Penny Marshall: Playing Outside in the Street

PENNY MARSHALL, the actress and film director born in 1943, was from the Bronx. Her parents were poorly matched. Penny’s father Tony was a gifted draftsman who drew a delightful announcement card when Penny was born. But he was unkind to Penny’s mother, changed his last name from Masciarelli to Marshall, and pretended he’d never been Italian or Catholic.

Penny’s mother, Marjorie, was the owner and sole proprietor of the Marjorie Marshall Dance School. She was a little off her rocker but gave Penny certain things, including a sense of humor and an interest in show business. Marjorie didn’t consider Broadway and Hollywood secure enough; she thought it was obvious that little girls would always need formal dance lessons, but it was not obvious that any of her children were talented or lucky enough to make it in show business.

She never praised Penny. Her own mother had praised Marjorie to the skies for every little thing she did, and Marjorie vowed she would never do that with her own children. She over-corrected. She shot down so many of Penny’s ideas that when Penny was chosen as “rag monitor” in the 11th grade, Penny wondered if she was up to the role.

Many girls that Penny knew enjoyed their lessons at the Marjorie Marshall Dance School. Penny did not. For the rest of her life, she would run into people who said “I studied dance at your mother’s dance school!” and would fondly recall Penny’s mother. Penny could never decide if this was poignant and heartwarming, or just annoying.

When Marjorie took her little dancers to an Episcopal church, she told them they were all Episcopalians. At Catholic churches, she told them they were Catholics. At temples, they were Jewish. Prisons, shipyards, charity telethons… there was nowhere Marjorie wouldn’t take her dancers. Then she’d proudly show off the newspaper articles that resulted: “YOUNGSTERS AID POLIO FUND” or “STRUTTERS AID BLIND CHILDREN.”

Whenever Penny tried to quit dance lessons and dance performances, her Mom would say “Fine. On Saturdays, you’ll go shopping and do the laundry and clean the house like everyone else.” So Penny groaned and went back to dancing for the Marjorie Marshall Dance School.

She was a girl with pony tail and an overbite who preferred to be outside in the streets with her friends. ‘What do you do out there?’ her mother would ask. ‘Why does it take so long?’ She thought her daughter should fill her life with scheduled activities. Penny found it hard to explain why it was so much fun to be outside with friends. They played stickball. They played a game called I Declare War. They teased each other, told jokes, and created stories that distracted each other from the stressful or humdrum parts of life.

One of the boys in the neighborhood was Rob Reiner, whose father Carl Reiner was a big shot in television, one of the stars of “Your Show of Shows.”

When it was time for college, Penny was a little surprised that her mother wasn’t more concerned about Penny going all the way out to the University of New Mexico. Then she realized that her mother thought all the “New” states were grouped together, so New Mexico must be adjacent to New York and New Jersey.

Out in New Mexico, Penny introduced herself as being from the Bronx. “Do you live on campus?” people asked. “No,” she was tempted to say. “I commute from the Bronx!” But she found some nice people in college. She gravitated to the football players. One of them became her first lover; another one, Michael Henry, got her pregnant.

She and Michael Henry married, and named their baby Tracy. But Penny and Michael drifted apart and after two years they divorced. Penny needed work. Her mother suggested she become a dance instructor. Penny acted in a little dinner theater and then moved to Los Angeles to try show business. She was a rare mixture of insecurity and fearlessness. Her mother predicted that Penny would take acid and jump off a roof.

Penny caught up with Rob Reiner again, and each one loved the way the other one made them laugh. In 1971, they married. Rob adopted Tracy, and gave her his last name. Penny became friends with Rob’s high school friends Richard Dreyfuss and Albert Brooks.

Many interviewers would say: ‘You grew up across the street from your husband?’

“It was a very wide street,” said Penny.

Both Penny and Rob auditioned for the parts of the young marrieds Gloria and Michael Stivic for the TV show “All in the Family.” Rob got the part of Michael; Penny lost out to Sally Struthers as Gloria. Penny started getting on TV sit-coms, but just tiny parts, usually as a secretary. She got a Head & Shoulders commercial, but had to play ‘the ugly, smart girl’ who convinced the pretty girl, played by Farrah Fawcett, to try Head & Shoulders.

“All in the Family” was a surprise hit and sometimes when they were in public together, people would rush at Rob, pushing Penny aside. Rob said he didn’t enjoy celebrity much but Penny didn’t believe him; it looked great to her to have your work so adored by fans.

Her brother Garry was a player in Hollywood and he was very helpful. He himself had dreamed of being a stand-up comedian, but was not quite professional quality. He’d decided to write comedy, and create shows, but not do stand-up. He knew his sister was funny but he thought she, too, might be better as a comedy writer than a performer.

“Perky” was the fashionable thing to be as an actress at that time. Sally Field was perky and all of the studios were looking for perky. The idea was that perky women could be popular with men and women, young and old. Penny was not perky.

When she told Garry she wanted to make it in front of the camera, he applauded her. He made clear that he wouldn’t risk his career going to bat for her but he had all kinds of useful advice: which people were talented, which acting classes were worthwhile, how to get a good agent, which guy was a good contact to make but don’t get caught alone with him in his office. Garden variety nepotism didn’t bother Garry; he figured he’d open some doors for Penny, but it was up to her to walk through them, and if she lacked the talent, she’d soon find out.

By the early 1970’s, Garry’s children were getting old enough to watch the programs he was making, and he wanted to do a family show. He hit upon the idea of a show called “Happy Days”, a funny, upbeat TV show about young people trying to find themselves in the 1950’s. The film “American Graffiti” had been a surprise hit and ABC executives bought “Happy Days”, and it, too, was a hit.

Two central characters in “Happy Days” were Richie Cunningham, the good-natured square, and Arthur Fonzarelli, (“The Fonz”) the street-smart chick magnet.

Garry was working on a script for a “Happy Days” episode in which Richie is having trouble finding a girlfriend so the Fonz turns up two party girls, Laverne DeFazio and Shirley Feeney. Cindy Williams was playing Shirley. Garry asked Penny if she wanted to play Laverne. She did, the episode aired in November of 1975 and was well-received.

With “Happy Days” high in the ratings, ABC asked Garry Marshall if he had any ideas for spinoff shows. What about the “party girls” get their own show? So it was that in 1976 “Laverne & Shirley” was launched. They were wisecracking brewery workers in Milwaukee in the ‘50’s. After years of waiting and watching, it was amazing to Penny how quickly stardom arrived. ABC ordered 15 episodes of a show which had not even been cast, did not have a single episode written, which had no writers, no director, no producer, crew — nothing — and ABC wanted to put the first episode on the air in eight weeks.

Why is the show a hit? the critics wondered. The writing, the casting, the tie to “Happy Days?” Penny had her own theory. Laverne and Shirley were poor, and there were almost no poor people shown on TV but there were a lot of poor people at home watching TV, wanting to see someone like themselves.

Penny and Cindy cut a record album (“Laverne & Shirley Sing”). They were mobbed at a Philadelphia record store. New York invited them to join the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Fans pushed through a barricade to try to reach Laverne and Shirley. Even the cop who pushed the fans back asked Penny for an autograph. Fame was nuts — exciting but scary and not so great. Now she agreed with Rob Reiner about that.

Sometimes, her daughter Tracy would have a classmate from school over to the house and the classmate would leave suddenly, and when Penny asked why the girl had left so soon, Tracy would say ‘She didn’t really want to be my friend. She just wanted to see you and Rob.’ It made Penny’s heart ache.

In 1981, she and Rob Reiner divorced.

She directed a few episodes of “Laverne & Shirley” and then decided to try directing films. She directed “Big” (1988) and “Awakenings” (1990) and “A League of Their Own” (1992) — and each of them made at least $100 million. No female director had ever made a $100 million-grossing film before.

On the set, Penny felt happy. A crisis would arise and she’d deal with it. It was like a grown-up version of playing outside in the street with her friends. She was still teasing, joking, and telling stories with people she liked. People still asked her: ‘What are you doing and why does it take so long?’ And the movies she and her colleagues made distracted the audience for a few hours from the problems in their lives. All of that was fun.

Doing press tours to promote her film was much harder for her. Then her insecurities came back. She convinced Robin Williams to join her in speaking to the press about “Awakenings.” She was so nervous that when she tried to say it was a movie set many years ago in a mental hospital, what she actually said was that it was a movie set many years ago in a menstrual hospital . (“It’s a period piece,” chirped Robin Williams.)

At some point, Penny was feeling shaky, having trouble walking and so she went to a hospital. An examination revealed she had both lung cancer and a brain tumor. She felt oddly relaxed at news that freaked out her siblings and her friends. She checked into hospital so lavish that it had a private chef. The chef told Penny, ‘My mother studied dance at your mother’s dance school!’

In 2018, her friends said that Penny’s cancer was in remission, but in December of that year she died, leaving behind her daughter Tracy, a devoted ex-husband, a lot of heartbroken friends and millions of saddened fans. When Tracy left for college, Penny hugged her goodbye in front of a sound stage, wearing a bunny suit. She wasn’t the usual Mom, but she was a lot of fun.