Penny Marshall would have turned 83 on October 15. Born in New York City on October 15, 1943, she gave America one of its most beloved sitcom characters and then moved behind the camera to make movie history. She died on December 17, 2018, at 75, from complications of diabetes, according to the Associated Press and Variety.
This birthday comes in a milestone year. Laverne & Shirley premiered on January 27, 1976, and turned 50 this year. Forbes and Cord Cutters News both marked the anniversary with looks back at the show.
For decades, fans wondered whether Laverne and Shirley were really friends once the cameras stopped. The two women split badly in 1982. Years later, Marshall sat down with Cindy Williams for a private talk at her own house, and she described it in her own book.
Why Did Laverne And Shirley Stop Speaking?
As Laverne DeFazio, Marshall paired a monogrammed sweater with perfect comic timing. Her partner on screen was Cindy Williams as Shirley Feeney. The two Milwaukee brewery workers became a fixture of 1970s television. The show began as a spinoff of Happy Days, the hit created by Marshall’s brother Garry, as NBC News noted in her obituary.
The trouble came in the show’s eighth season. Williams was pregnant, and she left in 1982 after a dispute with producers over her filming schedule. That year she sued Paramount TV and Garry Marshall for $20 million. She claimed they went back on a deal to work around her pregnancy, according to The Boston Globe and The Hollywood Reporter. The case settled out of court. “The lawsuit is settled, and everything is copacetic,” Williams told the Los Angeles Times in 1985.
Laverne & Shirley ended in 1983, and the two stars drifted apart.
Marshall later put much of the blame on Williams’ husband at the time, singer Bill Hudson. “We were not estranged during the show but then she got married,” she told Fox News in 2012. “He wanted to be a producer,” she said. Entertainment Tonight reported that same year that Marshall found Hudson too controlling. With the friendship on ice, Marshall turned to a new job.
What Did Penny Build While They Were Apart?
Directed by Penny Marshall
Shown from left: Tom Hanks, Geena Davis
Marshall made her feature directing debut with Jumpin’ Jack Flash in 1986. Two years later came Big with Tom Hanks. According to Variety, it was reportedly the first film directed by a woman to earn more than $100 million at the U.S. box office. NBC News reported the same milestone.
Her next film went to the Oscars. Awakenings (1990) starred Robin Williams and Robert De Niro. It earned three Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, according to the AFI Catalog and the Academy.
She did it again in 1992 with A League of Their Own. It became the second of her films to pass $100 million, NBC News reported. Its line “There’s no crying in baseball!” is still quoted on ballfields today. The film also gave a long-overdue spotlight to the women of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.
By the 2010s, the two old roommates were ready to share a set again. A children’s network gave them the chance.
Was The Famous Feud Real?
On November 9, 2013, Marshall and Williams guest-starred together on Nickelodeon’s Sam & Cat. In the episode “#SalmonCat,” they played the feuding creators of a made-up 1970s children’s show. The title characters had to track them down and end their quarrel. Creator Dan Schneider talked them into it. “He loved our show,” Williams said. “He wanted to do a little tribute.”
Asked about their real feud, Marshall told the Associated Press, “Any show you work on for eight years, you’re gonna argue at some point.” Then she added, “Way overblown.” Williams agreed it was “a bit overblown.” She said they simply had “very different personalities.”
That August, the pair sat side by side for a joint interview with the Television Academy Foundation. Over about 90 minutes, they talked through the show’s history and their friendship over the years. The Academy’s archive lists the Sam & Cat reunion among its topics. Williams died on January 25, 2023, at 75, as NPR and NBC News reported. Today the cast has only one surviving star left.
Their easy banter on camera was not new, though. The real repair had happened years earlier, away from any studio.
How Did Penny And Cindy Finally Make Peace?
Marshall told the story in her 2012 memoir, My Mother Was Nuts. Co-star David Lander, who played Squiggy, told her that Williams had separated from Hudson. “I was eager to reconnect,” Marshall wrote, as quoted by MeTV. Until then, she had seen Williams only once or twice at TV Land specials, always in a crowd.
“We had shared too much for me to consider her anything but a special person in my life,” Marshall wrote. Once Williams finished a stage play, Marshall invited her over. “We got together at my house and had the conversation I wished I’d been able to have fifteen years earlier,” she wrote. They talked through how they had parted on the show and mended the friendship.
It held. “We get along great,” Marshall told Entertainment Tonight when the book came out. “I talked to her yesterday.” The Boston Globe also reported that the two reconciled before Marshall’s death.
When Marshall died in December 2018, Williams was among the first to speak. “What an extraordinary loss. My good friend, Penny Marshall is gone, one in a million,” she told TODAY. Her statement, also carried by ET, ended on the years they shared: “Utterly unique, a truly great talent. And, oh what fun we had! Can’t describe how I’ll miss her.”
