‘COMEDY GOLD’
Hollywood mourns icon
NEW YORK Penny Marshall, who starred in Laverne & Shirley before becoming one of the top-grossing female directors in Hollywood, has died. She was 75.
Marshall’s publicist, Michelle Bega, said Marshall died in her Los Angeles home on Monday due to complications from diabetes. “Our family is heartbroken,” the Marshall family said.
Marshall starred as Laverne Defazio, the Milwaukee brewery worker, alongside Cindy Williams in the hit ABC comedy Laverne & Shirley. The series, which aired from 1976 to 1983, was among the biggest hits of its era.
It also gave Marshall her start as a filmmaker. She directed several episodes of Laverne & Shirley before making her feature film directorial debut in Jumpin’ Jack Flash, the 1986 comedy starring Whoopi Goldberg.
Her next film made Marshall the first woman to direct a film that grossed more than $100 million. Her 1988 hit comedy Big, starring Tom Hanks, was about a 12-yearold boy who wakes up in the body of a 30-year-old man. The film earned Hanks an Oscar nomination.
Marshall re-teamed with Hanks for A League of Their Own, the 1992 comedy about the women’s professional baseball league that started during the Second World War. That, too, grossed $100 million, making $107.5 million in the North American market.
Reviewers found Marshall’s movies sentimental and technically undistinguished but noted her ability to wring disarming performances from her actors.
“What she had was an instinct for knowing what would please moviegoers, large crowds of people,” said film historian Jeanine Basinger, who specializes in the study of women in cinema.
“She had learned on TV what people enjoyed, what kind of characters, what kind of performances, and what kind of comedic material. She had an instinct for that, and that’s what her films represented.”
Carole Penny Marshall was born in the Bronx, N.Y., on Oct. 15, 1943 to Marjorie Irene (née Ward), a tap dance teacher who ran the Marjorie Marshall Dance School, and Anthony (Tony) Masciarelli, who changed his name to Marshall, a director of industrial films and later a producer.
She was the sister of actor-director-tv producer Garry Marshall and Ronny Hallin, a TV producer.
She began her career as a tap dancer at age three, and later taught tap at her mother’s dance school. Her birth name, Carole, was selected because her mother’s favourite actress was Carole Lombard. Her middle name was selected because her older sister, Ronny, wanting a horse in the Bronx, was saving her pennies. Her mother chose the middle name in an attempt to console her.
Although she never lost her Bronx accent, after moving to California Marshall became a dedicated Los Angeles Lakers fan and a courtside regular.
She was married to Michael Henry for two years in the 1960s and to actor-director Rob Reiner from 1971 to 1981. Their daughter Tracy Reiner is an actress; one of her first roles was a brief appearance in her mother’s Jumpin’ Jack Flash. Marshall is also survived by her sister, Ronny, and three grandchildren. The Associated Press, with files from The Washington Post