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Show MOVIES Rocky starts don't deter Penny Marshall; crisis turns her on s Laverne on ABC s w j. V Laverne and Shirley," Penny Marshall danced the schlemiel-schlamazefell down more ramps than Chevy l, Chase and fought off hurricanes. She helped to make the sitcom one of the top shows on television for seven seasons. Yet her comedic success never convinced her that she would ever be able to direct. New Yorker believed The to bark orders at indecisive too she was too klutzy to figure out grips and gaffers, Steadicams and too shy to instill inspiration in actors. In But witness this act of her on of weeks final the production movie, "Big," she is discussing a song for the sound track with James Brooks, the executive producer. As cocrea-to-r of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and director of both "Terms of Endearment" and "Broadcast News," Brooks is one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. He is urging her to use a sophisticated Gershwin tune. "Woody Allen would do it in a minute," he pushes. But Marshall thinks Gershwin would clash with the rock heard elsewhere in the film, so she stands her ground. Taking a drag on her Marlboro, she chides, "But what a transition to Billy Idol." And what a transition for Penny Marshall. After being dumped from her first directorial project, "Peggy Sue Got Married," and being called in at a moment's notice to barely revive her second, "Jump-in- ' Jack Flash," Marshall seems to have hit it big with "Big" at the age of 45. Twentieth Century Fox is so high on her sophisticated comedy about a kid who wakes up an adult that the studio pushed up its release to June, when the movie will go head to head with Eddie Murphy and George Lucas. ) In "Big," a boy (Joshua be to to one bed wishing night goes "big" and wakes up the next morning in the body of Tom Hanks. The problem is that he still views life as that Little League kid. While the plot bears some superficial removies semblance to the rash of Mar- director out come that have recently, "tr jf" self-assertio- n. Bas-kin- age-switc- MAY 1988 h JUkl hrtaMhirtMH ni lit 1.,4. n- ii - 1 need an enormous amount of encouragement to do anything shall has vice versaed "Vice Versa" and its ilk. Instead of going strictly for laughs, she makes you feel the terror of the transAt the end of his first formed man-chilman's in a body, when he's run away day is panicked, Joshua holes and from home up in a New York City flophouse and cries himself to sleep as police sirens screech outside. Like the grown child in "Big," who survives by putting his immaturity to work in a toy company, Marshall has learned to turn disabilities into assets. A chronic pessimist, she prepares for every day as if disaster were imminent. "The truth is," of says brother Garry Marshall (a creator films TV's "Happy Days" and director of such as "Nothing in Common"), "without a d. mimi l'if tnMM "' " EUGENE PINKOWSKI even go out to dinner': Marshall crisis she can be a little dull. At The Battle of the Network Stars,' she would lay in the grass and whine. But when the gun went off, she was Wonder Woman." No Liz Taylor: Penny grew up reading Variety. She performed in her mother's Bronx dancing school, on local TV and at VA hospitals. But she never thought she could act. "I wasn't Elizabeth Taylor beautiful and I talked Bronx, not English," she says, laying on her New York accent really parts thick. Still, she took the walk-o- n (Nurse 2, Hippie 1) she could get on various TV shows, and her career began to develop. Her first substantial role was as Oscar Madison's secretary on TV's "The Odd Couple," which her brother helped develop. The breakthrough came in 1975 when NEWSWEEK ON CAMPUS 45 |
