Original Airdate of "The Laverne & Shirley Reunion":
May 22, 1995 at 8:00pm Eastern on ABC Networks

By: Jeanne Wolf

"Twenty years ago, Penny and Cindy walked on the set of Happy Days..." That's as far as Henry Winkler gets into his introduction to "The Laverne & Shirley Reunion" before he is interrupted by a familiar, nasal whine. "Henry, it's not happy days--it's happy days! Don't you know the name of your own show?"

Winkler grins and walks off-camera to hug the owner of the unmistakable voice--Penny Marshall--before doing another take. After all, it's hard to go wrong taking direction from the woman who helmed such major movies as "Big" and "A League Of Their Own."

But nearly two decades earlier, Marshall wasn't in the big leagues yet; she was blue-collar ditz Laverne DeFazio, half of a blind double date for Winkler's Fonzie and Ron Howard's Richie Cunningham on a 1976 Happy Days episode. The other half, of course, was Shirley Feeney, Laverne's starry-eyed roommate and coworker at the Shotz Brewery in 1950s Milwaukee, played by Cindy Williams.

"We were loose girls on Happy Days," Marshall recalls with a laugh as she heads to the makeup room. "Then we had to become more like virgins on Laverne & Shirley."

The rest is TV history. Created by Penny's brother, Garry Marshall (who also produced Happy Days), Laverne & Shirley debuted at No. 1 in 1976 and ran through 1983--178 slapstick-packed episodes. It finished the first four of its seven and a half seasons in first or second place. Even so, "We had no idea we were such a big deal," says Cindy, slippig into a chair next to Penny's.

"We made our first public appearance at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, and we didn't even get a float," Penny remembers. "We said, 'That's OK, we'll just walk.'"

"Suddenly there was all this screaming," Cindy jumps in. "We looked around to see who they were carrying on about, and it was us!"

There was well-publicized carrying-on behind the scenes of the hit show, too. There was Williams's tearful walkout in 1976, for instance, when she demanded--and won--the firing of two head writers who seemed to give all the best lines to Marshall. There were reports of scripts thrown against walls, of agents on the set with stopwatches to measure which actress got more screen time. And there was Williams's 1982 lawsuit against Garry Marshall and Paramount, who, she claimed, reneged on oral agreements to write er real-life pregnancy into the show. That time, Williams didn't return, resulting in a final season with a lot of Laverne and very little Shirley.

Today, however, that's all water under the bridge. "We were always supposedly feuding, according to every tabloid," Penny says dismissively.

"There would be headlines in the rag sheets, but the fact of the matter remains we could never have done the show if all that were true," Cindy chimes in.

"Sometimes you just get in a fight with someone or disagree, and then you make up," Penny adds.

To hear the way they support each other today, it's hard to believe suggestions that these two women didn't speak to each other out of character for two years. But they are a study in contrasts: Williams is quieter, more relaxed, while Marshall chain-smokes as she catalogues her long list of anxities.

"They were night and day," comments Eddie Mekka, who played Shirley's frustrated boyfriend, Carmine. "When you're opposites, naturally you're going to get some kind of conflict. Unfortunately, that's the first thing people write about."

Maybe the realtionship is just too complex and intimate for outsiders to comprehend. like siblings wo squabble but stick together when the chips are down. A case in point: "I remember when I was breaking up with Rob Reiner, to whom I was married," Marshall says, shaking her head. "On the set, I had this anxiety attack and I just couldn't breathe and I couldn't see. I said to Cindy, 'I think I'm blind, but it's OK, because I remember my lines. Just guide me to my mark and I'll be fine.'"

Williams chuckles. "I walked her around the set. She was still smoking, of course. And she was crying. I said, 'Penny, there's good news: Your tear ducts are still working.'

"Penny's the kind of friend that, if I don't see her for years, I feel like it's been seconds," Williams adds. "No one understands what we have between us. I've never found it in anyone else."

But Garry Marshall may have a piece of the puzzle. "They were No. 1 in the ratings, but the industry never gave them an Emmy, because they were doing physical comedy, and there was no place for that--particularly for women," he says. "They ran eight years wondering if they were any good. They became a little cranky."

"I wish we'd had more fun during the run of the show," Penny says wistfully. "I mean, we had fun doing it, but I wish we'd had more confidence in ourselves so we could have enjoyed all the success that was happening, rather than be afraid about it becasue the industry didn't think it was much of a show. I guess we got scared, so that's why we sometimes fought writing and stuff like that. It was that fear--wanting to make sure the show was good."

On the set, a monitor is displaying vintage Laverne & Shirley scenes; alternately amused and self-critical, Marshall and Williams join the throng watching them perform a series of Lucy-like pratfalls and wild contortions. Why was the show so packed with shtick? "We were getting around bad writing," Marshall laughs. "When we didn't like what was written, we tried to distract with physical bits. Then, because we did them so much, they started to write in physical bits."

She is interrupted by the arrival of more alumni: Michael McKean and David Lander, who played dim-bulb duo Lenny and Squiggy. After the squeals and hugs subside, Lander comments, "They were two moody girls. But when they were in the right mood, they could make people laugh like no one else. McKean, now a regular on Saturday Night Live, adds, "It felt like a great basketball team, especially when we were in the zone."

Meanwhile, Marshall and Williams rehearse the nostalgic good-bye that closes the special. They play it straight; then each catches the other's eye, and suddenly they erupt into a slapstick shoving match. Twenty years later, they still shtick each other.