Happy Days greaser Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli, one of the icons of cool on the small screen, was known for his motorcycle, white T-shirts, jeans and, most of all, his dark brown leather jacket. One of the jackets was donated to the Smithsonian in 1980. Only a few others are known to exist.

Now Henry Winkler, famed for portraying the Fonz on the ’50s-themed show, is selling one of the character’s jackets, which he’s had in his personal possession for decades, in an auction that will take place Dec. 8 at Bonhams Los Angeles. The jacket will be sold as part of a complete Fonzie outfit that includes an original pair of blue jeans, T-shirt and biker boots; the grouping has an estimate of $50,000 to $70,000. The items are part of the 26-lot Henry Winkler Collection, which is included in Bonhams’ TCM sale.

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“During the pandemic, I had the urge for spring cleaning except that it lasted for a year and a half,” explains Winkler, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, about why he’s selling the pieces now. “I found 27 boxes, and those boxes were filled with memorabilia from Happy Days to The Waterboy to Scream.” Those boxes contained everything from T-shirt and hat collections to “the book that I held on the sidelines in The Waterboy for making plays,” he says, plus “two masks from Scream that I cut onscreen and the prop people gave me them because they weren’t going to be used again.” Winkler, who appeared as Principal Himbry in the 1996 film, is selling one of the Scream Ghostface masks; it has an estimate of $20,000 to $30,000.

Part of the proceeds from the Bonhams sale will go to support the nonprofit This Is About Humanity, which was co-founded by the actor’s daughter Zoe Winkler. “She started this with two friends to take care of the children who were separated from their parents at the border,” says Winkler.

Winkler actually had two original Fonzie leather jackets at home, one of which is going up for sale. The second, he is keeping.

Winkler says he only knows of five others: the one in the Smithsonian; one that was “stolen from the costume department at Paramount — it was the very first one I ever wore,” he says; one that was destroyed after “we ripped out the lining in order to do the water-skiing when we jumped the shark [on Happy Days],” and two that were in the possession of series creator Garry Marshall.

Winkler tells THR he did not try on the Happy Days jacket that he’s selling before parting ways with it: “I would have wept. I think I would have pulled the zipper out of the lining.”

As part of the Bonhams sale, Winkler is also selling a pair of mechanic overalls that he wore in Happy Days, a jacket that he wore in Ron Howard’s Night Shift, and a pair of cowboy boots that he wore in the film The Lords of Flatbush and later as Fonzie. “I like to take something from one thing and use it in another, so I bought these boots on 23rd street in New York City for The Lords of Flatbush and then I brought them with me to wear as the Fonz,” he says.

Winkler — who stars this month in Wes Anderson’s new film The French Dispatch — says that what he still cherishes most about appearing on Happy Days is that “I loved the people. They are still my friends. Tomorrow, I am taking Marion Ross to lunch for her 93rd birthday. Ron [Howard] is like my brother, my younger brother; and [fellow castmembers] Anson [Williams] and Donny [Most], we talk all the time.”

As part of his “spring cleaning,” Winkler admits, “I realized I honestly am a hoarder. I save everything, thinking it is eventually going to be useful or important. I mean, I’m talking about jewelry boxes. Little boxes of different sizes, kind of stacked like a Russian doll, and I have saved them for 40 years thinking I’m going to give somebody a gift that is going to be this big, and I will have the box to put it in. Except I never found the gift to actually put in the box.” In going through his possessions, he realized he also has kept the following items: “A complete set of Happy Days trading cards, still in the cellophane; an alien’s rubber head from the show Sightings that I produced; a pop-top can of fresh air from Winnipeg, Canada; every political pin that I ever got in my adult life; and an unopened box of M&Ms from [once going on] Air Force One. I never got to ride on it; I got to stand in it. They were all in my home in a storage area.”

Winkler does note that his hoarding has not reached one extreme: “I don’t have newspaper in the hallway.”

Currently, the actor is filming the third season of HBO’s acclaimed comedy Barry. “I’m so sad that we’re coming close to the end of the season. Oh my God, it is amazing and this is not hyperbole. I think this is the most intense character, this moment in the third season, of my entire career, [which started] June 30, 1970. That was when I got $173 a week with the Yale Repertory Theatre and we did a season in East Hampton, Long Island, at the John Drew Guild Theater. I am so serious.” Will he share anything about the plot of season three? “No, because I want to be alive to do the fourth season,” he says of the secrecy around the filming. “You can’t even invite a friend to the set.”

He also notes that on Barry, he continues his tradition of wearing something for a role that has personal meaning. “I wear Garry Marshall’s tie as a tribute to my mentor. It was an actual tie of his that was given to me by the family. I miss him all the time.”

In addition to his acting, Winkler is also an author of children’s books with his longtime writing partner, Lin Oliver. Their Hank Zipzer series tells the tale of a dyslexic boy named Hank, while their latest book, Alien Superstar: Hollywood vs. the Galaxy is out this month. “It’s part of a trilogy about a 13-year-old alien who lands on the backlot of Universal and, I don’t know how this happened, but he got a job on a situational comedy as an alien because he already had the costume,” says Winkler.