Fame came from being a regular person
Marshall known for blue-collar roles, sensitivity as director
Years ago, Penny Marshall’s brother, Garry — a major professional influence in her life — told a story of his sister’s visit to Abruzzo, in Italy, the town from which their immigrant ancestors had come to America.
“Penny went in a new Mercedes” he recalled. “So everybody said, ‘Hello, I’m related to you, whoever you are.’ I went in a Chevrolet, with an interpreter, and I found a cousin.”
Marshall, who died Monday, Dec. 17, at age 75, from complications of diabetes, was an appealing sitcom actress and a director of wit and sensitivity. Her films “Big” (1988) and “A League of Their Own” (1992) aren’t quite classics, but they’re still remembered fondly, all these years later, as is her role as Laverne in “Laverne & Shirley.”
“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight! Schlemiel! Schlimazel! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated,” Marshall and co-star Cindy Williams famously chanted as they skipped down the sidewalk in the opening sequence of the hit show.
A spin-off of “Happy Days,” the mid-season 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 once said in an interview for the Archive of American Television. (He 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.”
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 semiregular on “The Odd Couple” as Oscar Madison’s secretary and a regular on the shortlived “Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers.”
Marshall’s career received big boosts from brother Garry, who had been an executive producer on “The Odd Couple.” He also created “Happy Days” and co-created “Laverne & Shirley.”
“I’m sure people thought I got parts because my brother was being nice, and at first I probably thought the same thing,” Penny Marshall told the New York Times in 1988. “But my brother finally told me, ‘I’m not giving you a job ’cause I’m nice. I’m not that nice.’ ”
“Laverne & Shirley” had been off the air three years when Marshall made her feature film debut as a director of the 1986 Whoopi Goldberg comedy “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.”
She had directed four episodes of “Laverne & Shirley” and the pilot for the shortlived 1979 sitcom “Working Stiffs” when she received an unexpected offer to replace director Howard Zieff 10 days into the shooting of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” The film was not a success, but her next one was.
“Big,” a fantasy tale in which a boy wakes up in the body of an adult man played by Tom Hanks, earned Hanks an Oscar nomination and made Marshall the first woman in Hollywood to direct a movie that grossed more than $100 million.
“Awakenings,” a 1990 medical drama starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams, came next. It received three Oscar nominations, including for best picture and actor in a leading role (for De Niro).
Marshall went on to direct “A League of Their Own” (1992), “Renaissance Man” (1994), “The Preacher’s Wife” (1996) and “Riding in Cars With Boys” (2001).
A dedicated sports fan — she had Lakers season tickets and a large collection of sports memorabilia — Marshall was known among longtime friends for being intensely loyal.
She also has been described as a worrier, insecure and self-effacing.
Asked by a Los Angeles Times reporter in 1988 how deep her insecurities were, she joked: “I was born with a frown.”
“I always feel like somehow I’m going to be a failure,” she said in that interview. “I’m from the negativity and depression school. When I see bad reviews, I say, ‘Yeah, they’re probably right.’
“With directing, I know people on movie sets want leadership, but I don’t exude that captain-of-the-ship image. I’d get on the phone with (‘Big’ producer) Jim Brooks and apologize all the time and say, ‘I’m no good at this.’ ”
Countered Brooks at the time: “Penny has an iron will, which is a thing that almost everybody misses.”
Despite her later 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.