|
The first time I watched Laverne & Shirley I could only have been about
7 or 8 years old, I distinctly remember asking my mother, "Why does that
lady have a pound sign (£) on her jumper?" From then on, I was hooked. The trouble with being a Laverne and Shirley fan is that it doesn't get aired on UK terrestrial television very often, In fact, in the past 10 years, you'd be lucky if 30 episodes were shown. Happy Days gets repeated quite often, but Laverne and Shirley was destined to be shown either in the very early morning hours or extremely late graveyard slots. Recently satellite television has changed all that. In the past 8 months, every episode of L&S has been shown on 'The Paramount Comedy Channel' on SKY TV. This had to be ground breaking news for UK die-hard L&S fans who had been left out in the cold for years. When I started to watch and tape the shows again, it hadn't changed at all for me, most shows that you watched as a kid, you remember thinking were great and then years later you see them again and wonder, "What the hell was I thinking watching this?" But seeing Laverne and Shirley made me laugh just as much now as then. I decided to hunt around on the Internet to see if there were any fan sites or general information available on the show or cast. I was sadly disappointed to find that there was nothing, nothing at all in the way of a fan site, and next to no information on the show itself. So I decided to create my own fan site, I had a rough working site on my hard disk but I desperately needed information to put up on my site or it would be nothing more than a list of my likes and dislikes about the characters. I found biographical information on the various cast members but most of it was sparse or actually out of date and some were missing chunks of work from their biographies. I took what I could and set about fleshing out a more in-depth biography sheet for the cast. This didn't take too long as I borrowed various friends film review books and Cinemania type CD's. I then wrote my own comments and brief descriptions of the character that each actor played. Even now, I'm constantly getting pieces of information from other fans to add to the bio's to help keep them up to date. I bought a video capture card and grabbed myself a few pictures of the actors and a few pictures from the show to help jazz up the layout of the pages. I added pictures and bio's for the cameo characters who only had small parts but were still characters that returned enough to warrant a mention. I had to include information for Garry Marshall, the creator of the show, and I managed to add a couple of interviews he had given over the years. I had always looked for an episode guide to the series but had never found one, when I got access to the internet I spent whole weekends trying to track down episode information but I never found anything useful. So once again I set out to write my own, I got various episode titles from here and there and as I have the shows on tape writing the plotlines and listing the guest stars wasn't too hard, but it was very time consuming. Then I was contacted by another huge L&S fan, Cindy Pinti in Ohio who had also been writing a Laverne and Shirley episode guide, and she had the correct airing order direct from Paramount. We put the two guides into one, added production information, more in-depth plotlines and at last for the first time anywhere, we had created a definitive L&S episode guide which had all the shows titles listed in the correct original airing order and was now on-line and available to fans. The guide is always being updated as I write greater in-depth plotlines for the shows when I get time. I added a notable guest appearances page as it's quite surprising just how many of today's top Hollywood stars got a start on Laverne and Shirley, again my trusty capture card allowed me to illustrate the page with screen captures of the guest stars. Top it off with an illustrated list of Laverne and Shirley merchandise and merchandise links, some sounds, some stories from fans, theme music, pictures of the cast as they were when L&S first aired in 1976 and as they are today, rumours about the new L&S big screen movie and loads of behind the scenes information about what was happening behind the cameras with the cast and crew. It certainly surprised me to find out that L&S was a troubled show to film as many of the cast were arguing with each other and to find out that Cindy William's and Penny Marshall were very competitive in their roles. I always thought that David Landers ( Squiggy) and Michael McKean (Lenny) helped to make the show such a hit with their great portrayal of the characters they created, Lenny and Squiggy. In the beginning, they weren't on screen for more than a few minutes at a time, but the characters were so endearing to the public that they eventually became central characters to the show and helped provide much of the comedy and laughs that made Laverne and Shirley what it was. You would always know when Lenny and Squiggy were about to come through the doors as Laverne or Shirley would be talking about something 'slimey and oil.' Then they would come with their traditional "Hello" from Squiggy. In reality both teams of Cindy Williams and Penny Marshall and David Landers and Michael McKean were talented comedy writers. That's how Penny and Cindy met: they teamed up and wrote their own comedy sketches in the early 70's, similarly with David and Michael except they went on to form their own comedy troupe called 'The Credibility Gap' which they toured around the college-club concert circuit. Warner brothers released an audio tape of one of their live stand up shows in 197; it was later released on CD by Warners in 1994 and is quite a sought after collectors piece if you can find it. Penny's brother Garry was filming an episode of Happy Days when he needed two girls to play the parts of Richie and Potsie's girlfriends. He cast his sister and her friend Cindy Williams in the one-shot roles. Laverne DeFazio and Shirley Feeney made their first ever TV appearances on Happy Days; fortunately that wasn't to be their last. The characters of the girls was so popular with the viewing public that they soon got their own tv show, and Penny suggested bringing in Michael and David as additional comedy writers/performers on the show. So Laverne and Shirley, Lenny and Squiggy soon became household names. In the week of January 28th, 1979 Laverne and Shirley was rated the number one Nielson rated show. I must mention the other great supporting actors who helped make up the Laverne and Shirley family, Phil Foster as Frank DeFazio who died only 2 years after L&S finished, Betty Garrett who played Frank's wife and before that the girls landlady, Eddie Mekka, who was 'The Big Ragu,' Shirley's long time on/off boyfriend, and to a lesser extent the characters of Rosie (Carol White), Rhonda (Leslie Easterbrook), who went on to play Sgt. Callahan in the Police Academy movies, Ed Marinaro (Sonny), and Vicki Lawrence (Sgt. Plout), who went on to talk show fame. There's a lot of new stuff planned for the site in the upcoming weeks; I have about 100 pages of A4 text waiting to be uploaded regarding the behind the scene feuding from news cuttings taken from magazines and papers from the time that L&S was being originally aired, more pictures, more sounds, and even more juicy behind the scenes stories. Also, the front-end will be going through a major rewrite to make the site look more professional. I'm constantly on the look out for any Laverne and Shirley information that I don't already have, so if any of you readers has anything to add or has any comments, you can contact me via my site or via my email address listed below.
|
Laverne & Shirley - The ONLY Fan Site On The Web
