Garry Marshall, who created and executive produced some of the most popular sitcoms on TV — Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, The Odd Couple and Mork & Mindy, among them — and directed the box-office smash Pretty Woman, died Tuesday. He was 81.
Marshall, the older brother of director-actress Penny Marshall, died at 5 p.m. from complications of pneumonia following a stroke at a hospital in Burbank, a spokeswoman at Rogers & Cowan said.
His most recent film was the April release Mother's Day, which reunited him with his Pretty Woman star Julia Roberts. Another Pretty Woman star, Richard Gere, remembered Marshall in a statement sent to The Hollywood Reporter: "Garry, of course, was one of those truly important people one is blessed to meet in one's lifetime. Besides being the pulse and life force of Pretty Woman ... a steady helmsman on a ship that could have easily capsized ... he was a super-fine and decent man, husband and father who brought real joy and love and infectious good spirits to every thing and everyone he crossed paths with. Everyone loved Garry. He was a mentor and a cheerleader and one of the funniest men who ever lived. He had a heart of the purest gold and a soul full of mischief. He was Garry."
He also helmed such movies as Young Doctors in Love (1982), The Flamingo Kid(1984), Nothing in Common (1986), Overboard (1987), Beaches (1988), Frankie and Johnny (1991), Dear God (1996), The Other Sister (1999), Runaway Bride (1999), The Princess Diaries (2001), Valentine’s Day (2010) and New Year’s Eve (2011).
Marshall earned five Emmy Award nominations and was the recipient of Women in Film’s Lucy Award in 1996 and the Producers Guild of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award in Television in 1998. In 1997, he was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ Hall of Fame. Marshall had also just finished a rewrite of the book for the Broadway-bound musical of Pretty Woman.
He appeared as an actor in such projects as A League of Their Own (1992), directed by Penny, and Keeping Up With the Steins (2006), helmed by his son Scott. On the CBS sitcom Murphy Brown, he played exasperated network executive Stan Lansing, and his TV résumé also includes Louie, The Simpsons, ER, Brothers & Sisters, The Sarah Silverman Program, According to Jim, Monk and the acclaimed telefilm The Twilight of the Golds(1996), which he produced.
Donations in his name can be made to The Saban Community Clinic, formerly known as the Los Angeles Free Clinic; The Intensive Care Unit at Providence St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Burbank; and the Northwestern University Undergraduate Scholarship Fund.
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