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Responsible for a string of small and large screen hits that have made him one of the industry's biggest names, he began his career in NYC as a copy boy and sports reporter for the DAILY NEWS while also moonlighting as a gag writer for such stand-up talents as Phil Foster and Joey Bishop. A drummer in his own successful jazz band and an ineffectual stand-up comic, Marshall made his TV acting debut with a recurring role in the long-running "George Burns and Gracie Allen Show" (CBS, 1950-58) and since then has contributed frequent cameos, plus the occasional larger part, to both film and TV projects. In 1960 Jack Paar hired him to write material for the original "Tonight Show", and in 1962, Joey Bishop, who had gotten his own TV show, brought Marshall out to Hollywood to work with him.
Marshall began a long-standing collaboration with Jerry Belson, writing episodes for such legendary sitcoms as "The Danny Thomas Show" (ABC), "The Lucy Show" (CBS) and "The Dick Van Dyke Show" (CBS, created by the elder Reiner), as well as for the dramatic adventure series "I Spy" (NBC). They also worked on several primetime specials and created and produced the short-lived NBC sitcom "Hey, Landlord" (1966-67) before developing Neil Simon's Broadway hit "The Odd Couple" into the long-running sitcom (1970-75) starring Jack Klugman and Tony Randall as network TV's first all-male household. Marshall also gave baby sister Penny her first acting job in a recurring role on the series as Klugman's secretary. Though not considered an unqualified success during its initial five-year run, it later achieved its classic status in reruns. With Belson, he also dipped his toe into feature waters for the first time, producing and scripting "How Sweet it Is" (1968), starring James Garner and Debbie Reynolds.
Independent of Belson, Marshall anticipated the zeitgeist and developed "Happy Days" (1974-84), flagship for the 50s nostalgia craze and one of TV's longest running and highest rated series. More cartoon than sitcom, the show started modestly and built in popularity until the 1976-77 season when it became television's number one program. Viewing the era though the rose-tinted glasses of the 70s, it made a major star out of one of its supporting actors, Henry Winkler, whose greasy-haired dropout Arthur 'Fonzie' Fonzarelli (a.k.a. 'The Fonz') provided an edgy counterpoint to the show's innocent teenagers (i.e., Ron Howard, Anson Williams) and helped make the series a hit. The Smithsonian Institute's 1980 announcement that it would enshrine the Fonz's leather jacket confirmed Winkler's iconic status, an amazing cultural phenomenon for the actor who had risen all the way from fifth billing to top billing with Howard's departure that year.
Marshall spun-off two successful ABC sitcoms from "Happy Days", "Laverne and Shirley" (1976-83), about two zany roommates--one played by Marshall's sister Penny--who like the "Happy Days" bunch lived in 50s Milwaukee (and worked for a brewery), and "Mork and Mindy" (1978-82), which made Robin Williams an overnight star as Mork, the space alien who arrives on Earth to study life on the primitive planet. Propelled by the laughs that their characters and situations generated, the three shows had no planned, deeper messages, and Marshall's decision to make broad entertainments concentrating more on amusement than enlightenment received tremendous validation the week of January 18, 1979 when no fewer than four of Neilsen's top five series were his: "Laverne and Shirley" (1), "Happy Days" (2), "Mork & Mindy" (3) and NBC's "Angie" (5). The "Happy Days" franchise would spawn one final series, "Joanie Loves Chachi" (ABC, 1982-83), but by then his attention had wandered to a new arena.
Marshall parlayed his triple threat TV career--writer, director, producer--into feature film directing, debuting with "Young Doctors in Love" (1982), an all-star comedy that didn't quite hit the mark. His directorial outings during the 80s included well-received movies like the coming-of-age teen movie "The Flamingo Kid" (1984, starring Matt Dillon), the Goldie Hawn-Kurt Russell comedy "Overboard" (1987), and the Bette Midler soaper "Beaches", but he hit big box office pay dirt with the highly popular "Pretty Woman" (1990), which not only revived Richard Gere's sagging career and made Julia Roberts a star, but also became one of Disney's highest grossing live-action features. Next, critics almost unanimously hailed Marshall's affecting direction of Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer as two lonely people finding each other in "Frankie and Johnny" (1991), but his follow-up project, an adaptation of Anne Rice's erotic novel "Exit To Eden" (1994), which he co-produced and directed, was a timid tease and an unqualified flop.
Marshall professes a lifelong fondness for the theater, and his first stab at playwriting, "Shelves", ran for four weeks in Chicago's Pheasant Run Playhouse. Subsequently, "The Roast" (1980), which he co-wrote with partner Belson, lasted four days on Broadway, but he had better luck with "Wrong Turn at Lungfish" (1993), co-written with "A League of Their Own" screenwriter Lowell Ganz, which enjoyed regional exposure in Los Angeles and at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre before its off-Broadway run at NYC's Promenade Theatre (a production helmed by Marshall). His plans to build a theater got sidetracked in the mid-80s ("I pretty much lost the money I made in TV"), but the success of "Pretty Woman" got the ball rolling again, culminating in the opening of Burbank's 120-seat Falcon Theatre (named after a "gang" he used to hang with during his Bronx teenage days) in 1997.
Ironically, Marshall achieved a more prominent public profile for his recurring role as the Machiavellian network exec Stan Lansing on the popular CBS sitcom "Murphy Brown" from 1993-98 than for all his many successes "off-camera." He also acted in sister Penny's "A League of Their Own" (1992) and executive produced and starred in the Showtime movie "The Twilight of the Golds" (1997, adapted from the play by Jonathan Tolins), not to mention making cameo appearances in "Hocus Pocus" (1993), "Soulmates" (1996), "With Friends Like These ..." (1998), "Can't Be Heaven" (2000), "Tomcats" (2001) and "The Hollywood Sign" (2001). Marshall's newfound career as a character actor and voice artist resulted in featured roles in films including "Never Been Kissed" (1999), "The Majestic" (2001), "Orange County" (2002), "The Long Ride Home" (2003) and as Bernie on the CGI-animated NBC series "Father of the Pride" (2004 - ).
As for feature directing, Marshall was finding "Pretty Woman" a very tough act to duplicate. "Dear God" (1996), after getting off to a promising start, lost its conviction, and despite strong performances by leads Juliette Lewis and Giovanni Ribisi, in "The Other Sister" (1999), the cloying sweetness of that romantic comedy about two mentally challenged people who fall in love seemed better suited to the small screen. After batting around and abandoning a possible sequel to "Pretty Woman," Marshall hoped to recapture some long-ago magic by reteaming with Roberts and Gere in "Runaway Bride" (also 1999), a romantic comedy about a woman who has left four men at the altar and the intrepid reporter who succumbs to her charms while investigating her story. Not surprisingly, the film failed to snare the same lightning in a bottle as the trio's original collaboration, though it was not without its moments.
Just as it seemed Marshall, an avid softball player when not behind the camera, was starting to get off his game, he hit an unexpected homerun with yet another Cinderella story, "The Princess Diaries" (2001), in which an awkward 15-year-old (Anne Hathaway) discovers she is actually the princess of a postage-stamp-sized country and must learn to act regal under the tutelage of her imperious but ultimatley understanding grandmother (Julie Andrews). The G-rated film, altogether predictable and sweet but with offbeat comedic moments worthy of Marshall's sit-com best, proved to be a "Pretty Woman" for the tween-to-teen set, and provided a necessary shot in the arm to the director's career. It would also inspire the Marshall-helmed sequel "The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement" (2004), an equally assured outing. That same year, Marshall would also helm the unchallenging, overtly sentimental but occasionally entertaining comedy "Raising Helen," starring Kate Hudson as a self-invovled career woman who suddenly finds herself playing guardian to her late sister's three children.
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