Penny Marshall, left, and Cindy
Williams as the title characters in the ABC sitcom “Laverne & Shirley.” Ms.
Marshall’s success on the show paved the way for her directing career.
·
Dec. 18, 2018
Penny Marshall, the nasal-voiced
co-star of the slapstick sitcom “Laverne & Shirley” and later the
chronically self-deprecating director of hit films like “Big” and “A League of
Their Own,” died on Monday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 75.
Her publicist, Michelle Bega, said the
cause was complications of diabetes. Ms. Marshall had in recent years been
treated for lung cancer, discovered in 2009, and a brain tumor. She announced
in 2013 that the cancer was in remission.
Ms. Marshall became the first woman to
direct a feature film that grossed more than $100 million when she made “Big”
(1988). That movie, a comedy about a 12-year-old boy who magically turns into
an adult (Tom Hanks) and then has to navigate the grown-up world, was as
popular with critics as it was with audiences.
The
Washington Post said it had
“the zip and exuberance of a classic romantic comedy.” The Los Angeles Times
described it as “a refreshingly grown-up comedy” directed “with verve and
impeccable judgment.” Mr. Hanks received his first Oscar nomination for his
performance.
Four years later she repeated her
box-office success with “A League of Their Own,” a sentimentally spunky comedy
about a wartime women’s baseball league with an ensemble cast that included
Madonna, Geena Davis, Rosie O’Donnell and Mr. Hanks.
In between, she directed “Awakenings”
(1990), a medical drama starring Robert De Niro as a patient coming out of an
encephalitic trance and Robin Williams as the neurologist who helps him.
“Awakenings,” based on a book by Oliver Sacks, was only moderately successful financially,
but Mr. De Niro received an Academy Award nomination.
A
writer for Cosmopolitan magazine once commented that Ms. Marshall “got into
directing the ‘easy’ way — by becoming a television superstar first.” That was
a reference to her seven seasons (1976-83) as Laverne DeFazio, the brasher (yet
possibly more vulnerable) of two young roommates, brewery assembly-line
workers, on the hit ABC comedy series “Laverne & Shirley,” set in 1950s and
’60s Milwaukee.
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In Hollywood Ms. Marshall had a
reputation for instinctive directing, which could mean endless retakes. But she
was also known for treating filmmaking as a team effort rather than a
dictatorship.
That
may or may not have been a function of her self-effacing personality, which
colleagues and interviewers often commented on. But in 1992 Ms. Marshall
confessed to The New York Times Magazine that she wasn’t completely guileless.
“I
have my own way of functioning,” she said. “My personality is, I whine. It’s
how I feel
inside. I guess it’s how I use being female,
too. I touch a lot to get my way and say, ‘Pleeease, do it over here.’
So it can be an advantage — the anti-director.”
That
attitude was also an essential aspect of her humor. When Vanity Fair asked her to identify
her greatest regret, she said, “That when I was a size 0, there was no size 0.”
Ms. Marshall in 2011. She became the first woman to direct a feature film that grossed more than $100 million when she made “Big” in 1988.CreditFrederic J. Brown/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Carole Penny Marshall was born on Oct.
15, 1943, in the Bronx and grew up there, at the northern end of the Grand
Concourse. Her father, Anthony, was an industrial filmmaker, and her mother,
Marjorie (Ward) Marshall, taught dance. The family name had been changed from
Masciarelli.
After
she graduated from Walton High School, in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx,
Ms. Marshall attended the University of New Mexico. There she met and married
Michael Henry, a college football player. They had a daughter, but the marriage
lasted only two years, and Ms. Marshall headed for California, where her older
brother, Garry, had become a successful comedy writer.
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She made her film debut in “The Savage
Seven,” a 1968 biker-gang drama, and had a small part the same year in “How
Sweet It Is!,” a romantic comedy starring Debbie Reynolds and James Garner.
Ms. Marshall continued acting, mostly
playing guest roles on television series, until she got her big break in 1971,
when she was cast in the recurring part of Jack Klugman’s gloomy secretary,
Myrna Turner, on the ABC sitcom “The Odd Couple.” Her brother, a producer of
the show, got her the job, but nepotism had nothing to do with it when viewers
fell in love with her poker-faced humor and Bronx-accented whine.
That
same year she married Rob Reiner, who was then a star of the hit series “All in
the Family.” He adopted her daughter, but they divorced in 1979, when “Laverne
& Shirley” and Ms. Marshall were at the height of their television
popularity.
That series grew out of a 1975 episode
of “Happy Days,” in which Laverne (Ms. Marshall) and Shirley Feeney (Cindy Williams),
two fast blue-collar girls, turned up at the local hangout as blind dates for
Richie Cunningham and Fonzie, the two lead characters.
When “Laverne & Shirley” ended in
1983, after considerable on-set conflict between the co-stars and a final
season without Ms. Williams, it was the first time in 12 years that Ms.
Marshall had not had at least a relatively steady job on a television series.
She
began making a handful of films and television appearances. Then Whoopi
Goldberg, a friend, asked her to take over for a director she wasn’t getting
along with on “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” (1986), a comic spy caper. (Ms. Marshall had
directed a few episodes of “Laverne & Shirley.”) The movie was far from an
unqualified success, but it led to “Big.”
Robert Loggia, left, and Tom Hanks starred in the 1988 film
“Big,” directed by Ms. Marshall. A story of a 12-year-old boy who magically
turns into an adult, it was as popular with critics as it was with audiences.CreditBrian Hamill/20th Century Fox
Ms. Marshall’s two films after “A
League of Their Own” were not as well received. “Renaissance Man” (1994),
starring Danny DeVito as an adman turned teacher of Army recruits, was savaged
by critics and earned only about $24 million, considerably less than it cost to
make, in the United States (in contrast, “Big” earned almost $115 million).
“The Preacher’s Wife” (1996), a remake of the heartwarming 1947 fantasy romance
“The Bishop’s Wife,” starred Denzel Washington and Whitney Houston. Critics
found it likable but weak, and it brought in just under $50 million
domestically.
Ms. Marshall did not direct again until
2001. “Riding in Cars With Boys,” a saga of teenage motherhood starring Drew
Barrymore, earned mostly positive reviews but was a box-office disappointment.
It was the last film Ms. Marshall directed. Her farewell to television
direction was a 2011 episode of the multiple-personalities series “United
States of Tara.”
She devoted some time to producing,
notably with the 2005 movie inspired by the classic sitcom “Bewitched,” and
took on the occasional acting job, including a 2012 guest spot on the series
“Portlandia” and voice-over narration in the film “Mother’s Day” (2016),
directed by Garry Marshall, who died in
2016.
In 2012 she published a best-selling
memoir, “My Mother Was Nuts,” which began in her characteristically
self-effacing way:
“I’m
not someone who’s had to deal with much personal drama outside of the usual:
growing up with parents who hated each other, two marriages and divorces, the
ups and downs of various relationships, raising a daughter and watching friends
crack up and overdose. There was the cancer thing, too. As you can see, though,
there’s nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that most people don’t go through,
nothing that says, ‘Penny, you were lucky to get through that one.’ ”
Her
final screen appearance was on the new version of “The Odd Couple,” in a
November 2016 episode that was a tribute to her brother, and featured cameos by
stars from his many hit series.
Ms. Marshall, who lived in the
Hollywood Hills section of Los Angeles, is survived by her older sister, Ronny;
a daughter, the actress Tracy Reiner; and three grandchildren.
Critics sometimes accused Ms. Marshall
of being overly sentimental, but she never apologized for that side of her
work.
“I like something that tells a story or
that tells me something I didn’t know,” she told The San Diego Union-Tribune in
1992 when asked about her taste in films. “It should have humor in it — or it
should have heart.”
“And
if it doesn’t,” she added, with what the reporter described as a sly grin,
“I’ll make it have heart.”
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