Marshall Arts

Garry Marshall (front and center) poses with his sitcom posse from ABC-TV:
Ron Howard, Penny Marshall (Garry's younger sister), Robin Williams,
Cindy Williams, Pam Dawber, and Henry Winkler.

Garry Marshall, the creator of the homespun sitcoms "Happy Days," "Laverne & Shirley," and "Mork & Mindy," once admitted he wanted to be "the Norman Rockwell of television." Marshall's creative interests eventually gravitated toward the silver screen, where he directed 18 movies, including the wildly successful overhaul of the Cinderella story in "Pretty Woman," starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere.

Director Garry Marshall and Julia Roberts share
a laugh on the set of "Pretty Woman."

Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips recently looked back at the film as "a peculiar sort of hit...objectionable and retrograde in a dozen different ways, confoundingly appealing in a dozen more." When "Pretty Woman" was released in 1990, Marshall remarked, "I like to do very romantic, sentimental type of work. It's a dirty job but somebody has to do it."

Garry Marshall reunited Julia Roberts and Richard Gere
in the 1999 romantic comedy "Runaway Bride." Roberts also
appeared in the ensemble casts of the romantic comedies
"Valentine's Day" (2010) and "Mother's Day" (2016),
both directed by Marshall.

Garry Marshall passed away at the age if 81 on July 19, 2016, from complications of pneumonia after suffering a stroke. Writing the obituary for The New York Times, Bruce Weber noted, "His work in network television and Hollywood movies fattened the archive of romantic, family and buddy comedies and consistently found the sweet spot smack dab in the middle of the mainstream."

Bronx-born, Marshall joined the U.S. Army in 1956 and served in postwar South Korea, where he wrote for Stars and Stripes, the newspaper for U.S. armed forces personnel. At Northwestern University, he studied journalism and wrote sports for the college newspaper. He recalled, "I realized words matter."

That respect for words would come in handy when he began his show business career as a standup comic and a joke writer for such comedians as Joey Bishop and Phil Foster (who later played Penny Marshall's father on "Laverne & Shirley"). According to Marshall, it was Foster who "turned my life around." At some forgotten club in Greenwich Village, Foster approached Marshall and said, "You're making three waiters hysterical, but the audience isn't laughing. So, you got a choice. You can make the waiters laugh, or you can try for the audience."

He wrote for "The Tonight Show," featuring Jack Paar, as well as the series "Make Room for Daddy," "The Dick Van Dyke Show," "The Lucy Show," "I Spy," "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C." and "Love, American Style."

Garry Marshall (second from left) celebrates the 100th episode of "The Odd Couple"
with (left to right) Tony Randall, your-guess-is-as-good-as-ours, guest star Rob Reiner
(then married to series regular Penny Marshall), Penny Marshall, and Jack Klugman.

Marshall and his frequent writing partner, Jerry Belson, adapted the Neil Simon play "The Odd Couple" for television, starring Tony Randall and Jack Klugman. On his own, Marshall created "Happy Days," which spun off "Laverne & Shirley" and "Mork & Mindy."

What's old is new again...Four decades after the original series, the reboot of
"The Odd Couple," with Matthew Perry (left) as Oscar Madison and Thomas
Lennon as Felix Unger, featured Garry Marshall as Oscar's father in a
memorable episode recorded less than three months before his passing.

Bill Carter, a former longtime television reporter for The New York Times, commented, "Garry Marshall had a feel for Everyman, blue-collar comedy..." In his own words, from his 1995 memoir Wake Me When It's Funny: How to Break into Show Business and Stay There, Marshall wrote, "Critics have knocked me for targeting society's lowest common denominator. I believe that television was, and still is, the only medium that can reach society's lowest common denominator and entertain those people who maybe can't afford a movie or a play. So why not reach them and do it well?"

"When I produced a television show," Marshall stated in Wake Me When It's Funny, "I didn't just roll out of bed each morning and say, 'I'm going to make some rich, smart and successful people laugh.' I thought, 'Let them get their own laughs.' They have the money to pay for it."

Garry Marshall's first major motion picture was 1982's "Young Doctors in Love," a scattershot spoof of hospital soap operas. Not exactly an "Everyman comedy," it was undoubtedly inspired by the gag-packed 1980 parody "Airplane!" The first feature film from ABC Motion Pictures, the short-lived production company owned by ABC-TV, "Young Doctors in Love," not surprisingly, featured numerous cameos by stars of that network's daytime dramas.

Amid the cameos in "Young Doctors in Love" is newcomer Demi Moore,
who was playing Jackie Templeton on "General Hospital" at the time.

"Airplane!" had been a monstrous hit, but when "Young Doctors in Love" was released, the concept of genre spoofs riddled with rapid-fire jokes hadn't yet caught fire with filmgoers. Mel Brooks and company struck box-office gold with "Blazing Saddles," "Young Frankenstein," and, to a lesser degree, "High Anxiety" in the mid-1970s, and it should be noted that the cult parody of period costumers, "Start the Revolution Without Me," from Bud Yorkin and Norman Lear (the creators of "All in the Family"), with Gene Wilder and Donald Sutherland, preceded "Blazing Saddles" by four years.

But the heyday of cinematic spoof-dom was still a few years away, kicked off in the late 1980s when the "Airplane!" crew - Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker - launched the "Naked Gun" films, starring the master of deadpan slapstick, Leslie Nielsen. The Wayans clan climbed on board with the "Scary Movie" franchise, which was shortly assimilated by the aforementioned "Airplane!" creators, with Leslie Nielsen in tow. Things got out of hand in everything-but-the-kitchen-sink parodies like "Date Movie," "Epic Movie," "Disaster Movie," "Not Another Teen Movie," and "Superhero Movie," the latter featuring the ubiquitous Leslie Nielsen.

Reviewing Garry Marshall's film in The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, "Every imaginable kind of gag has been wedged into 'Young Doctors in Love' in hopes of getting another 'Airplane!' off the ground. Not all of them are funny, and plenty of them fall flat. But there are enough bright moments to make this a passable hot-weather entertainment...Historical note: this is the first movie to contain a wisecrack about 'E.T.'"

Garry Marshall stands behind his cast: (left to right) Rick Overton,
Michael McKean, Sean Young, Taylor Negron, Ted McGinley,
Gary Friedkin, Patrick Collins, and Kyle T. Heffner.

Any semblance of a plot is virtually nonexistent as the movie follows a group of residents on their rounds in a loony bin of a hospital. Chief among the fledglings are Sean Young, fresh from her role as experimental replicant Rachael in "Blade Runner," and Michael McKean, who was still portraying Lenny on "Laverne & Shirley."

Sean Young and Michael McKeaton
pose for a really corny publicity shot.

The game cast of familiar faces included Dabney Coleman (basically doing another take on his characters from "9 to 5" and "Tootsie"), Patrick Macnee (star of TV's "The Avengers"), Pamela Reed (a Moviehouse favorite for her roles as Paul Le Mat's second wife in "Melvin and Howard," Belle Starr in "The Long Riders," and Kurt Russell's wife in "The Best of Times"), Ted McGinley (best known at the time for his role as Patton High principal Roger Phillips on "Happy Days"), Crystal Bernard (best known as Helen Chappell on the popular sitcom "Wings"), "Seinfeld's" Michael Richards, comedians Rick Overton and Taylor Negron, and the irrepressible, irreplaceable Harry Dean Stanton.

Garry Marshall, relaxing between takes with Sean Young and Michael McKean,
made it a point to wear a different baseball jacket to the set every day. "Wardrobe
is very important," he joked, "otherwise the actors would say, 'This is not a director!'"

The screenplay for "Young Doctors in Love" was written by Rich Eustis and Michael Elias, a writing team who had previously adapted Cyra McFadden's novel The Serial: A Year in the Life of Marin County for the 1980 comedy "Serial." The satirical look at the trendy Northern California county during the late '70s starred Martin Mull and Tuesday Weld in an eclectic cast that included 

Sally Kellerman as a spacey New Ager who practices tantric sex, Peter Bonerz as a coke-peddling psychiatrist, Tom Smothers as a hippie minister named Reverend Spike, and Christopher Lee as a gay biker called "Skull."

"Fellow beings" Peter Bonerz, Tom Smothers, and Martin Mull
share a moment of non-"we-ness" in "Serial."

Roger Ebert was not very fond of "Serial," declaring that it "just isn't very good...because the characters are seen almost exclusively as caricatures." He wasn't fond of "Young Doctors in Love" either, mainly because "hospitals are just not very funny." He admitted, "There are some nice moments," singling out "one wonderfully funny moment, starring that superb character actor Harry Dean Stanton, he of the long face, the quivering eyelids, and the perpetual hangover. He attempts to explain the secretion of bodily fluids to the amazed young medical students, and by the time he is finished with his amazing catalog, there is not an orifice left untapped."

When mad scientist-coiffed Harry Dean Stanton says, "There are over 20 bodily
fluids present in the human body, and I am proud to say I have tasted all of them,"
you WILL believe him.

Despite the few "nice spots," Ebert noted that "most of the time I wasn't laughing, and toward the end I wasn't even smiling. When a comedy goes wrong, it goes very wrong. 'Young Doctors in Love' goes very wrong."

 The Moviehouse pays tribute to "Young Doctors'"
scene-stealing Pamela Reed...

It might look like lothario Taylor Negron is trying to unlock mousy wallflower Pamela
Reed's heart, but what he really wants are her keys to unlock the drug cabinet.

Pamela Reed seeks motivation for her character from director Garry Marshall.

Michael Richards plays an accident-prone hitman whose attempts to
whack a hospitalized mob boss backfire with self-injuries or end up
thwarted by the attentive bedside manner of Pamela Reed.

Established right from the onset, the single constant in every one of Garry Marshall's 18 feature films was the appearance of character actor Hector Elizondo (best known for his Emmy Award-winning role as Dr. Phillip Waters on the '90s medical drama "Chicago Hope"), whom the director considered his "lucky charm." In "Young Doctors in Love," Elizondo portrayed the son of the aforementioned hospitalized gang kingpin.

Angelo Bonafetti (Hector Elizondo) goes to extreme lengths to keep pop
Sal Bonafetti (Titos Vandis) alive in "Young Doctors in Love."

The story goes that after catching Hector Elizondo in a couple of plays in New York City in 1979, Garry Marshall invited the actor to join an ongoing series of basketball games with producers and directors on Marshall's personal court in Hollywood. Elizondo made a pass behind his back, and the ball hit Marshall in the face ("On the chops - oy!"). "Garry was on one knee checking his teeth," Elizondo recounted. "He summons me over with a finger, and I said, 'Wait a minute. Is this guy looking for trouble?' He says, 'I'm Garry Marshall. This is my court. You're a terrific actor, a terrible passer. But I've got a movie for you!' And we both laughed, sat on a bench, and we started talking about the idea for his first movie, 'Young Doctors in Love'...And that's how it started. It was a great marriage." Recalling that first day of b-ball, Elizondo said, "We got along instantly. It's like we had been friends for 30 years."

Hector Elizondo earned a Golden Globe Award nomination as Best Supporting
Actor for his role as Julia Roberts' "fairy godfather" in "Pretty Woman."

For the eighth film Elizondo made in collaboration with Marshall, 1984's "Exit to Eden," a major comedic misfire that is still dreaded for lingering after-images of Dan Aykroyd and Rosie O'Donnell as undercover detectives in leather S&M accoutrements, the opening credits read, "As usual...Hector Elizondo."

As a matter of fact, Hector Elizondo was surprised to learn that his participation in Garry Marshall's movies was actually written into the director's contract, whether the actor wanted to be in the film or not.

Elizondo (pictured above, with Marshall, on the set of "The Princess Diaries," starring Anne Hathaway and Julie Andrews) recently remarked, "We came from the same place, same time - New York City during the Depression. He was from the Bronx, I was from Manhattan. We were both lovers of music, drummers and reading. He thought ladies were the superior gender, as do I. He was my best friend, simply put."

When critics were less than kind to what would be Garry Marshall's final movie, "Mother's Day" - the third of the director's all-star holiday-themed romantic comedies, preceded by "Valentine's Day" and "New Year's Eve" - the filmmaker told an audience attending a screening of the beleaguered picture at his alma mater, Northwestern University, "I do light stuff."

He also did acting. Look closely and you might spot him in an uncredited walk-on as a thug in the 1964 James Bond film "Goldfinger" (pictured below).

Michael Phillips, film critic for the Chicago Tribune, observed, "He acted a lot, often wonderfully, never better than in Albert Brooks' 'Lost in America,' as the casino honcho fielding Brooks' request to refund his gambling losses." After Brooks invokes memories of the Christmas classic "Miracle on 34th Street" when a department store profited from a competitor's act of beneficence, Marshall (pictured below) bluntly states, "In that movie, Santy Claus took care of everything...We don't have Santy Claus."

Marshall had a bit part as a police detective in "Jumpin' Jack Flash" (1986), an action comedy starring Whoopi Goldberg and directed by Marshall's sister, Penny, in her theatrical film directing debut (she had previously directed a handful of "Laverne & Shirley" episodes). Six years later, Penny gave her big brother a more substantial role when she directed the box office hit "A League of Their Own." Garry (pictured below, with David Strathairn) portrayed candy magnate and Chicago Cubs owner Walter Harvey (based on real-life chewing gum manufacturer and Cubs owner Philip K. Wrigley).

Garry Marshall once said, "When in doubt, you bring in relatives. Nepotism is a part of my work." Incidentally, Garry Marshall and Penny Marshall played a bickering married couple in the 1993 Halloween-themed comedy "Hocus Pocus." Costumed as the Devil, Garry is mistaken by the witchly trio of Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy for the "Master," while the threesome refer to Penny as "Medusa."

Siblings Penny Marshall and Garry Marshall pose alongside the Bronze Fonz
on the Milwaukee Riverfront.

Hector Elizondo said working with Garry Marshall was "like wearing an old pair of slippers - a nice comfy pair of slippers." He recalled Marshall as "a kind man, an elegant man, and a loyal, loyal man. He just elevated the atmosphere he was in. He nurtured so many people. He loved seeing character in people...I'm going to miss him a lot."

Hector Elizondo called Garry Marshall "a man who left the room a little better
than he found it."