other long-running shows that had Miller as an executive producer included the “Happy Days” spinoff “Laverne & Shirley” (1976-83), “Valerie” (later renamed “The Hogan Family,” 1986-91), “Step by Step” (1991-98) and “Family Matters” (1989-98).

Some producers are less hands-on once a TV series is launched, but Winkler said Miller was an active presence on “Happy Days.”

“He was there at every shoot,” Winkler said. “He was part of the family, and a creative part. He was there in the editing room. He knew where to put the violins for the emotional moments.”

“He understood the audience,” Winkler added, “and then, if you had a problem, he understood you.”

Thomas Lee Miller was born Aug. 31, 1940, in Milwaukee to Edward and Shirley Miller. He earned a bachelor’s degree in drama and speech in 1962 at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, then set out for Los Angeles, where he worked for director Billy Wilder on “Irma la Douce” (1963), “The Fortune Cookie” (1966) and other films.

After four years with Wilder he developed TV shows at 20th Century Fox, then became a vice president of development at Paramount Studios before embarking on his producing career, founding a production company with Edward Milkis. Miller-Milkis Productions joined with Marshall, who died in 2016, to produce “Happy Days” (which was set in Miller’s hometown) and “Laverne & Shirley.”

Boyett eventually joined the group, and in the mid-1980s, after Milkis’ departure, the company became Miller-Boyett Productions. Miller-Boyett shows, including “Full House” and “Family Matters,” were a key part of ABC’s Friday night sitcom lineup, known as TGIF. Miller and Boyett’s most recent TV producing credits were on “Fuller House,” a Netflix sequel to “Full House.”

In 2000 Miller and Boyett, his life partner as well as his business partner, relocated to New York, where they were among the producers of a number of Broadway shows, including “Tootsie” last year.

Miller, who lived in Salisbury, moved to Connecticut with Boyett in 2007. Boyett survives him along with a brother, Robert, and a sister, Kitty Glass.

Miller aimed for shows that didn’t try to deliver a Message with a capital M but did have heart.

“It’s never about lecturing, it’s about entertaining,” he told The New York Times in 1990, “but we always like to have somebody in our shows make some human connections, so the people who watch it say, ‘Yes, I understand that and I like it.’”

© 2020 The New York Times Company