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Penny Marshall has died. A bit of a shock. We hadn't heard much from her lately, but it seemed like she'd always be around.
She later did a guest shot on brother Garry's big hit Happy Days as Laverne DeFazio. She and Cindy Williams as Shirley Feeney played two favorites of Fonzie whom he calls to help Richie Cunningham during a dry spell. In their original appearance, they're actually floozies, but when they were given their own show, Laverne & Shirley, they were good girls. (Well, better girls, anyway.)
L&S was a huge hit out of the box, and by its third season was the #1 show on TV. Some saw the show, with its physical comedy (and being set in the 50s), as a return to the days of I Love Lucy. I was never a fan, but L&S certainly made Penny Marshall rich and famous. (I love her appearance as herself during this time on an episode of Taxi. Low-class Louis De Palma is hoping to get into a high-class condo. He sees Marshall being interviewed for a spot and then turned down because she's a sitcom actress. He goes for his interview and asks Was that Penny Marshall from TV I just saw leaving? They say yes. He says She won't be living here, will she?)
She directed a handful of Laverne & Shirley episode and then got a chance to do Jumping Jack Flash in 1986. It's a Whoopi Goldberg comedy that's no classic, but showed that Marshall could handle a feature. Her next film was gigantic--Big. It helped turned Tom Hanks into a major star and made Marshall a sought-after director. I think it's her best film. There were actually several body-switching films out at the time, and Big, the last released, was the only hit among them. That's because Marshall (and the screenwriters) took a fantastic premise and played it straight, grounding the comedy in reality. In most body-switching film, the switch happens and the characters act like idiots. In Big, when a 13-year-old wakes up as a 30-year-old, its traumatic, but he tries his best, step by step, to deal with the situation.
She followed that with another big comedy hit, A League Of Their Own, starring Tom Hanks and Geena Davis, about the women's baseball league in the 1940s. Aside from an unfortunate framing device, I think the film moves pretty well.
Marshall was on a streak, but it was here her career faltered. Her next film was Renaissance Man (shot in Detroit, near where I grew up), starring Danny DeVito as a teacher on an army base. It didn't do particularly well. That was followed by The Preacher's Wife, an African-American update of The Bishop's Wife*, starring Denzel Washington and Whitney Houston, which was a mild hit at best. Then she did the drama Riding In Cars With Boys, starring Drew Barrymore, which was not well-received. She continued to work as an actor and director, but she never directed another feature.
Overall, a pretty impressive career. She proved herself as both an actor and director, and her best work still holds up.
*A few years earlier I'd actually pitched the same idea. No one was interested, but I think my version solved the problem of the original, while Marshall's version kept the problem--the leading man should be the preacher, not the angel.
posted by LAGuy @ 6:30 AM
2 Comments:
There are some things you enjoy as a kid which hold up well when you're an adult. Others don't.
I loved Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley back when I was a kid, but I find them almost unwatchable now. Nonetheless, when I replay them in my memory (as opposed to actually watching them) I remember them as hilarious.
There was one gag that appeared in every L&S episode. Someone would say a set-up line, like "I can't think of anything more repulsive than that." -- and suddenly the door would open, and Lenny and Squiggy would appear. "Hello!"
Is there a term for this sort of joke, based on apparently coincidental timing?
I remember at least two comedy writers in recent years -- one was probably Joss Whedon, I don't recall the other -- who cited this device as something to be avoided entirely when writing for TV. Maybe it's too Seventies? Did it die around the time camp died?
Even back then I didn't like L&S, though I did like Happy Days. I haven't rewatched these shows, but there have been others I liked in childhood that I've seen since and can't believe how bad they are.
The Lenny and Squiggy joke (I was about to write L&S and noticed for the first time they have the same initials and Laverne and Shirley) is hardly a seventies thing. It's an old formula that goes back at least to the beginning of sitcoms, and probably much earlier. For instance, it was a running gag on Dobie Gillis. Someone would talk about something repulsive and Bob Denver as unkempt beatnik Maynard G. Krebs would enter saying "You rang?"
I assume Whedon recognized it as being a tired and obvious wheeze. Perhaps someone could come up with a twist that would make it work, but as a running gag forget it.
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