Trivia: Instantly recognizable for her cute overbite, raucous voice, and broad Bronx accent, Penny Marshall successfully made the transition from popular comic actress to a respected director and producer of popular mainstream feature films. A New York native (born Carole Penny Marsciarelli), Marshall is the daughter of an industrial filmmaker and a dance instructor. She started dancing herself as a toddler and as a teen competed on The Ted Mack Amateur Hour with a dance troupe comprised of several friends. The group also appeared on The Jackie Gleason Show. By the time she was a young adult and had graduated with degrees in math and psychology from the University of New Mexico, her older brother, Garry Marshall, had established himself as a successful television writer. It was Garry who provided Marshall with her first film role in his feature film debut effort as a screenwriter and producer in How Sweet It Is (1968).When her brother began creating and producing situation comedies, he made sure Marshall had parts in his shows, the first of which was My Friend Tony and the second was The Odd Couple, where she had a recurring role. Marshall also guest starred on other comedies, including The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but her big break didn't come until her brother cast her and her friend Cindy Williams as Laverne and Shirley in an episode of his popular series Happy Days. Her portrayal of a wiseacre working-class broad and Williams' take on the more innocent Shirley gained an instant fan base and so Garry Marshall was inspired to build a sitcom around the characters. Laverne and Shirley debuted in 1978 and ran through 1983. During this period, Marshall was married to actor-turned-director Rob Reiner. She divorced him in the early '80s. At that time, it was apparent that her acting career was on a dead-end street and Marshall decided to try out directing. Beginning with television movies and series such as The Tracey Ullman Show, Marshall learned to direct. She made her feature film directorial debut with the Whoopi Goldberg vehicle Jumpin' Jack Flash (1986) which had originally been slated for director Howard Zieff. Returning her brother's favors, she gave him a part in the film and also created a part for her daughter, Tracy Reiner (the offspring from Marshall's first marriage to Michael Henry). The film was a critical and box-office dud, but this did not deter Marshall from trying again. Her second attempt at directing, Big (1988), the story of a boy whose wish is granted and so finds himself stranded in a man's body, made actor Tom Hanks a movie star and established Marshall as a respectable big-league filmmaker. Still, she took two years to finish her next film, Awakenings (1990). This was due in part to 20th Century Fox's reluctance to have the story filmed until Marshall had engaged her friends Robin Williams, in a rare subdued dramatic role, and Robert De Niro. A well-made and poignant drama, Awakenings received three Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture. For her next film, Marshall offered up a sentimental, funny, and ebullient look at the women who kept professional baseball alive when all the young men were off fighting during WWII in A League of Their Own (1992). It was a well-crafted effort that has grown in popularity on video and netted star Geena Davis a Golden Globe nomination. Since then, Marshall's directorial output yielded uneven results and her films, while still loaded with mainstream appeal, had yet to reach the degree of popularity of her earlier work. In the late '90s, she and her much-younger pal, comedian Rosie O'Donnell, became popular for a series of television commercials for K-Mart. In addition to directing and producing, Marshall occasionally continued to work as an actress on television and in films, and earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (alongside her Laverne and Shirley co-star Cindy Williams) in 2004. Though at the time it appeared that Marshall had taken a hiatus from the director's chair, she would later resurface to direct episiodes of According to Jim and United States of Tara before lending her voice to the animated comedy series The Life and Times of Jim, and making an appearance in Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein's hipster-skewing sketch series Portlandia.

Trivia: Upon graduating from LA City College, petite brunette actress Cindy Williams sought out and found stage and film work, supporting herself as a waitress between engagements. In films from 1970, Williams earned critical and popular plaudits for her work as Ron Howard's girlfriend in American Graffiti (1973) and as a highly unlikely murderess in The Conversation (1974). Her musical comedy prowess was shown off to excellent advantage in the better-than-it-sounds The First Nudie Musical (1975). In 1976, Williams signed to star as eternally optimistic brewery worker Shirley Feeney in the blue-collar sitcom Laverne and Shirley (1976-83). The series proved to be a smash, winning its Tuesday night timeslot for several seasons. Married to comedian Bill Hudson, Williams became pregnant in 1982, a circumstance that was hastily written into the program. Feeling that the L & S producers were using her pregnancy as an excuse to ease her off the series, she stormed off the set permanently, filing a $20,000,000 lawsuit against Paramount Pictures. Williams' later TV-series credits have included Normal Life and Just Getting By. Increasingly active on the business end of show business, Cindy Williams served as co-producer of the two Father of the Bride films of the 1990s.

Trivia: Born in Brooklyn, David L. Lander was raised in Bronx. Lander attended drama classes at Carnegie Tech, where he befriended fellow student Michael McKean. The two budding comedians joined a Hollywood improv group called the Credibility Gap (another member was Harry Shearer), gaining a huge fan following with their manic appearances on an LA radio station. Hired by producer Gary Marshall as writers/consultants for the '70s TV sitcom Laverne and Shirley, Lander and McKean immediately wrote themselves into the first show. Lander played Andrew "Squiggy" Squiggman and McKean portrayed Lenny Kosnowski, two adenoidal, terminally stupid truck drivers for Milwaukee's Shotz Brewery. The boys remained with the series from 1976 to 1983, then pretty much went their separate ways. Lander played comic character roles in films, and was prominently featured in the off-the-wall television efforts of David Lynch, notably the 1992 series On the Air, in which he was cast as unintelligible TV director Vladja Gochktch. Since providing the voice of the title character in the 1970 animated cartoon series Will the Real Jerry Lewis Please Sit Down?, Lander has been a busy and versatile voiceover artist, most recently as Lechner in the USA Network's Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills (1994-95). Also for USA, he played the recurring role of Elvis the mechanic in the 1995 series Pacific Blue. David L. Lander's credits are sometimes confused with those of British actor David Lander.

Trivia: Like Sheckey Greene and Guy Marks, Dick Shawn was a nightclub comedian whose talents were highly prized by the members of his profession, but who took quite some time building up a fan following with "civilian" audiences. Beginning his film career with a peripheral role in 1956's The Opposite Sex, Shawn signed a contract with 20th Century Fox in 1960. He starred in an Arabian Nights satire, The Wizard of Baghdad (1960), which may have been too "inside" for fans of that genre. After co-starring with Ernie Kovacs in Wake Me When It's Over (1961), Shawn was generally seen in secondary, plot-motivating comic roles in such films as It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963) and What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? (1966). He was hysterically funny in Mel Brooks' The Producers (1967), playing an erratic hippie actor named L.S.D. who was cast in the musical play "Springtime for Hitler" as a singing Fuehrer. Outside of The Producers, Shawn was seen to best advantage in his bizarre, stream-of-consciousness nightclub routines. So quirky and unpredictable were his live performances that, when Dick Shawn died of a heart attack while performing before a college crowd in San Diego, many members of the audience assumed his collapse was part of the act.