Penny Marshall

For the British journalist, see Penny Marshall (journalist).

Penny Marshall
Marshall with Ed Begley, Jr. at the 1988 Emmy Awards
Born	Carole Penelope Marshall (1942-10-15) October 15, 1942 The Bronx, New York City, New York, U.S.
Alma mater	University of New Mexico
Occupation(s)	Actress, director, producer
Years active	1968–present
Spouse(s)	Michael Henry (1961-1963) Rob Reiner (1971-1981)
Relatives	Garry Marshall (brother)

Penny Marshall (born Carole Penelope Marshall; October 15, 1943) is an American actress, producer, and director.

After playing several small roles for television, she was cast as Laverne DeFazio in the sitcom Laverne and Shirley. A ratings success, the show ran from 1976 until 1983, during which Marshall was nominated for a Golden Globe award for her performance three times.

She progressed to directing films such as Big (1988), the first film directed by a woman to gross in excess of $100 million at the U.S. box office, Awakenings (1990), which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, and A League of Their Own (1992). In more recent years, she has produced Cinderella Man (2005) and Bewitched (2005), as well as episodes of According to Jim (2009). She most recently directed two episodes of the Showtime original series United States of Tara.

Early life

Marshall was born in The Bronx, New York City, the daughter of Marjorie Irene (née Ward), a tap dance teacher who ran a dance school, and Anthony Wallace Marshall, a director of industrial films and later a producer. She is the sister of actor/director/TV producer Garry Marshall and Ronny Hallin, a TV producer. Her father was of Italian descent, his family having come from Abruzzo, and her mother was of English and Scottish descent; her father changed his last name from Masciarelli to Marshall before Penny was born. In the 1950s, she grew up in an apartment a 3235 Grand Concourse in the Bronx on a block that also spawned Neil Simon, Paddy Chayefsky, Calvin Klein, and Ralph Lauren. She began her career as a tap dancer at age 3, and later taught tap at her mother's dance school. She is a graduate of Walton High School in New York City and attended the University of New Mexico. In 1967, she moved to Los Angeles to join her older brother Garry Marshall, a writer whose credits at the time included TV's The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961–1966).

Career

One of her first jobs was for a TV commercial for a beautifying shampoo. She was hired to play a girl with stringy, unattractive hair, and Farrah Fawcett was hired to play a girl with thick, bouncy hair. As the crew was lighting the set, Marshall's stand-in wore a placard that read "Homely Girl" and Fawcett's stand-in wore a placard that said "Pretty Girl". Farrah Fawcett, sensing Marshall's insecurity about her looks, crossed out "Homely" on the Marshall stand-in placard and wrote "Plain".

Marshall first gained prominence as a television actress with a recurring guest role of Myrna Turner on The Odd Couple (1971–1975). In Marshall's ultimate appearance as Myrna Turner, Myrna married her boyfriend, Sheldn ("They forgot the 'o' on his birth certificate; legally, it's 'Sheldn'"), played by her then-real-life husband, Rob Reiner, and briefly introduced her brother and sister, Werner Turner and Verna Turner (played by, respectively, Marshall's brother, Garry, and her sister, Ronny). Before appearing on The Odd Couple, Marshall was considered to play the role of Gloria Bunker Stivic on All In The Family. She ultimately lost the part to Sally Struthers while her husband, Rob Reiner, was cast as Gloria's husband, Michael "Meathead" Stivic.

In 1974, James L. Brooks and Allan Burns, executive producers of the hit situation comedy, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, cast Marshall as Janice Dreyfuss, sister-in-law to Paul Dreyfuss (played by actor Paul Sand). In the series, Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers, Paul was a bachelor, who was a bass violinist for The Boston Symphony Orchestra. It aired on CBS-TV Saturday nights beginning September 14, 1974, as part of the powerhouse lineup of All In The Family, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, and The Carol Burnett Show. Despite good reviews and decent ratings, it was canceled mid-season. Brooks and Burns, along with studio head Grant Tinker were so impressed with Marshall's comedic talent that the following season, they hired Marshall and actress Mary Kay Place to play Mary Richards' new neighbors (Paula and Sally Jo, respectively) on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, when Mary moved out of her old apartment into a high-rise. After appearing as "guest stars" on a few episodes of the series, Marshall and Place were slated to become regulars on the show (thereby replacing Valerie Harper and Cloris Leachman) when fate stepped in for both of them. First, Place was hired by Norman Lear for the role of Loretta on the syndicated comedy, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.

Garry Marshall, creator/part-time writer for Happy Days cast Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams to guest on an episode of that show. The installment, titled "A Date with Fonzie", aired on November 11, 1975 and introduced the characters LaVerne DeFazio and Shirley Feeney (played by Marshall and Williams, respectively). In that episode, Laverne and Shirley were a pair of wise-cracking brewery workers, who were dates for Fonzie (played by Winkler) and Richie (played by Howard). The pair were such a hit with the studio audience that Garry Marshall decided to co-create and star them in a hit spin-off, Laverne and Shirley (1976–1983). The characters of Laverne and Shirley also appeared in five more episodes of Happy Days.

In 1983, while still filming Laverne and Shirley, Marshall guest-starred on Taxi in a cameo appearance as herself. In the Taxi episode "Louie Moves Uptown", Marshall is turned down for residency in a new high-rise condo in Manhattan. The Laverne and Shirley episode "Lost in Spacesuits" is referenced in the scene. At the encouragement of her brother, Marshall became interested in directing. She directed two episodes of Laverne and Shirley and other TV assignments. She soon moved on to theatrical films, her first film being Jumpin' Jack Flash (1986) starring Whoopi Goldberg.

Marshall has directed several successful feature films since the mid-1980s, including 1988's Big starring Tom Hanks (the first film directed by a woman to gross over US$100 million), Awakenings (1990) starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, A League of Their Own (1992) with Geena Davis, Tom Hanks, Madonna and Rosie O'Donnell, and The Preacher's Wife (1996) starring Denzel Washington and Whitney Houston. In 1991, she was awarded the Women in Film Crystal Award. She lent her voice to Ms. Botz a/k/a Ms. Botzukowski, the "babysitter bandit", on the first produced episode of The Simpsons, and played a cameo role as herself on the HBO series Entourage.

Personal life

While attending the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, Marshall met Michael Henry, a football player. She quit college after three years, married him in 1961, and they had a daughter, Tracy, who later guest-starred on Laverne & Shirley. Marshall worked as a secretary and later as a tap dance teacher. The marriage lasted two years. On April 10, 1971, Marshall married actor/director Rob Reiner, and her daughter took the name of Tracy Reiner. The marriage would last until 1981. Soon after her divorce from Reiner, Marshall dated actor Larry Breeding, who subsequently went on to guest star on Laverne & Shirley during its seventh and eighth seasons. The two were still involved when Breeding was killed in a car accident on the Hollywood Freeway on September 28, 1982 (with his third Laverne & Shirley appearance airing posthumously). A couple of years later, Marshall was romantically linked with Art Garfunkel.

Filmography

Television

• That Girl (2 episodes, 1968–1969)
• Then Came Bronson (1 episode, 1969)
• Love, American Style (1 episode, 1970)
• Barefoot in the Park (1 episode, 1970)
• Wacky Zoo of Morgan City (1970)
• Disneyland (2 episodes, 1970)
• The Feminist and the Fuzz (1971)
• Getting Together (1 episode, 1971)
• Funny Face (TV series) (pilot, 1971) (uncredited)
• The Odd Couple (26 episodes, 1971–1975)
• Evil Roy Slade (1972)
• The Super (1 episode, 1972)
• The Bob Newhart Show (1 episode, 1972)
• The Crooked Hearts (1972)
• The Couple Takes a Wife (1972)
• Banacek (1 episode, 1973)
• Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers (14 episodes, 1974-1975)
• Mary Tyler Moore (3 episodes, 1974–1976)
• Let's Switch! (1975)
• Wives (1975)
• Chico and the Man (1 episode, 1975)
• Happy Days (6 episodes, 1975–1979)
• Good Heavens (1 episode, 1976)
• Laverne & Shirley (178 episodes, 1976–1983)
• Blansky's Beauties (1 episode, 1977)
• Saturday Night Live (2 episodes, 1977,1996)
• Mork & Mindy (1 episode, 1978)
• More Than Friends (1978)
• Laverne & Shirley in the Army (1981)
• The Mork & Mindy/Laverne & Shirley/Fonz Hour (1982) (voice)
• The New Show (1 episode, 1984)
• Love Thy Neighbor (1984)
• Challenge of a Lifetime (1985)
• The Simpsons TV series, episode "Some Enchanted Evening" (1990) (voice)
• The Odd Couple: Together Again (1993)
• Nash Bridges (1 episode, 1998)
• Frasier (1 episode, 2004)
• Campus Ladies (1 episode, 2006)
• Bones (1 episode, 2006)
• The Game (1 episode, 2008)
• Portlandia (1 episode, 2012)

Features

• The Savage Seven (1968)
• How Sweet It Is! (1968)
• The Grasshopper (1970)
• The Odd Couple (1970)
• Where's Poppa? (1970) (uncredited)
• The Christian Licorice Store (1971) (scenes deleted)
• How Come Nobody's on Our Side? (1975)
• 1941 (1979) (uncredited)
• Movers & Shakers (1985)
• She's Having a Baby (1988) (cameo)
• Alice Upside Down (2007)
• The Hard Way (1991)
• Hocus Pocus (1993) (uncredited)
• Get Shorty (1995) (cameo)
• One Vision (1998) (documentary)
• Special Delivery (1999)
• Stateside (2004) (uncredited)
• Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World (2005) (cameo)
• Everybody Wants to Be Italian (2007)
• Alice Upside Down (2007) (Mrs. Plotkin)
• Blonde Ambition (2007) (bolo excutive)

As Director

• Jumpin' Jack Flash (1986)
• Big (1988)
• Awakenings (1990)
• A League of Their Own (1992)
• Renaissance Man (1994)
• The Preacher's Wife (1996)
• Riding in Cars with Boys (2001)

External links

• Penny Marshall at IMDb