Actor/Director Penny Marshall Dies at 75
by EG
Penny Marshall first rose to fame as one half of a wacky duo on Laverne & Shirley, but she went on to direct some of the biggest hit movies of the late 20th century. She died on Monday at the age of 75. Read on for details.
Via Deadline.
Penny Marshall, who went from starring on the smash Happy Days spinoff Laverne & Shirley to helming such features including Big and A League Of Their Own, died Monday night of diabetes complications at her home in the Hollywood Hills. She was 75.
Marshall also directed films including Riding in Cars with Boys, The Preacher’s Wife, Jumpin’ Jack Flash and Renaissance Man, which she also produced along with League of Their Own. She was in postproduction on a feature about basketball Hall of Famer and Kim Jong-un pal Dennis Rodman.
Laverne & Shirley was an out-of-the-box smash after premiere in January 1976 on ABC. The characters appeared on briefly on Happy Days — which was created by her brother Garry Marshall — but made enough of an impression to lead their own series. Also starring Cindy Williams, the midcentury-set sitcom about a pair of lower-class workers at Shotz Brewery in Milwaukee would finish as the No. 3 series in all of primetime for the 1975-76 season, far outpacing Happy Days.
The next season, Happy Days was the No. 1 in primetime, followed by Laverne & Shirley at No. 2, but the latter would rule the ranking for the next two seasons, averaging a 31 rating.
In a 2013 interview for the Television Academy Foundation’s “The Interviews” series, Marshall said: “Fred Silverman went to my brother and said, ‘Got any spin-offs?’ He didn’t, but he said, ‘Well, there’s these two girl bottle-cappers in Milwaukee from Happy Days …’ ‘Good, let’s do it!’ That was around Thanksgiving. We went to work in December, and Laverne & Shirley was on the air in January, the No. 1 show on television.”
Get the rest of the story at Deadline.
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