Cindy Williams, the beloved actress best known as one-half of the 1970s TV show Laverne & Shirley, has died at age 75.
Cindy Williams, the beloved actress best known to American audiences as one-half of the hit 1970s television show Laverne and Shirley, has died at the age of 75.
Williams’ death was announced in a statement released by his family on Monday evening, where it was revealed that she had actually died last Wednesday.
The statement, on behalf of her children Zak and Emily Hudson, read in part, “The passing of our kind, joyful mother, Cindy Williams, sends us a sadness that can never be expressed. Knowing and loving her is our pleasure and an honour to be in. She was kind, beautiful, generous, and had a wonderful sense of humour and a great spirit that everyone loved.
She was brought to international fame after starring in director George Lucas’s 1973 film American Graffiti, a performance she followed to acclaim the following year in the 1974 Francis Ford Coppola film The Conversation.
But she really found stardom in the Happy Days spinoff Laverne & Shirley, which aired from 1976 to 1983. Williams played straight-laced Shirley Feeney opposite Penny Marshall’s free-spirited Laverne DeFazio in a sitcom about a pair of roommates who work at a Milwaukee brewery in the 1950s.
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While auditioning for the part of Princess Leia in Star Wars, she met Marshall’s brother, producer Garry Marshall. Who greeted her on the sidewalk, saying, “Schlemiel! Schlimazel! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated” to everyone watching the show it is a matter of happiness.
Her family says that the actress was suffering from an illness for some time but they have not given much information about it.
McKean paid tribute to Cindy Williams on Twitter with a memory from the production.
“Backstage, Season 1: I’m offstage waiting for a cue. The script’s been a tough one, so we’re giving it 110% and the audience is having a great time,” McKean tweeted. “Cindy scoots by me to make her entrance and with a glorious grin, says: ‘Show’s cookin’!’ Amen. Thank you, Cindy.”
Williams was born in 1947 in the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles, the younger of two sisters. Her family moved to Dallas soon after her birth but returned to Los Angeles, where she began acting while attending Birmingham High School and Theater Arts at LA City College.
Her acting career began in 1969 with small roles in “Room 222,” “Nanny and the Professor” and “Love, American Style.”
Over the past three decades, Williams has made guest appearances on dozens of TV series, including “Seventh Heaven,” “8 Simple Rules” and “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.” In 2013, she and Marshall appeared in the “Laverne & Shirley” tribute episode of the Nickelodeon series “Sam and Cat”.
Last year, Williams appeared in “Me, Myself and Shirley,” a one-woman stage show filled with stories from her career at a theater in Palm Springs, California, near her home in Desert Hot Springs.
