Honestly, I’ve never been a huge Laverne and Shirley fan, and the first place I think of Penny Marshall is behind the camera. When I think of the opening of the show, I picture Wayne and Garth, not Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams. I made my traditional “oh!”of Someone I Like Has Died, and then had to explain to my boyfriend Graham who Penny Marshall even was. (“Was she the blonde?” “. . . Yes.”) So I read him the list of seven movies she’d directed, and he said something he’s never said before when I described someone’s career: “Wow.”

Not everyone will agree that all seven of her movies are classics, I admit. But she was the first woman to direct a movie that grossed over $100 million in the US, with Big,and then became the first to direct two movies that grossed over $100 million in the US when A League of Their Own came out. That means I can forgive her for The Preacher’s Wife, which I feel mostly serves to make people forget that the original version exists. Frankly, I’d forgive quite a lot just for A League of Their Own, which I use to defend Madonna-the-actress, too. It’s a fine movie and one of those that reminds you that Tom Hanks can be extremely funny.

She was pretty matter-of-fact about what she was doing with movies, too. She said that knowing about lenses was the cinematographer’s job, and she talked to people. And what she wanted to do with a movie was tell a story, which she felt there wasn’t a lot of room for in film these days. She did extol the virtues of YouTube as a creative outlet, though, which not all Great Directors (if you count her as a Great Director) recognize. She liked arts and crafts, liked the movies, but thought that life was more important.

As for her television work, well, there’s certainly a lot more to it than just (checks) Laverne. For one thing, she was the Babysitter Bandit in a season-one episode of The Simpsons,”Some Enchanted Evening.” In fact, because it was the first episode produced (despite being the last aired for the season), she was the very first guest star on The Simpsons,which deserves some attention from someone but probably isn’t going to be brought up much because everyone will be talking about Laverne.

In fact, she was a recurring character on two other shows first, playing Oscar’s secretary Myrna on The Odd Couple and Janice Dreyfuss on a show called Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers, which I’ve never heard of. Wikipedia claims she was a regular for one season of The Bob Newhart Show, but IMDb lists no episodes. And, in probably the weirdest casting of her career, she played The Master’s Wife in Hocus Pocus. Which isn’t that weird until you realize that The Master was played by Garry Marshall. Her older brother. Who encouraged her to direct in the first place.