Penny Marshall Played an Underachiever on TV. In Real Life She Was Anything But

In the olden days of TV, long before Netflix or binge-watching and certainly before DVRs, people used to tune in on certain days and times to watch the shows they liked: If you were a kid in the mid-1970s—maybe, particularly, a girl—one of those shows was likely to be Laverne & Shirley, the Happy Days spinoff that became a huge hit by itself. Its stars, Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams, played young single women, roommates and best friends, in late 1950s Milwaukee.

In the olden days of TV, long before Netflix or binge-watching and certainly before DVRs, people used to tune in on certain days and times to watch the shows they liked: If you were a kid in the mid-1970s—maybe, particularly, a girl—one of those shows was likely to be Laverne & Shirley, the Happy Days spinoff that became a huge hit by itself. Its stars, Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams, played young single women, roommates and best friends, in late 1950s Milwaukee.