It’s sad, really, that the last few of Garry Marshall’s movies are considered punchlines. It’s an unfortunate end to one of the most fascinating and varied careers in American pop culture. He has acted, written, directed, and produced. He got his start as a gag-man. And he even owned his own theatre to develop independent projects. That he became one of a few talented men who got old and did middling comedies feels beneath him.

If all we had was Marshall’s history as a TV writer, he would still deserve acknowledgement. His first credits are writing for Jack Paar. He and Jerry Belson, after cutting their teeth on such shows as The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Lucy Show, went on to create the TV adaptation of The Odd Couple. Then, working alone, Marshall created the Happy Days television universe, starting with the Love, American Style segment “Love and the Happy Days” and continuing with the TV show and its spinoffs, Laverne and Shirley and Mork and Mindy. And Joanie Loves Chachi.

Or say he’d only been an actor. Whenever someone needed a surly old guy, there was Garry Marshall. My particular favourite of his roles was as TV executive Edmund Edwards, beleagured producer of The Sun Also Rises from the movie Soapdish, but of course he was also in A League of Their Own, Murphy Brown, and even that classic of modern cinema Tomcats. Weirdly, he played his sister Penny’s husband in Hocus Pocus.

And then there’s his work as a director. Okay, Mother’s Day. On the other hand, Pretty Woman and The Princess Diaries. Slight, admittedly, and with some not-so-great implications to them, but still. He basically launched Julia Roberts and Anne Hathaway. They’d both done other stuff before working with him, Roberts more than Hathaway, but still. Men have won major awards for such things in the past.

I’ll admit that he hadn’t made it onto my Celebrating the Living list, but now that I’m looking at things, I realize that he should have. A handful of missteps notwithstanding, he had a long and mostly successful career. And seemed like a nice enough guy, though I don’t know a lot about him personally. He went to high school with Steve Ditko. He’d been married to the same woman since 1963. Maybe he did make Georgia Rule, but maybe we can forgive him for that because of the good things he made as well.