100 Favorite Shows: #94 — Laverne & Shirley
“Wouldn’t it be great if no one cared about your reputation? Think of all the fun you could have!”
In 1976, ABC went ahead with a new sitcom from Garry Marshall, Lowell Ganz, and Mark Rothman entitled Laverne & Shirley. As the most successful spin-off of ABC’s flagship Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley showed a more women-centric perspective of Milwaukee in the 1950s, underscored by the theme song’s triumphant proclamation that Laverne DeFazio (Penny Marshall) and Shirley Feeney (Cindy Williams) weren’t just going to make their dreams come true; they were going to do it their way. They worked in the Shotz Brewery and they hung out at the Pizza Bowl and in their eight seasons (which ran through to a bizarre, unsatisfying series finale that doubled as a backdoor pilot for a failed Carmine Ragusa (Eddie Mekka) spin-off), they experienced a two-year stretch (from 1977 to 1979) as the most popular show in the entire world.
(Spoilers for Laverne & Shirley are just around the corner, as well as some details about It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.)
On Rotten Tomatoes, the 2011 ensemble rom-com, New Year’s Eve, has a 7% rating. Directed by Garry Marshall, the film is not posing as an Oscar contender and it’s hardly even passing as a future holiday classic. But it’s earnest and charming and, above all, wholesome. Say what you will about Garry Marshall, but his films were always wholesome, even when they starred Julia Roberts as a prostitute.
It’s a sensibility that was infused in Marshall’s work throughout his entire career, perhaps best embodied by his string of inordinately in demand television programs. His most prominent television creation, Happy Days, spun off numerous series, including Mork & Mindy and the subject of this particular essay, Laverne & Shirley (a show he appears on in a cameo as a drummer, twice). In terms of setting (New York accents prevalent in Milwaukee aside) and story, Laverne & Shirley owes a great debt to Happy Days. However, its lineage is best traced back to Marshall’s first credit as executive producer, The Odd Couple.
Well-known for being a series depicting opposite personalities forging a path as roommates, The Odd Couple provided a crucial template for Laverne & Shirley: two people — who wouldn’t be friends on paper — making their own way through independence with the support of one another. Add this to a nostalgic reflection on the late 1950s after the two lead characters graduated high school and a live audience that reacted to practically every line of dialogue; its DNA could create nothing but a wholesome family comedy — occasionally dumb, always sweet.
Laverne & Shirley, though, was not just an average sitcom destined to be re-ran on MeTV with bumpers anchored by the less successful members of the cast. It also helped set an early template of the television hangout comedy, one that revolved around a found family (aside from Laverne and her father, Frank (Phil Foster)). In the twenty-first century, the hangout comedy revolves around characters’ burgeoning careers and cyclical romances. It shows the dynamics of young adulthood as being buoyed by the close friends of childhood and a few new faces met in the interim. On Laverne & Shirley, the defining friendships (Laverne and Shirley, Lenny (Michael McKean) and Squiggy (David Lander), anyone else with the initials, L and S) were aligned with this forthcoming formula, aside from a few barbs and pretensions thrown in Lenny and Squiggy’s direction.
For as much as the main gang (also comprised of Carmine and Edna Babish (Betty Garrett)) pretended to find only annoyance in Lenny and Squiggy, it was clear that they had genuine love for them, too. (Even a hokey sitcom wouldn’t be able to justify why Laverne and Shirley let them into their apartment so frequently if they actually despised the two faux-greasers.) Their group wouldn’t have been whole without them.
Lenny and Squiggy were more than just the comic relievers on a show that was populated with actors who could provide a laugh at any turn. They could also act as heartfully as any of their friends. Mostly applicable to Lenny, his sense of care for others manifested past his slicked back hair and goofy, palm-biting behavior, especially in season two’s “Look Before You Leap.”
In this episode (directed by comedy veteran James Burrows and written by Deborah Leschin and David W. Duclon), Laverne believes her time at a party has resulted in a pregnancy. When word spreads to Lenny and Squiggy, they flip a coin to determine who will be the one to propose marriage to Laverne and offer to raise the child with her, knowing she barely managed to pay her bills when the only one she needed to support was herself. (Not that Lenny and Squiggy made much money on their own, but still, it’s a sweet gesture.)
When Laverne asks Lenny if he lost as he prepares to get on one knee, he replies back, “No, I won.” It’s a subversive, clever moment built on immense heart in the middle of a show that tended to go broader most of the time. It’s also perfectly played by McKean, who might be the most talented actor to come from the Happy Days universe, with all the earnestness his young face can muster.
Of course, in classic Lenny fashion, it’s a scene surrounded by comedy. (He claims to have had the Kosnowski surname “practically all [his] life” and believes it means, “Help! There’s a hog in my kitchen.) But that’s not the main focus. At a time when comedies always strove for the best laugh lines to play to their live audiences, “Look Before You Leap” settled for a heartwarming moment to be enough. It was a hallmark of the show’s wholesomeness, as it knew that sincerity could be just as important as set-ups and punchlines.
While the stories of the series mostly revolved around Laverne and Shirley, much of the eccentric character work stemmed from the supporting players. Obviously, there were the shoddy swingers with embroidered nickname jackets, Lenny and Squiggy, who liked to play “Coal Miners” together in the building’s dumbwaiter and complained about their sheets being hard. But there was also the mushmouth Italian father who provided boundless love and support to his daughter and her best friend (as well as dressing Laverne in winter accessories before she ventured into the Wisconsin cold to confirm her pregnancy suspicions — she wasn’t with child).
And, of course, Carmine, who might have been the most straight-laced of the bunch. While most characters spent all of their time mucking about with one another, Carmine was the only one who would actually spend some time away from the series’ three and a half primary sets. He’d come ‘round when his involvement in the episode’s plots called for it or when his relationship with Shirley was on again. Or, as in the case of “Oh, Hear the Angel Voices,” when he needed them to help out with a good-hearted deed he wanted to undertake.
In this installment, Carmine asked the gang to help him put on a variety revue for a local psychiatric hospital on Christmas Eve in lieu of his dance studio’s fallen entertainment commitments. Despite the inexplicability of Lenny and Squiggy dropping a rock through Carmine’s windshield at the outset of the episode, they agree to join up for the holiday, as well.
Their involvement in the holiday episode revolves around a Lenny and the Squigtones performance of “The Jolliest Fat Man” in Dickensian attire, which is said to be for all fans of musical morality tales (including those who are “pretty or ugly”). The lyrics are borderline nonsensical (“One morning my wife left this message, / Each Christmas I’ve spent by myself, / I’m sick o’ your stupid tradition, / So I’ve run off to Spain with a elf”), but the minor key in which they sing brings a spirit of melancholy to an episode that is otherwise hopeful. (They still bring the laughs, especially after Squiggy says the hospital “sounds like fun” and prompts the doctors to take notes on the pair for the rest of the installment.)
Elsewhere in the variety show, Edna dresses as a clown, Frank emcees, and Laverne and Shirley dance as elves (though, their hats look more like Peter Pan’s). The most impressive vignette, however, is Carmine’s. Mekka is undeniably talented and perhaps if his skills had actually been present in the 1950s, maybe he would have found success in the vein of Gene Kelly. Instead, it’s enough that he’s singing slightly after the beat for a jazzier rendition of “Jingle Bell Rock” and spinning effortlessly in tap shoes, all for the sake of bringing a little bit of joy to people who might not have otherwise experienced it.
“Who’s not as fortunate as we are?” Lenny asks when Carmine first proposes the musical show. He’s not terribly wrong. Most of these characters live week-to-week in near poverty and on the one holiday they get to be together, they shouldn’t be expected to help others. However, there’s no resistance toward Carmine’s request. Literally, it’s for the sake of moving the episode along. But in a grander sense, it’s because these friends would do anything for each other, especially if one asked to do anything for other people in need.
It’s an element that brings the episode’s central lesson into the picture. Shirley has an apprehension toward the psychiatric patients (including one who appeals to Laverne by rolling his tongue in his cheek and one who pretends to be a doctor, a chef, and any other Guess Who? profession), but by the end, she sings arm-in-arm with them after realizing her white bread fears were only the product of ignorance. A final speech from the impersonator (Roger Garrett) acknowledges that the patients “do have problems,” but that’s why they’re there in the first place — to learn to deal with them. It’s not really a radical idea anymore, but back in the 1970s (and certainly the 1950s), it was a little bit of effort towards destigmatizing mental illness. It wasn’t much, but it was a decision made consciously by Marshall, Duclon, and Howard Storm. Maybe it didn’t change the stigma drastically, but it was a step. For something as modest as Laverne & Shirley with characters equally so, it was moving forward all the same.
For all of the wondrous bonds intersecting between the series’ friends, the ultimate found family came between the core friendship: Laverne DeFazio and Shirley Feeney. Two single women controlling their own destinies is hardly a radical premise anymore, but in 1976, it must have been refreshing for forward-minded people to see a sitcom depict female friendship and honor it for all its loves and flaws. Many installments revolved around an argument between the two (the best moments of these coming in the form of Marshall and Williams’ excellent physical comedy and ability to time a slammed door flawlessly), but the best were when they supported and rooted for one another.
When Laverne is sick, Shirley self-sufficiently digs their car out of the snow, but she only has to do so because Laverne left the top down. When they get ready for bed, they gargle and floss in their shared bathroom, gossiping all the while and choosing not to make snide comments about their personal hygienic behaviors. One holiday season, they each gift the other a “signed” photograph of Elvis Presley. Yes, they were both forged, but what mattered is that the other would find joy in the gift-giving process between lifelong friends at all.
For all of Mekka’s talent and McKean’s high-octane acting and Marshall’s later, greater success as a director, I found myself most drawn to Williams’ performance upon my rewatch. Lenny and Squiggy were primed for comedic excess and Mekka’s and Marshall’s characters were clearly defined. Shirley, on the other hand, could have easily slipped into the archetype of the straight character/buzzkill. While she frequently maintained civility and politeness, Williams had just as much vivaciousness and life in her performance as the rest. The series only flourished when it revolved around the entire cast in Milwaukee, but Williams was consistently underrated throughout.
These days, the sincerity of Laverne & Shirley might not make it onto a broadcast anymore. Even ABC’s new comedies have a slight edge to them. Granted, they’re not as edgy as something like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, but they’re edgier than Laverne & Shirley ever was.
IASIP (on which Mekka also appeared once) is an actually an interesting comparison to Laverne & Shirley (beyond the parallel, well-timed entrances of Lenny and Squiggy, which led to later set-ups for characters like Rose on The Golden Girls and the Dean on Community). Both IASIP and L & S revolve around characters who went to high school together and have now entered into the world with only each other to fall back on. Dennis and Dee take after Laverne and Shirley in that they see themselves as superior to and cooler than their friends and yet, they spend all their time with them (Charlie & Mac and Lenny & Squiggy, respectively). They have a pseudo-nemesis from their adolescent days (Adriano and Big Rosie Greenbaum (Carole Ita White), respectively). They work in the alcohol business. But there’s one big difference.
Sunny never tried to be as wholesome as Laverne & Shirley and that’s perfectly okay. There’s still room for gentle sensibilities in television comedy, but the auras of security projected by the two Milwaukee women is an attribute long gone from the medium in 2020. It’s good to be wholesome. It’s good to have a friendship you’re not embarrassed by and even though I might prefer something like IASIP, I’m not embarrassed by enjoying something as seventies and silly as Laverne & Shirley. There’s merit in the sweetness, in the knowing the friends from Shotz Brewery will be there for you, like they’re there for each other. “If in heaven we don’t meet,” Laverne and Shirley would often say to each other, in many of the episodes I experienced one summer when my parents eagerly exposed me to one of their childhood favorites. “Hand in hand we’ll bear the heat,” they continued. “And if it ever gets too hot, Pepsi Cola hits the spot.”
