Penny Marshall
Penny Marshall’s paternal grandparents emigrated from the Abruzzo region in east central Italy to New York City about 1900. Her father, Antonio Masciarelli, was born there in 1906. When he became an adult, he changed his name to Anthony Wallace Marshall and worked for an advertising agency. He married a tap dance teacher, Marjorie Irene Ward, and had three children with her. Son Garry became an actor and a director while daughter Ronny became a TV producer. The youngest, Carole Penny, was born in the Bronx on October 15, 1943, and was confirmed in the Congregationalist Church. Penny graduated from Walton High School in June, 1961, and went to the University of New Mexico to study mathematics and psychology. Near the end of her sophomore year, she became pregnant by her boyfriend, Michael Henry, who was a football player.
She dropped out of college to marry the father in late 1963. A daughter, who they named Tracy, was born to them in 1964. They divorced in 1966. In 1967, Penny moved with her daughter to Los Angeles to join her brother Garry. She appeared first in a TV commercial for “Head and Shoulders” shampoo before her brother got her a bit part in the movie “How Sweet It Is” in 1968. Later that year, she got another small role in the film “The Savage Seven”. She devoted the next three years to the care of her daughter. On April 10, 1971, she married actor and director, Rob Reiner, who adopted her daughter. Later that year, Penny was added to the permanent TV cast of “The Odd Couple” to play a secretary named Myrna. She held the role for four years. In early 1975, Penny was hired to play Mary Richards’ new neighbor, Paula, in several episodes of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”. On November 11, 1975, she was introduced as a new Italian-American character, Laverne DeFazio, on “Happy Days”, which starred Henry Winkler as Fonzie. She was such a hit with another new character, Shirley Feeney, played by Cindy Williams, that a spinoff called “Laverne & Shirley” was created for the TV season starting in the Fall of 1976. It was a big success.
In 1981, she divorced Reiner. In 1982, Williams got pregnant and left the show. At the end of the eighth season in May 1983, the show was canceled. Encouraged by her brother, Penny became a director. Her first film was “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” starring Whoopi Goldberg in 1986. Next, she directed “Big” starring Tom Hanks in 1988. It was the first film directed by a woman to gross over $100 million. She followed up with “Awakenings” starring Robert DeNiro in 1990, “A League of Their Own” starring Madonna Ciccone in 1992, “Renaissance Man” in 1994, “The Preacher’s Wife” starring Denzel Washington and Whitney Houston in 1996, and “Riding in Cars with Boys” in 2001. Penny then turned to producing films. She produced “Risk” in 2003, “Cinderella Man” in 2005, and “Bewitched” also in 2005. She returned briefly to acting in 2007 to play Teresa the florist in the movie “Everybody Wants to Be Italian”. She then stopped producing and acting to turn to writing. In 2012, she published her memoir entitled “My Mother Was Nuts”. On December 17, 2018, she died in Los Angeles at age 75 due to complications from diabetes. She was buried in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills, California. The letter “L” for Laverne is inscribed at the base of her tombstone. ❚
Sources,
all accessed July 25, 2020:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Marshall
https://heavy.com/news/2018/12/penny-marshall-parents
“Piacere! Pleased to meet you, Cindy”, Italian American Magazine at page 36 (Summer 2020)