Writer, director, producer and actor Garry Marshall has died. He was 81.
In a career which spanned sixty years, Marshall, for good or ill, played an integral role in shaping popular television and film of the modern era.
Marshall began his career writing for Jack Paar's Tonight Show and Joey Bishop's variety program before Carl Reiner hired Marshall and his writing partner Jerry Belson as writers on The Dick Van Dyke Show. Belson and Marshall later developed Neil Simon's The Odd Couple into the classic TV series starring Tony Randall and Jack Klugman.
Subsequently, Marshall created a string of TV series which were hits with audiences, if not with critics, such as Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley and Mork & Mindy, the latter of which made a star out of Robin Williams.
Moving into filmmaking in the mid 1980s, Marshall developed a reputation as a director of lightweight romantic comedies -- including the popular hits THE FLAMINGO KID (1984) OVERBOARD (1987), BEACHES (1988), PRETTY WOMAN (1990) and THE PRINCESS DIARIES (2001). His more recent efforts such as VALENTINE'S DAY (2010) and NEW YEAR'S DAY (2011) were commercially unsuccessful. Sadly, Marshall's last completed film, the critically panned box office bomb MOTHER'S DAY (2016), really marked the nadir of his career.
As an actor, Marshall's most memorable film roles were in A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN (1992), directed by his sister Penny Marshall, and as the casino owner opposite Albert Brooks in LOST IN AMERICA (1985). On the small screen, Marshall had a memorable recurring role on Murphy Brown in the mid-'90s.
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