Penny Marshall, the beloved star of Laverne & Shirley who went on to make Hollywood history as the director of beloved films Big and A League of Their Own, died peacefully at her home on Monday of complications from diabetes. She was 75 years old.
“Our family is heartbroken over the passing of Penny Marshall,” Marshall’s family wrote in a statement. “Penny was a tomboy who loved sports, doing puzzles of any kind, drinking milk and Pepsi together and being with her family.”
Marshall’s first career break came when she was cast in The Odd Couple in 1971, the sitcom that her brother Garry was executive producing at the time.
A spinoff of “Happy Days,” “Laverne & Shirley” starred Marshall as the feisty Laverne De Fazio and Williams as the idealistic Shirley Feeney, two 1950s working-class roommates who worked on the assembly line at the Shotz Brewery in Milwaukee.
The midseason replacement was launched on ABC in January 1976 and soared to the top of the ratings. Known for its broad physical comedy, it was the No. 1-rated show for the 1977 and ’78 seasons and aired until 1983.
“There were no blue-collar girls on television” when “Laverne & Shirley” debuted, executive producer Garry Marshall, Penny’s brother, once said in an interview for the Archive of American Television. (Garry Marshall died in 2016.)
Viewers, he said, “were dying for somebody that didn’t look like Mary Tyler Moore or all the pretty girls on TV. They wanted somebody who looked like a regular person. And my sister looks like a regular person — talks like a regular person — and Cindy Williams was brilliant as Shirley.”
Penny Marshall, left, with “Laverne & Shirley” costar Cindy Williams in 1976. (Kathleen Ballard)
With her deadpan demeanor and flat-toned Bronx accent that a TV Guide writer once described as sounding like “a groan filtered through a whine,” Marshall had been making minor inroads in Hollywood for several years before the Laverne and Shirley characters debuted as Richie and Fonzie’s double dates on an episode of “Happy Days” in 1975.
That included being a semi-regular on “The Odd Couple” as Oscar Madison’s secretary and a regular on the short-lived “Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers.”
After a successful television acting career, Marshall pivoted into directing. With the iconic Tom Hanks comedy Big, Marshall became the first woman to direct a film that grossed more than $100 million.
“With directing, I know people on movie sets want leadership, but I don’t exude that captain-of-the-ship image.” Marshall once said. “I’d get on the phone with [Bigproducer] Jim Brooks and apologize all the time and say, ‘I’m no good at this.’”
In a 2013 interview with Vanity Fair, Marshall joked that her films would never be made today. “Because they’re not horror, they’re not vampires, they’re not car crashes, and they’re not superheroes. I like a nice story,” she said.
Despite her later career success as a director, her days on “Laverne & Shirley” had an enduring impact.
“I must say that it seems that people remember or have watched it from reruns on TV Land or Nickelodeon,” she told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2007. “I go to the basketball game, and they all still yell, ‘Laverne!’”
Marshall is survived by her sister Ronny, daughter Tracy Reiner and three grandchildren, Spencer, Bella and Viva. Plans for a memorial service have yet to be made.
(Excerpts) Read More at: VanityFair.com and LATimes.com