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Cindy Williams initially refused to do Laverne & Shirley
Shirley Feeney was almost played by a different Williams!
The list of truly great spin-offs isn't very long. For every Maude, there's an AfterMASH and a W*A*L*T*E*R. Far too often, executives misunderstand what audiences love about the source material. Worse, spinoffs are frequently made as hopeful cash-ins, rather than because there's a a real, creative reason. Enos of The Dukes of Hazzard gets his own show because he has a catchphrase, not because we're all sat wondering what he'd be like in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, hearing Sonny Shroyer repeat "Possum on a gumbush!" couldn't justify any more than a paltry 18 episodes.
Laverne & Shirley sits atop the peak of Quality Spinoff Mountain. Its place of favor wasn't an accident, as the cards were stacked in favor of the Milwaukee duo from the start. Laverne and Shirley were Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams, and their casting was very intentional. The pair had known each other before this show. They were both brought on board as comedy writers at Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope Production when the company decided it needed more women.
Meanwhile, Penny Marshall's brother Garry created the ABC hit Happy Days, which attracted a huge audience with its memorable characters and nostalgic setting. Garry Marshall cast his sister Penny and her friend and writing partner Cindy Williams to appear in an episode as a couple of willing dates for Happy Days characters Richie Cunningham and Arthur Herbert "Fonzie" Fonzarelli. Willams and Marshall had such natural onscreen chemistry because of their shared experience prior to the show.
These one-off Happy Days characters, Laverne De Fazio and her roommate Shirley Feeney, were so immediately successful that ABC executive (and future Disney CEO) Michael Eisner and his team began exploring the idea of a spinoff. There was one problem, though: Williams didn't want to do it.
"Actually, this is kind of the definition of the frustration sometimes in the entertainment business," Eisner told the American Archive of Television in 2006.
"We thought, 'Why don't we take the two of them and make them their own show?' But Cindy wouldn't do it. So, we decided to recast it, and we did a ten-minute scene— or a seven-minute scene. Garry (Marshall) wrote a very, very good scene. We cast Liberty Williams. And it was okay. But it wasn't magic. And then, between the afternoon and the evening, I think Garry talked Cindy Williams into doing it. We'd already shot it with Liberty Williams— no relation. And we shot it [again] after Happy Days that night, with Cindy Williams. It was unbelievable. It was like one of those things you rarely see onstage or anywhere. The place went crazy."
Eisner boarded a plane to New York City immediately after the second iteration of the scene was filmed. Both versions had to be processed before they were screened at ABC. But because the Cindy Williams version was such an obvious winner, Eisner ensured the other reel never made it to the screen. Instead, upon his arrival to the East Coast offices, Eisner locked the Liberty Williams variant in a closet on the building's 38th floor.
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