To die at 81, beloved by generations, is not a bad way to go. Garry Marshall got to go out that way, and good for him.
A Bronx kid who never lost the accent – and maybe even leaned into it once he realized how much people loved it – Marshall’s populist instincts led him to create, produce or direct some of the most popular comedies ever produced in America – the TV version of The Odd Couple, the long-running series Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley and Mork & Mindy, Julia Roberts’s breakout smash Pretty Woman.
He wasn’t much of a filmmaker – with the sole exception of The Flamingo Kid, his movie work was pretty pedestrian – but he had an amazing eye for talent. Pretty Woman is the most obvious example, but try to imagine The Princess Diaries without Anne Hathaway in the lead (or Julie Andrews as her character’s grandmother), or Beaches without Bette Midler and Mayim Bialik, or Nothing In Common without Tom Hanks and Jackie Gleason. Hell, try to picture anyone other than Ron Howard and Henry Winkler as Richie Cunningham and Arthur Fonzarelli. Marshall knew that if he got the right people for the right roles, everything else would work itself out. Who would have thought anyone could replace Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau as Neil Simon’s Odd Couple? Marshall cast Tony Randall and Jack Klugman in the TV version, and that was that.
His generosity was legendary in the industry. People flat-out loved the guy. As the news of his death spread across Twitter, the platform was flooded with tweets from writers, actors and directors sharing stories of kindnesses or seemingly flippant advice that turned out to be essential. The word “mensch” was thrown around an awful lot.
And, of course, dozens of people shared the clip of Marshall’s cameo in Lost In America, where he played a casino manager opposite writer/director/star Albert Brooks with perfect comic timing. Because Marshall was an actor, too, and a surprisingly good one.
Though he started out as a writer – crafting bits for Jack Paar on the Tonight show and working on sitcoms for Danny Thomas, Joey Bishop, Lucille Ball and Dick Van Dyke before eventually finding his groove in the 70s with crowd-pleasers like Love, American Style, Angie and the Happy Days empire – Marshall was an inveterate ham, appearing in front of the camera whenever he could. (The IMDb credits him as one of the henchmen in Goldfinger, but no one’s been able to find him in the film.) He turned up in his own shows a lot, but Brooks’s casting of him in Lost In America demonstrated his range, and people took notice.
I’d be willing to bet there are people who know Marshall exclusively as an actor – people who saw him cranking his way through his sister Penny’s A League Of Their Own, or as a short-fused network executive clashing with Candice Bergen in Murphy Brown, or in one of dozens of cameos. He was, by all reports, a fun guy to work with why wouldn’t you bring him in for a couple of lines if you could?
Marshall was even savvy enough about his own reputation to play a voice role in BoJack Horseman, sending himself up as a hack director who blithely waves off problems with his Secretariat biopic by telling his star “we ain’t making Casablanca.” The joke is that he still believes he’s making great cinema – just not Casablanca, because that was a movie about a club owner named Rick.
I don’t think the real Garry Marshall had any such illusions. He was an entertainer, not an auteur, and while his films got sloppier over the years he continued to fill them with A-list talent. People said they worked with him for the fun of it (rather than, say, because it paid pretty well and wasn’t too challenging), and having done the press junket for New Year’s Eve, I kind of get that.
Nobody had any illusions about the kind of movie it was – one of Marshall’s worst, a lazy roundelay of intersecting rom-com bullshit in New York City anchored by preposterous complications – but the press conference felt like a party. Marshall and his old friend (and regular co-star) Hector Elizondo came out first, produced two sets of bongos, and played in the rest of the panel. And they weren’t just half-assing it. They were good – trading solos, changing up their rhythm, making faces when an actor’s entrance didn’t match their musical timing.
It was schticky as hell, sure, and it didn’t make New Year’s Eve any better, but it was also really entertaining. Garry Marshall made work seem fun. That’s a hell of a legacy, when you think about it.
normw@nowtoronto.com | @normwilner
