“At the end of camp, my parents picked me up and we caught up during the long drive back to the Bronx. Everything was the same, my mother said, nothing was new, that is until I asked how my grandfather was doing. 'Oh, he died,' my mother said. 'Excuse me?' I said, shocked. 'He died,' she said. 'When?' I asked. 'Around the beginning of the summer,' she said.” -- actor, director and producer Penny Marshall (10/15/1943 - 12/17/2018) from her autobiography "My Mother Was Nuts: A Memoir" (2012). Judging from that excerpt, Penny was on to something. Comedy was Marshall's great gift, as viewers of the long running comedy "Laverne and Shirley" will tell you. Marshall also directed such memorable films as "A League of Their Own," "Jumpin' Jack Flash,""Big," and "Awakenings," and was the first female director to have a film grossing over $100 million in the U.S. for 1988's "Big."
(photo: Marshall directing on the set of "Jumpin' Jack Flash", 1986)
