BWW Looks Back On Career of Legendary Director & Writer Garry Marshall

Garry Marshall, best known for creating such iconic 1970s' TV shows as "Happy Days," "The Odd Couple," and for directing such classic films as Pretty Woman" and "The Princess Diaries," passed away on Tuesday, July 19th in Burbank, Calif. due to COMPLICATIONS from pneumonia following a stroke. He was 81.

As BWW recently reported, Marshall had officially secured the rights to move forward with his new PRETTY WOMAN stage musical adaptation, based on the hit film. The show was expected to arrive on Broadway sometime in 2017.

Marshall began his career as a joke writer for such comedians as Joey Bishop and Phil Foster, and then became a writer for The Tonight Show with Jack Paar. In 1961 he moved to Hollywood, where he teamed up with Jerry Belson as a writer for television. The pair worked on The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Joey Bishop Show, The Danny Thomas Show, and The Lucy Show. Their first television series as creator/producers was Hey, Landlord, which lasted one season (1966-67). They then adapted Neil Simon's play THE ODD COUPLE for television:

Marshall also created Happy Days, the TV series that idealized vision of life in the mid-1950s to mid-1960s United States which aired from January 15, 1974, to September 24, 1984, on ABC. The show was originally based on a segment from ABC's Love, American Style titled Love and the Television Set, featuring future cast members Ron Howard, Marion Ross and Anson Williams.

In 1978, Marshall created Mork & Mindy, a TV sitcom about an extraterrestrial who comes to Earth from the planet Ork in a small, one-Orkan egg-shaped spaceship. Robin Williams starred as Mork and Pam Dawber co-stars as Mindy McConnell, his human friend and roommate. Mork appeared in the Happy Days season five episode, "My Favorite Orkan", which first aired in February 1978 and is a take on the 1960s sitcom My Favorite Martian making Mork & Mindy an official spin-off of Happy Days.

In 1990, Marshall directed the feature film Pretty Woman, a story that centers around down-on-her-luck Hollywood hooker Vivian Ward, who is hired by Edward Lewis, a wealthy businessman, to be his escort for several business and social functions, and their developing relationship over the course of her week-long stay with him. Originally intended to be a dark cautionary tale about class and sex work in Los Angeles, the film was charged to work as a romantic comedy which made it widely successful at the box office and became one of the highest-grossing films of 1990.

Marshall later went on to direct The Princess Diaries, stars Anne Hathaway in her film debut as Mia Thermopolis, Julie Andrews as her grandmother Queen Dowager Clarisse Renaldi.

Marshall is survived by his wife of 53 years, nurse Barbara Sue Marshall; two sisters, Ronny Hallin and Penny Marshall; three children, Lori, a writer, Kathleen, a theater producer, and Scott, a film and TV director; and six grandchildren.

Photo Credit: Jennifer Broski

To post a comment, you must register and login.