Marshall scored two appearances on The Mary Tyler Moore Show before scoring a larger role on another of her brother's series, Happy Days. By 1971, after several years in Los Angeles, Marshall landed a recurring role as secretary Myrna Turner on The Odd Couple, a show her brother wrote. The few television commercials she booked focused on her less-than-glamorous looks, featuring her as the 'before' in before-and-after ads for supposedly transformative beauty products. Penny Marshall and her brother, Garry, in 2004 Photo: Vince Bucci/Getty Images While there, she reunited with her brother Garry, who was working as a comedy writer, and her sister Ronny Hallin, who was a casting director and producer. Marshall worked as a tap dancer and secretary to support the young family, but when the marriage ended a few years later, she decided to move to Los Angeles to try to break into show business. She married Henry and dropped out of school. While in college, she took up with a campus football player named Michael Henry and became pregnant with their daughter, Tracy. 'Obviously, they failed,' she later quipped in her distinctive New York cadence. She ventured west to the University of New Mexico, where she studied math and psychology, and enlisted friends and teachers to help her lose her thick Bronx accent. Penny had two siblings, older brother Garry and sister Ronny, whom she would later follow into show business.Īfter spending her entire childhood in the Bronx, Marshall 'wanted to get out,' following graduation from Walton High School in 1960.

Penny's Italian-American father changed the family's last name from Marsciarelli to Marshall before she was born. Early Lifeīorn Carole Penny Marshall on October 15, 1943, in New York City, Marshall grew up in the Bronx with parents Tony Marshall, a director and producer, and Marjorie Marshall, a dance teacher. She went on to direct Big, Awakenings, A League of Their Own and Riding in Cars With Boys.

The film wasn't a hit, but it launched Marshall's career. In 1985, Marshall's friend, Whoopi Goldberg, convinced her to pursue a career in directing, starting with the movie Jumpin' Jack Flash.

Penny Marshall spent her early years as Laverne on the sitcom Laverne and Shirley.

My Mother Was Nuts by Penny Marshall