Laverne & Shirley Star and Director Penny Marshall Dies at 75

In both TV and movies, she was in a league of her own

Penny Marshall, whose successful Hollywood career took her from hit sitcom star to a director of blockbuster films, has died at 75.

Marshall died Monday night from diabetes-related complications.

She began her career as an actress, most memorably in Laverne & Shirley, where she played Laverne DeFazio, who toiled in a Milwaukee brewery alongside friend and roommate Shirley (Cindy Williams).

But Marshall then transitioned to directing hit movies like 1988’s Big, which was the first film directed by a woman to make more than $100 million in the U.S.,

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