Throughout their seven years together onLaverne & Shirley,Cindy WilliamsandPenny Marshallwere one of the best-known duos on television.
Starring alongside each other as Laverne DeFazio (Marshall) and Shirley Feeney (Williams) for nearly a decade on the iconic sitcom, the costars formed a close bond that extended beyond the cameras.
A little over four years later, it was announced thatWilliams had died on Jan. 25, 2023, following a brief illness. She was also 75.
“The passing of our kind, hilarious mother, Cindy Williams, has brought us insurmountable sadness that could never truly be expressed,” Williams' children, Zak and Emily Hudson, said in a statement through their family spokeswoman Liza Cranis. “Knowing and loving her has been our joy and privilege. She was one of a kind, beautiful, generous and possessed a brilliant sense of humor and a glittering spirit that everyone loved.”
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Williams and Marshall’s chemistry onscreen was electric. In an interview for theArchive of American Televisionin August 2013, Williams said the two began writing together when Marshall’s brother, Garry, cast them as Laverne DeFazio and Shirley Feeney in an episode ofHappy Daysin 1975.
“We sort of had telepathy,” Williams said of their friendship. “We [were just] always like that.”
Their characters were so popular, ABC hired the two for their own spin-off showLaverne & Shirley,which debuted on the air the following year. The show focused on Laverne and Shirley, two roommates that struggled to make ends meet while trying to find Mr. Right.
Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams on Laverne & Shirley.Silver Screen Collection/Getty
Marshall and Williams suddenly found themselves at the helm of what would cement them as sitcom stars.
“She’s very tough, she has a mind like a steel trap, she doesn’t forget anything,” Williams said of working with Marshall. “She’s a taskmistress. She’ll read the script and be smoking a cigarette and have it down in a day. I’ll hold the script right up to dress rehearsal.”
In the same interview, Marshall said she simply “didn’t care about lines.”
“[Williams] is a better actress than me. Trust me,” theBigdirector said. “She has a better range. She can [memorize] a paragraph. I can’t do an accent.”
Williams said Marshall could be “impatient,” but that it made her “be better.”
While the two had their differences, Williams said they could “always make each other laugh.”
“Some of the best laughs of my life were with that woman. If we made each other laugh, we knew we would make the audience laugh also,” she said. “We were very, very close like that. You couldn’t slip a playing card between us. We had our differences but not when it came to hitting that stage and doing what we loved doing. It was like [an] instinct with her, like telepathy. I don’t think I’ve had that with anyone else in my life.”
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Marshall gave her two cents, saying their differences were what made scenes funny.
“Neat and sloppy,” Marshall explained.
Williams added, “Our personalities are so alike in so many ways, and so different in so many ways. There would be squabbles, but in the end the entire experience, the entire thing was such a blessing and so much fun. I couldn’t have done it without her, it wouldn’t have been the same and I’m sure she would say vice versa.”
“We’re great friends, she’s one of my great, great friends, one of the greatest friends of my life,” she reflected to theArchive of American Television.
source: people.com
