Penny Marshall, the comedienne, and actress who gained fame as one-half of the iconic Laverne & Shirley and who later became an acclaimed director who brought
Penny Marshall, the comedienne, and actress who gained fame as one-half of the iconic Laverne & Shirley and who later became an acclaimed director who brought classic films such as Big and A League Of Their Own to the silver screen, has died at the age of 75:
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 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.
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.
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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.
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.
