Laverne & Shirley
Making Their Dreams Come True
Last updated
American Broadcasting Company (ABC) · Public domain
Laverne & Shirley is an American sitcom that aired on ABC for eight seasons, from January 27, 1976, to May 10, 1983. It was a spin-off of Happy Days, starring Penny Marshall as Laverne DeFazio and Cindy Williams as Shirley Feeney. The two friends and roommates work as bottle-cappers at the fictional Shotz Brewery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, during the late 1950s to early 1960s. Starting with the sixth season, the show moved its setting to mid-1960s Burbank, California.
The series also featured Michael McKean and David Lander as neighbors Lenny Kosnowski and Andrew "Squiggy" Squiggman, Eddie Mekka as Carmine Ragusa, Phil Foster as Laverne's father Frank DeFazio, and Betty Garrett as landlady Edna Babish. Known for its regular physical comedy, Laverne & Shirley became the most-watched television program in the United States during its third and fourth seasons. It earned six Golden Globe nominations and one Emmy nomination.
The show originated as a spin-off of Happy Days, where the two lead characters appeared as acquaintances of Fonzie (Henry Winkler). Its original working title was Laverne DeFazio & Shirley Feeney.
The characters were initially conceived as "two girls who date the fleet," but were toned down for family-hour television, which Cindy Williams felt added depth to the show. Set in roughly the same period as Happy Days, the timeline began around 1958 and ended in 1967. Paramount Television produced the series, created by Garry Marshall along with Lowell Ganz and Mark Rothman, and executive produced by Marshall, Edward K. Milkis, and Thomas L. Miller of Miller-Boyett Productions.
According to former Paramount president Michael Eisner, Cindy Williams initially refused to do the spin-off, so her role was recast with Liberty Williams (no relation), and a seven-minute screen test was filmed. Between that afternoon shoot and the evening, Cindy Williams was convinced to take the role and re-filmed the scene that night with Penny Marshall. Executives wanted to see both versions, but Eisner hid the first reel in a closet and claimed at the screening that the film from the first shoot had been lost, so only the performance with Cindy Williams and Penny Marshall was shown.
The opening credits feature Laverne and Shirley reciting a Yiddish-American hopscotch chant from Penny Marshall’s childhood: “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Schlemiel! Schlimazel! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!” This leads into the theme song "Making Our Dreams Come True" by Cyndi Grecco. In the final season, without Cindy Williams, the chant is recited by a group of schoolchildren.
For the first five seasons (1976–1980), the show was set in Milwaukee, executive producer Thomas L. Miller's hometown, taking place from roughly 1958–59 through the early 1960s. Laverne and Shirley, best friends and bottle-cappers at Shotz Brewery, live in a basement apartment and communicate with upstairs neighbors Lenny and Squiggy by yelling up the dumbwaiter shaft.
The cast also includes Laverne's father Frank, who runs the Pizza Bowl, and landlady Edna Babish, who later marries Frank. Shirley has an on-again, off-again romance with dancer/singer/boxer Carmine "The Big Ragu" Ragusa. Characters from Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley occasionally guest-starred on each other's shows.
Michael McKean and David Lander created Lenny and Squiggy while theater students at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Lander said in a 2006 interview that they created the characters while high on marijuana. After graduating, they continued performing the characters in live comedy routines before joining the show.
During the fifth season, the girls join the Army Reserve and deal with a tough drill sergeant named Alvinia T. "The Frog" Plout (Vicki Lawrence). Their time in the Army Reserve was brief in the live-action series, but it inspired an animated series where the duo serves in the army under a commanding pig named Sgt. Squealy (voiced by Ron Palillo), who constantly threatens to report them to Sgt. Turnbuckle (voiced by Kenneth Mars).
For the sixth season in 1980, Laverne and Shirley and their friends move from Milwaukee to Burbank, California, after the girls lose their brewery jobs to automated bottle-capping machines. They find work as gift wrappers at Bardwell's department store. Frank and Edna manage a Texas barbecue restaurant called Cowboy Bill's, Carmine delivers singing telegrams and pursues acting, and Lenny and Squiggy start a talent agency called Squignowski Talent Agency. From this point, the show is set in the mid-1960s.
In the new opening sequence, the ladies kiss a 1964 poster of the Beatles. Each season advances the timeline by a year, starting with 1965 in the 1980–81 season and ending in 1967 with Carmine heading to Broadway for the musical Hair. Two new characters are added: Sonny St. Jacques (Ed Marinaro), a stuntman and landlord of the Burbank apartment building who becomes a love interest for Laverne, and Rhonda Lee (Leslie Easterbrook), an aspiring actress and neighbor.
In March 1982, Cindy Williams became pregnant with her first child. In August, two episodes into production of the eighth season, Williams left the show and filed a $20 million lawsuit against Paramount.
Early Life and Family Roots
Penny Marshall was born Carole in Manhattan on October 15, 1943. Her mother, Marjorie Irene, ran a tap dance school, while her father, Anthony W. Marshall (born Masciarelli, of Italian Abruzzo descent), directed industrial films and later produced them. Her first name honored her mother's favorite actress, Carole Lombard, while her middle name "Penny" was a consolation for her older sister Ronny, who had been saving pennies for a horse.
The family lived at 3235 Grand Concourse in the Bronx—a building that also raised Neil Simon, Paddy Chayefsky, Calvin Klein, and Ralph Lauren. Religion was treated practically: each child was baptized in a different denomination depending on which church had a hall where their mother could stage a recital. Penny began tap dancing at age three and later taught at her mother's school.
She attended Walton High School, then studied math and psychology at the University of New Mexico for two and a half years. In 1963 she married a football player, Michael Henry, and had a daughter, Tracy, before divorcing in 1966. She supported herself as a choreographer before moving to Los Angeles in 1967 to join her brother Garry.
Building a Career in Television
Before becoming a household name, Marshall accumulated a steady stream of small roles. She appeared in a Head and Shoulders shampoo commercial alongside Farrah Fawcett, auditioned for Witchiepoo on H.R. Pufnstuf (losing to Billie Hayes), and landed parts in How Sweet It Is! and The Savage Seven in 1968. She was considered for Gloria Bunker Stivic on All in the Family but lost the role to Sally Struthers.
In 1971, her brother Garry added her to the permanent cast of The Odd Couple as secretary Myrna, a role she held for four years. In her final episode, Myrna married Rob Reiner's character—and Reiner was Marshall's real-life husband. The episode also featured her siblings Garry and Ronny as Myrna's brother and sister.
She guest-starred on That Girl and appeared in several TV movies. In 1974, James L. Brooks and Allan Burns cast her in Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers, which was canceled mid-season despite decent reviews. Impressed by her comedic range, they then brought her onto The Mary Tyler Moore Show as one of Mary Richards' neighbors.
Laverne & Shirley and the Breakthrough
The character that defined Marshall's public identity was born from a single guest appearance. In November 1975, Garry Marshall cast her and Cindy Williams in an episode of Happy Days titled "A Date with Fonzie," where they played wisecracking brewery workers Laverne DeFazio and Shirley Feeney as dates for Henry Winkler and Ron Howard. The pair's chemistry with the studio audience was so electric that Marshall decided to spin them into their own series.
Laverne & Shirley ran from 1976 to 1983, with Marshall portraying the loud, lovable, blue-collar Laverne DeFazio. Her performance earned her three nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Television Series Musical or Comedy. The show made her a cultural icon and cemented her as one of the most recognizable comedic actresses of the late 1970s and early 1980s, a role she would carry into her subsequent work in front of and behind the camera.
Behind the Camera: Directing and Producing
After Laverne & Shirley, Marshall transitioned to directing, making her feature debut with Jumpin' Jack Flash in 1986. Her 1988 film Big became a landmark achievement: it was the first movie directed by a woman to cross the $100 million mark at the U.S. box office. She followed with Awakenings (1990), which received an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture, then A League of Their Own (1992), Renaissance Man (1994), The Preacher's Wife (1996), and Riding in Cars with Boys (2001).
Beyond directing, she produced Cinderella Man and the television adaptation of Bewitched, both released in 2005. Later in her career she directed episodes of the sitcoms According to Jim and United States of Tara. Her body of work behind the camera—spanning comedies, dramas, and family films—established her as one of the most commercially successful and critically respected female directors in Hollywood history, a trailblazer whose impact extended far beyond her own screen roles.
Did You Know?
- Michael McKean and David Lander created the characters of Lenny and Squiggy while both were theater students at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
- Laverne is the only character to appear in all 178 episodes of the series.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are Laverne and Shirley's jobs?
Both leads work as bottle capers at the fictional Shotz Brewery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Their repetitive factory work provides the stage for much of the show's slapstick and workplace humor.
How many episodes of Laverne & Shirley are there?
The series produced 179 episodes across eight seasons, a count that includes the unaired pilot.
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