Actress and director Penny Marshall, best remembered for her role in the 1970s hit sitcom, Laverne and Shirley, has died after being ill with cancer and diabetes for a number of years. The cause of death was complications from diabetes. She was once married to actor-director Rob Reiner, and her brother was producer and sometime actor Garry Marshall, who passed away a few years ago.
Penny was 75.
From the obit:
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.
Marshall had even greater success as a director than as a performer.
No comments:
Post a Comment