April 29, 1976 - TV Guide
By: Bill O'Hallaren

Viewers seeing the Lenny & Squiggy characters on "Laverne & Shirley" for the first time can be pardoned for asking, not who are they, but what are they. Answers vary. Squiggy is the little one with the worm curl over his forehead and look of smug imbecility. His chief passion is his moth collection. He speaks a self-invented language filled with words like "rememorize", and it's been said he is the dumbest person on Earth. Lenny is the dumbest person's stooge. Lenny, with the askew hat and vacant eyes, also has a prize possession--his good shirt--which he keeps in a mayonnaise jar in the refridgerator. The two are truck drivers for the brewery that employs Laverne & Shirley and they drive the truck into things, such as carts of cantaloupes. They have invented the radio toothbrush. They think others speak their language. When a ship's loudspeaker says it's time to disembark, they bark. They are keenly competitive, specializing in marshmallow stuffing. Lenny once crammed 39 into his mouth at the same time. And they like Laverne & Shirley almost as much as their moths and good shirt. Penny Marshall - Laverne - believes the characters "are a couple of disgusting idiots. The natural question everytime you see them is: who let them in?" Cindy Williams - Shirley - explains that the two are important to the show because "They are the only two people in the world who can make Laverne & Shirley look classy."

Michael McKean and David L. Lander, who have been doing Lenny & Squiggy in much their present form since their undergraduate days at Carnegie Tech., surely understand the pair better than anyone else. Lander notes, "We are two strange things. We are actually your basic lunatics. Every intellectual would like to be a lunatic. We have a license to be lunatics." As might be expected, Lenny & Squiggy have a unique following. On personal appearances, McKean reports, "Guys come up to us talking like Lenny & Squiggy, and we think, hey, that's a great imitation. Only it's no imitation." On meeting them, some fans open the conversation with a sound like "Awwe" followed by a punch to the ribs. One admirer asked for their autographs, to be written on his girl's arm. A remark they often hear is, "You remind me of me." There are times fans fail to recognize them. McKean, without the Lenny hat and hairdo, and with his eyes switched to bright, is another tall, reddish-blond Robert Redford look-alike and indeed was once considered for a suave, lady killer role when the show was in its formative stages. Lander, with his hair combed normally, could pass for a young English professor and is, in fact, capable of coming up with such lines, in baritone, as "Now see here, my good man, Squiggy is simply a dramatic portrayal."

Lander says they both have had chances to play the good-looking guy next door, but "nothing fun ever happens to the guy next door." The truth is, the pair have an outrageously good time playing Lenny & Squiggy, and believe they have a comedy act that will go on and on, far beyond the present show and any spinoffs. Both 30, they've been close friends since their college days. Lander is single; McKean and his wife, Susan, have a 2 year old son, Colin. McKean and Lander were hired for the show principally on the basis of a performance that they gave one night at a Rob Reiner-Penny Marshall party that led to their being signed the same night by Penny's brother, Garry, who was then putting "Laverne & Shirley" together. Their weird characters were obviously successful from the start, but still difficult for the various writers and producers to understand, and the difficulties increased during the second season when the show developed internal frictions.

"The show was in strange shape," McKean recalls. "We were high in the ratings, but no one felt secure and the people in charge were panicking. We were getting yelled at. Then it became messiah-time. Everyday they would bring some guy around and say, 'This is the messiah. He is going to save the show.' Next day, a new messiah." The various messiahs had trouble understanding what Lenny & Squiggy are, and the pair found their lines reduced, eliminated, or, worst of all, written in terms that weren't pure Lenny & Squiggy. "We are hard to write for," Lander admits, "because we aren't ordinary stupid, we are busy stupid. A page full of 'Duhs' isn't Lenny & Squiggy."

A basic problem, according to Cindy Williams, was that, "No one expected the show to be such a hit. It was like an army going into battle without any plans, but it starts winning. It doesn't know what to do next." Thomas L. Miller, executive producer with Edward K. Milkis, recalls, "We were shocked by success. It was a difficult year all around - one that none of us ever wants to go through again."

Finally, Miller and Milkis decided, "We would rather have no show at all than one this unhappy. So, Eddie and I, with the network's approval, called everybody in one by one and said, 'Look, we love you, we want you, but we want a happy show even more. Anyone who doesn't go along can be replaced'." That seemed to offer the basic security that the cast wanted and they are moving into the third season brimming with mutual affection.

Cindy Williams and Penny Marshall curl up to talk about McKean and Lander like a couple of schoolgirls giggling over the antics of beloved class cut-ups. "There isn't a day," Williams insists, popping her bubble gum, "when they don't do some damn thing that makes us laugh. Talk about knowing their characters, they once did Lenny & Squiggy for two days. Every move for 48 hours was Lenny & Squiggy. They're nuts."

Lenny & Squiggy were born in all-night bull sessions in the dorms of Carnegie Tech. McKean, from Sea Cliff, Long Island; and Lander, born in Brooklyn and raised in the Bronx - both from middle-class backgrounds, were drama students who hit it off at first meeting and found themselves getting laughs from their classmates by doing imitations, according to McKean, "of various idiots we knew."

Lander was first to strike for Hollywood and found a job in an improvisational group called 'The Credibility Gap'. McKean soon joined him and the Gap, whose members also included Harry Shearer and Richard Beebe, and had a merry time appearing before tiny audiences and hurling satirical barbs at practically everyone of importance. A Los Angeles rock'n'roll station (KRLA) hired the Gap to do three 10 minute sketches each day, loosely based on the news. The skits often implied that many of the Nation's leaders sounded like, and were about the brain power of, Lenny & Squiggy.

One schoolgirl who was madly partisan toward the Gap was Cindy Williams, who "would have given anything in the world to join them." Rob Reiner was also an early fan who became a friend and, for a time, before Reiner married Penny Marshall, he and Lander were roommates. The Reiners threw a party one night when Laverne & Shirley was in the casting stage; McKean and Lander were among the guests and, sometime before morning, they did a raucous and bawdy Lenny & Squiggy routine.

The next morning, Garry Marshall dropped into producer Miller's office, "I've hired a couple of writers," he announced. "They were at this party and they... they also act." Miller's first reaction was that there should be a constitutional amendment barring TV executives from hiring people at parties, and he was even more sure when he saw the first lines written for Lenny & Squiggy. "These guys seem like a couple of idiots," he said. Despairingly, Marshall answered, "Yes, that's more or less the idea." But when Miller saw the pair perform those dumb lines, he was entranced enough to persuade ABC to sign them to a long-term contract and a pilot is now in the works that may launch them into a series of their own.

McKean and Lander enjoy analyzing their wacky characters almost as much as playing them. "I don't know whether anybody really believes Lenny & Squiggy," Lander philosophizes, "but they laugh anyway." "The kids like us," McKean guesses, "because Lenny & Squiggy get away with stuff they can't and they never get punished. What Lenny & Squiggy are doing is shaking up the system."