Penny Marshall

Born on October 15, 1943, in the Bronx, Carole Penelope Masciarelli belongs to an illustrious family in the audiovisual industry, as she was the daughter of producer Anthony W. Marshall, who was very successful with the series  The Odd Couple . Her two brothers also belong to the scene, since the deceased in 2016  Garry Marshall directed  Pretty Woman , while Ronny Hallin is dedicated to the production of series such as  Household Matters .

When she was 10 years old,  Penny Marshall  first appeared on the small screen, as a dancer on  The Jackie Gleason Show . At the end of the 60s, she became a regular actress on various television shows, until she became one of the protagonists of  Laverne and Shirley , where she played the sarcastic and realistic Laverne De Fazio, roommate of the more diffident Shirley Feeney, played by  Cindy Williams , who left the series in the final season. It was so well received that it lasted for eight seasons, totaling 178 episodes. Her character also regularly appeared in  Happy Days , also one of the most popular productions of the time. She and she appeared briefly in 1941 , Steven Spielberg ‘s great flop , in the dance sequence with foot soldiers and sailors, which made the public laugh in the United States, because it made reference to the obsession of its emblematic Laverne with seamen in uniform.

She seemed doomed to become the old glory of soap operas, totally typecast, until she jumped at the opportunity to replace director  Howard Zieff , chosen by 20th Century Fox to lead  Jumpin’ Jack Flash , a comedy at the service of  Whoopi Goldberg , from 1986. The film about the bank employee involved in an espionage plot for entangling too much with computers was very well received at the box office, so the same company put him in charge of another larger-budget comedy,  Big , since it had as its protagonist Tom Hanks , at  that time the top star of the genre, since he had not yet made the leap to other genres.

The story of a child who after making a wish at a fair wakes up as an adult also had a dramatic background, and it swept theaters, for which  Penny Marshall  broke the box office record for a filmmaker. Wanting to try new formulas herself, too, she brought an emotional true story to the screen in  Awakenings , which featured two acting giants,  Robin Williams  and  Robert De Niro , as a doctor and one of his patients, who awakens from his bed. catatonic state by a novel treatment. “People say that I was very brave for doing drama,” she recalled in an interview. “I don’t think it was bravery. I thought I had an excuse. If it went wrong, I could say that it was not my strong point.

Laughter returned, again with Hanks, brilliant as a drunken and disenchanted coach, in  Ellas pueden el coup , also with  Geena Davis  and  Madonna , about women in the baseball league, after the men’s games were suspended because the men fight in the Second Division World War. In  A Poet Amongst Recruits , with  Danny DeVito  as an elementary school teacher to a group of misfit soldiers, she cast the first role of him to  Mark Wahlberg . The filmmaker’s last big hit was  The Preacher’s Wife , a romantic comedy with  Denzel Washington  and  Whitney Houston .

Divorced in 1967 from Michael Myron Henry, with whom she had her only daughter, in 1971 she joined  Rob Reiner , director of  The Princess Bride , and like her also an actor and from the Bronx. Despite everything, they also ended up divorcing in 1981.

His last feature film was  Los chicos de mi vida , a light comedy with  Drew Barrymore . In his last years he devoted himself to television episodes of  The World According to Jim  and  United States of Tara , and leaves  Rodman , about the basketball player Dennis Rodman, pending release in post-production.