LOS ANGELES (AP) — Cindy Williams, who was one of America’s most recognizable stars in the 1970s and 1980s for her role as Shirley opposite Penny Marshall’s Laverne on the beloved sitcom “Laverne & Shirley,” died, his family said Monday.
Williams died in Los Angeles at age 75 on Wednesday after a brief illness, her children, Zak and Emily Hudson, said in a statement issued through family spokeswoman Liza Cranis.
“The passing of our kind and hilarious mother, Cindy Williams, has brought us an insurmountable sadness that could never truly be expressed,” the statement read. “Knowing her and loving her has been our joy and privilege. She was unique, beautiful, generous, and possessed a brilliant sense of humor and a glowing spirit that everyone loved.”
Williams worked with some of Hollywood’s most elite directors in a film career that preceded his full-time switch to television, appearing in George Cukor’s 1972 “Travels With My Aunt,” George Lucas’s 1973 “American Graffiti.” and “The Conversation” by Francis Ford Coppola. “from 1974.
But she was best known for “Laverne & Shirley,” the “Happy Days” spin-off that ran on ABC from 1976 to 1983 and was one of the most popular shows on television in its prime.
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Williams played straitlaced Shirley Feeney to Marshall’s more rakish Laverne DeFazio on the show about a pair of blue-collar roommates who toiled on the assembly line at a Milwaukee brewery in the 1950s and 1960s.
“They were beloved characters,” Williams told The Associated Press in 2002.
DeFazio was short-tempered and defensive; Feeney was naive and trusting. The actors drew on their own lives for inspiration for the plot.
“We would make a list at the beginning of every season of the talent we had,” Marshall told the AP in 2002. “Cindy could touch her nose with her tongue, and we used that on the show. She tap danced”.
Williams told The Associated Press in 2013 that she and Marshall had “very different personalities,” but that the stories of the two clashing during the making of the show were “a bit of a stretch.”
The series was the network’s rare hit about working-class characters, with its self-empowering opening song: “Give us any chance, we’ll take it, read us any rule, we’ll break it.”
That opening would become as popular as the show itself. Williams and Marshall’s chant of “schlemiel, schlimazel” as they skipped together became a cultural phenomenon and an oft-invoked piece of nostalgia.
Marshall, whose brother, Garry Marshall, co-created the series, died in 2018.
Actor rosario dawson shared a video of the opening theme song on Twitter on Tuesday.
“Singing this song with so much gratitude to both of you ladies,” Dawson tweeted. “Absolute gems. United again… Rest in Paradise Cindy Williams”.
The show also starred Michael McKean and David Lander as Lenny and Squiggy, Laverne and Shirley’s strange hangers-on. Lander died in 2020.
McKean paid tribute to Williams on Twitter with a throwback to the production.
“Backstage Season 1 – I’m off stage waiting for a cue. The script has been difficult so we are giving it 110% and the audience is having a great time,” McKean tweeted. “Cindy slides past me to make her entrance and with a glorious smile, she says: ‘she’s cooking!’ Amen. Thank you Cindy.
When ratings dipped in season six, the characters moved from Milwaukee to Burbank, California, trading their brewery jobs for jobs at a department store.
In 1982, Williams became pregnant and wanted her work hours reduced. When her demands were not met, she left the set and filed a lawsuit against her production company. She appeared infrequently during the last season.
Williams was born as one of two sisters in the Van Nuys area of Los Angeles in 1947. Her family moved to Dallas shortly after she was born, but she returned to Los Angeles, where she began acting while attending Birmingham High School. and majored in performing arts at LA City College.
His acting career began with small television roles beginning in 1969, with appearances on “Room 222,” “Nanny and the Professor,” and “Love, American Style.”
His role in Lucas’s “American Graffiti” would become a defining role. The film was a precursor to a nostalgia boom for the 1950s and early 1960s that would follow. “Happy Days,” starring her “American Graffiti” co-star Ron Howard, would be released the following year. The characters of Laverne and Shirley made their first television appearance as dates on Henry Winkler’s Fonzie before having their own show.
Lucas also considered her for the role of Princess Leia in “Star Wars,” a role that went to Carrie Fisher.
Over the past three decades, Williams has made guest appearances on dozens of television series, including “7th Heaven,” “8 Simple Rules,” and “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.” In 2013, she and Marshall appeared in a “Laverne & Shirley” tribute episode of the Nickelodeon series “Sam and Cat.”
Last year, Williams appeared in a one-woman show filled with stories from her career, “Me, Myself and Shirley,” at a theater in Palm Springs, California, near her Desert Hot Springs home.
Williams was married to singer Bill Hudson of the Hudson Brothers musical group from 1982 to 2000. Hudson fathered their two children. He was previously married to Goldie Hawn and is also the father of actress Kate Hudson.
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