Penny Marshall, who costarred as a Milwaukee brewery worker in the top-rated 1970s and '80s sitcom "Laverne & Shirley" before becoming a director of hit movies such as "Big" and "A League of Their Own," has died. She was 75.
Marshall died peacefully on Monday night in her Hollywood Hills home due to complications from diabetes, Michelle Bega, a spokeswoman for Marshall's family, told The Times on Tuesday.
"Our family is heartbroken over the passing of Penny Marshall," the Marshall family said in a statement.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight! Schlemiel! Schlimazel! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated," Marshall and costar Cindy Williams famously chanted as they skipped down the sidewalk in the opening sequence of "Laverne & Shirley."
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."
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."
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 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.'"
At the time "Laverne & Shirley" debuted, Marshall was married to Rob Reiner, who had gained fame on "All in the Family" playing Archie Bunker's liberal son-in-law. They later divorced.
Marshall's work on her hit series drew the admiration of her then-father-in-law, Carl Reiner.
"She has all the tools," he told TV Guide in 1976. "She can be the clown one moment, all nutsy crazy, and be very touching the next."
"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 short-lived 1979 sitcom "Working Stiffs" when she received an unexpected offer to replace director Howard Zieff 10 days into the shooting of "Jumpin' Jack Flash."
"It was real scary," Marshall told the New York Times in 1992. "I was hired on a Friday and went to work on a Monday. I didn't know you had to shoot from so many angles!"
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 female director in Hollywood history to direct a movie that grossed more than $100 USD million.
