Sketch o’the Week: Laverne and Shirley!

Schlemiel! Schlimazel! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated! “Laverne and Shirley” was a huge hit as a spin off from the show “Happy Days”. Here’s my sketch of stars Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams. The show was a favorite in the Richmond household and my parents and siblings and I used to watch it on Tuesday nights right after “Happy Days”. How ingrained into our pop culture psyche was this show? The hard drives on my wife’s computer are named “Laverne” and “Shirley”, and her backup drive is “The Big Ragoo”. Our daughter’s hard drives are named “Lenny” and “Squiggy”. I haven’t seen an episode in probably thirty years, but it made an impact obviously.

Interestingly enough the characters of “Lenny” and “Squiggy” were not created for the show, but were characters created by the actors who played them, Micheal McKean and David Lander, while they were studying theater as college students and they continued to play them in live comedy shows. McKean and Landers were hired as writers for “Laverne and Shirley” and the characters were added to the cast after they performed them for show creator Garry Marshall. Penny was Garry’s sister BTW, and she’d go on to have a great career as a director with movies like “Big” and “A League of Their Own”.

Sadly all the main cast of this show are deceased except for McKean, who also has had a long and successful career in film and TV.