- published: 13 Jan 2014
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Penny Marshall (born Carole Penelope Marshall; October 15, 1942) is an American actress, producer and director.
After playing several small roles for television, she was cast as Laverne DeFazio in the sitcom Laverne and Shirley. A ratings success, the show ran from 1976 until 1983, during which Marshall was nominated for a Golden Globe award for her performance three times.
She progressed to directing films such as Big (1988), the first film directed by a woman to gross in excess of $100 million at the U.S. box office, Awakenings (1990), which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, and A League of Their Own (1992). In more recent years, she has produced Cinderella Man (2005) and Bewitched (2005), as well as episodes of According to Jim (2009). She most recently directed two episodes of the Showtime original series United States of Tara.
Marshall was born in The Bronx, New York City, the daughter of Marjorie Irene (née Ward), a tap dance teacher who ran a dance school, and Anthony Wallace Marshall, a director of industrial films and later a producer. She is the sister of actor/director/TV producer Garry Marshall and Ronny Hallin, a TV producer. Her father was of Italian descent, his family having come from Abruzzo, and her mother was of English and Scottish descent; her father changed his last name from Masciarelli to Marshall before Penny was born. In the 1950s, she grew up in an apartment on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx on a block that also spawned Neil Simon, Paddy Chayefsky, Calvin Klein, and Ralph Lauren. She began her career as a tap dancer at age 3, and later taught tap at her mother's dance school. She is a graduate of Walton High School in New York City and attended the University of New Mexico. In 1967, she moved to Los Angeles to join her older brother Garry Marshall, a writer whose credits at the time included TV's The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961–1966).
Actors: April Telek (actress), Roger Bellon (composer), Stanley M. Brooks (producer), Jerry Wasserman (actor), Daniel Roebuck (actor), Venus Terzo (actress), Sam Vincent (actor), Adrian Hough (actor), Ryan Robbins (actor), David Richmond-Peck (actor), Peter Bryant (actor), Tyler Labine (actor), David Lewis (actor), Bridget Durnford (editor), Matt Dorff (producer),
Plot: It's 1970's Hollywood and a future movie star was on the horizon and looking for his big break. His name is Robin Williams and he's an up and coming comic on the Los Angeles comedy circuit. While on the other end of town, producer Garry Marshall and partner Harvey Severson have developed a new show called Mork & Mindy, that's a spinoff to their previous hit show "Happy Days". It's in their meeting with Williams that they have found the ideal actor to play Mork. But as the show slowly turns into a hit, the story of what happened behind the camera unfolds as a young comic is suddenly handed everything he ever wanted very quickly, which affected his personal life as well as those in it. Set against the backdrop of Mork & Mindy, this is a story about a show's rise to number one, it's struggles on the production, and the rising star of Robin Williams.
Keywords: character-name-in-title, television-showActors: Sam McDaniel (actor), Wade Boteler (actor), Hobart Bosworth (actor), Frank Mayo (actor), Eddy Chandler (actor), Roland Drew (actor), Sol Gorss (actor), John Hamilton (actor), John Harmon (actor), Edward Hearn (actor), Herbert Heywood (actor), Howard C. Hickman (actor), Fred Kelsey (actor), Hank Mann (actor), Bert Moorhouse (actor),
Plot: A newspaperman out to get the goods on a crooked politician winds up in jail, framed for a killing he didn't commit. He and another prisoner attempt an escape, but although the newspaperman gets away, his colleague is caught and returned to jail. Years later, the convict gets out of prison and winds up in the same town where his former cell-mate is now a respected citizen, and attempts to blackmail him.
Keywords: 1940s, alias, b-movie, blackmail, candidate, cell-mate, cigarette-smoking, corruption, crook, crooked-politician