This blog began months after the death of Penny Marshall and was a way for me to process what this series I grew up with meant to me, then and now. I half-jokingly said that "the Universe was telling me" to buy the whole series on DVD. It did end up changing my life in many unpredictable ways, helped along by the rise of Covid, whose shadow has changed me as well.
So, Cindy Williams, 1947 to 2023, bla bla bla. I'm not going to cover her career in full, as you can find elsewhere. I'm just going to talk about what she and her character meant to me, then and now.
In 1976, I would've said I was more of "a Shirley" than "a Laverne." I was eight and there was definitely a childlike, innocent quality to Shirley. As I got older, became a preteen and then a teen, I still gravitated towards the character who loved animals and sometimes didn't get the fuss the other characters made about sex.
At the same time, Laverne "was me," sloppy and sarcastic and motherless, and, as I got even older, stupid about men. But what I didn't get for a long time was that there was never a clear divide. Shirley had her bitchy side and Laverne had a soft heart. And they were never purely girly Shirley and tomboy Laverne. The show would tell us they were opposites, but they'd cross back and forth. Shirley dressed in drag more, and more comfortably, than Laverne, and it was mostly Shirley initiating kisses and affection with Laverne.
When I started this project, three and a half years ago, I would've identified as bisexual cisgender. Now it's more like asexual agender, but biromantic, and still leaning more towards female/feminine and still being fascinated by sex.
How much this show and Shirley has to do with that I don't know. But the whole thing of looking back at my life in one area has leaked into other areas. And, yeah, the changes of Covid (still haven't got it, still avoiding risk most of the time) are factors, too.
When Cindy Williams was young, she was an actress who adeptly did drama and comedy, in movies and on television. She hesitated to take the role of Shirley Feeney in a regular series because she thought (correctly it would turn out) it would limit her opportunities to grow as a film actress. The role almost went to the unrelated Liberty/Louise Williams, another sweet, bubbly brunette who could sell a punchline. (Watch her two scene-stealing roles on Three's Company.)
But Cindy had a melancholy quality that Shirley needed, somewhere between "lost little girl" and "woman who has seen the worst of life and survived." While Cindy would, with her almost psychic connection with Penny, become an impressive stuntwoman and physical comedienne, I'm thinking more the last couple days of the sad moments on L&S, like the times that her family disappointed her. (As Cindy's beloved but alcoholic late father had.)
She also brought a toughness to the role that most actresses couldn't have. We had to believe that she could carry her own in a fistfight and she could stand up to jerks and authority when she had to. America was first introduced to Shirley when she punched out Richie Cunningham on a date. There would be times when Richie deserved it, despite his own wholesome image, but this was an accident. The chemistry between Ron Howard and Cindy Williams deserves another post in itself, but I will reiterate that she brought out shades in him that we didn't usually get to see. Maybe he would always be the 18-year-old getting his first onscreen kiss in American Graffiti from 24-year-old Cindy, who was kind and, he now says, like a big sister.
Shirley was the girl who didn't want to talk to Squiggy's rotten girlfriend Barbara on the phone because she didn't even know this person. (And then Laverne took the phone and told Barbara off, to everyone's glee.) She didn't seek confrontation, except sometimes with the boys, but damn, she could dish it out when she was provoked enough.
We see a more world-wise, bitchier version of this character in The First Nudie Musical, although that "Rosie" comes through at times on L&S. As Laverne remarks to Edna, "Don't you love it when she's mean?"
I don't know a lot about Cindy Williams. Even her autobiography didn't tell us much about her. I do know that there was an energetic, welcoming, embracing quality that came through in the roles I've seen her play. It's even there in the FN Musical DVD extras, where she delights in telling us that she loved her repeated line "Your stunt cock is here."
R.I.P. Cindy Williams. You Shirley made the world a better place.
