On Jan. 27, 1976, tv welcomed its first female-fronted blue-collar comedy, Laverne & Shirley.
The characters had initially proven up on TV in 1975, showing for the primary time in an episode of Happy Days. Garry Marshall, the massively profitable tv producer, based mostly the duo on two ladies he’d met throughout his relationship days in Brooklyn.
“We took these two girls out and we walked into this diner at three o’clock in the morning. And some girl at one of the booths said something to the girl I was with,” Marshall recalled to the Archives of American Television. Tensions between the ladies quickly escalated. “My date stated, ‘Hold my coat,’ and took the girl out of the booth and punched her in the head. And they were killing, four girls, beating each other up.” Though Marshall never saw his date again, the character remained in his brain: “That’s what we should always do. We ought to get two ladies like that.”
As brutish ladies “from the other side of the tracks,” Laverne DeFazio and Shirley Feeney stood out on Happy Days, thanks largely to the comedic timing of actresses Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams, respectively. They’d be invited again and ultimately made 5 visitor appearances on the present. “Everybody immediately saw that as a spin-off,” Garry Marshall, Penny’s older brother, recalled. “I like it because, you see, on TV there’s no blue-collar girls.”
Watch Laverne and Shirley Debut on ‘Happy Days’
Penny Marshall was instantly on board for the spin-off; Williams, however, was hesitant. With the actress initially unwilling to signal on, producers auditioned different individuals for the position of Shirley.
“I read with everybody,” Marshall later recalled, admitting she was by no means impressed with the different Shirleys. “I just kept saying, ‘I think Cindy’s better than these people.’”
Liberty Williams (no relation to Cindy) could be forged within the position, filming a 10-minute take a look at scene alongside Marshall. “It was okay, but it wasn’t magic,” famous Michael Eisner, who was then the Assistant to the National Programming Director for ABC. That afternoon, Garry Marshall known as Cindy Williams and satisfied her to shoot the identical scene that Liberty Williams had recorded. “We shot it after Happy Days that night with Cindy Williams and it was unbelievable. It was like one of those things that you rarely see onstage or anywhere. The place went crazy.”
It was Eisner’s job to ship the recorded scenes to community executives who would have the ultimate say on which Williams obtained the a part of Shirley. Eisner was so satisfied that the half wanted to go to Cindy, he took issues into his personal fingers.
“I went and found the Liberty Williams film. I took it and I locked it in a closet on the 35h floor,” the TV veteran admitted. “And then, when we went to the screening, I told everybody, ‘We lost the Liberty Williams film.’ And we only showed the Cindy Williams – Penny Marshall [scene]. And it was fantastic.”
Watch a Promo for ‘Laverne & Shirley’
While producers have been bringing Cindy Williams into the fold, Penny Marshall recruited one other workers member. The actress had identified Paula Roth since childhood, or, as Roth explains to UCR, “[Penny] basically made my life a living hell. … She would throw my books on the floor at school, she would tell the people not to play with me after school. Needless to say, we didn’t get along.”
Still, that childhood animosity had was friendship throughout maturity. When Roth visited Marshall in Los Angeles in 1975, she was taken to the Happy Days set. There she witnessed groups of writers and administrators bringing tv to life. “How do I do what they do?” she inquired. Roth rapidly started studying the commerce, specializing in spec scripts. When Laverne & Shirley was given the inexperienced gentle, she’d come on board, becoming a member of a group of greater than a dozen writers engaged on the venture.
Despite being fronted by two main girls, there was a severe dearth of ladies behind the scenes on Laverne & Shirley. As Roth remembers, she was certainly one of solely two feminine writers on the present.
“There was one other writer on the show, also new, her name was Deborah Leschin. And she and I got no respect at the beginning,” the TV veteran admits. “As a matter of fact, everybody thought we were secretaries. And they would say things like, ‘Go get coffee. Do this, do that.’ Until finally we had T-shirts made that said ‘Girl Writer.’”
Onscreen, Marshall and Williams introduced Laverne and Shirley to life, constructing upon the characters they’d established on Happy Days. The duo’s rougher edges have been softened within the spin-off, or, as Marshall put it, “We were the slutty girls who then became virgins.”
Watch the First Episode of ‘Laverne & Shirley’
Physical comedy would grow to be one of many sitcom’s calling playing cards, one thing Marshall fortunately embraced. “I was very brave and fearless. And I was a tomboy,” the actress defined, including that she spent a lot of her childhood climbing everywhere in the dwelling. “They’d all report it to my mother: ‘She’s on the fire escape. She’s hanging on the roof.’ I was fearless.”
“Let’s be honest, it was a lot like Lucy and Ethel,” Roth admits, evaluating Laverne and Shirley to the basic I Love Lucy characters from the ’50s. “They would do anything. They would hang from chandeliers. Lots of physical comedy.”
Watch Laverne and Shirley Hang From Coat Hooks
While its stars earned a lot of the eye, Laverne & Shirley was actually an ensemble present. Laverne’s father, Frank DeFazio, was performed by Phil Foster, whereas Eddie Mekka performed Shirley’s occasional love curiosity, Carmine Ragusa (aka the Big Ragoo).
But the 2 hottest characters exterior the leads have been Lenny and Squiggy, Laverne and Shirley’s quirky neighbors, performed by Michael McKean and David Lander, respectively. Before the present grew to become a actuality, the pair created their characters as a part of their improv routine. So, McKean and Lander have been very protecting of Lenny and Squiggy, typically butting heads with the present’s writers on their concepts for the characters.
“It was difficult. The actors made it difficult for us,” Roth admits. “Because they were so invested in these characters that they had basically created, they made it a little bit difficult for us in the beginning to write for them, because they were writers and they were used to writing their own characters. And then all of a sudden they were just asked to be actors.”
An ongoing gag on the present was Lenny and Squiggy’s entrance, marked by Lander’s distinctive “Hello” greeting. “We decided it would be really important to expand on the hello joke,” notes Roth. “Not just having them come in the door, because that was getting kind of old, and we thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny to get them to come into the door wearing absolutely ridiculous costumes and outfits.’”
Watch a Montage of Lenny and Squiggy ‘Hello’ Gags
Another of Laverne & Shirley’s hallmarks could be its opening title sequence, thanks once more to an expertise from the Marshalls’ childhood.
“Garry wanted something special for the opening credits,” Roth remembers. “What they’re doing – running down the street singing ‘Schlemiel! Schlimazel! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated’ – was what we used to do as kids. We would run down the street, arms holding each other, and sing ‘One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Schlemiel! Schlimazel! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated.’ And he said to Penny, ‘I think that will work.’”
Watch the ‘Laverne & Shirley’ Opening Credits
Laverne & Shirley was successful from day one, debuting with chart-topping rankings and incomes a passionate fan base. “Because of the fact that there was no blue-collar girls, it debuted number one in the ratings,” Garry Marshall defined. “Because they were dying for somebody who didn’t look like Mary Tyler Moore or all the pretty girls on TV. They wanted somebody who looked like a regular person. And these two – my sister looks like a regular person, talks like a regular person. And Cindy Williams was brilliant.”
The sequence ran for eight seasons, with a complete of 178 episodes, at one level changing into the most-watched tv present in America. Thanks largely to its persevering with legacy and lasting affect, rumors of a reboot have circulated over time. Before his dying in 2016, Garry Marshall confessed it was “very possible that Laverne & Shirley or Happy Days will be back.”
For her half, Roth believes a reboot could be a mistake.
“I would hate for it to be done again,” the author admits. “There will never be another Penny. There will never be another David Lander. There will never be another show like that. The magic was the magic.”
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