Blue-collar diva

>>Laverne and Shirley's Cindy Williams shoots in Montreal

by MATTHEW HAYS

Cindy Williams is instantly recognizable as the latter half of the team that made up Laverne and Shirley, the Happy Days spinoff and staple of late-'70s TV which, for four years running, was either in first or second place in the Nielsen ratings.

Williams' CV is a lengthy and varied one, a list that includes such A-list directors as George Lucas (American Graffiti), George Cukor (Travels With My Aunt), Francis Ford Coppola (The Conversation) and Roger Corman (Gas-s-s-s). Williams even appeared in Jack Nicholson's directorial debut (Drive, He Said).

But Williams, in Montreal recently to shoot the reunion episode of The Patty Duke Show, says Shirley persists with fans--and that's fine by her. In fact, she seems taken aback when I ask if she's ever resented Shirley Feeney, the blue-collar Shotz Brewery employee, a character who's left an indelible mark on Williams' reputation.

"I could never resent Shirley! I thank god for the blessing of that character. People who come up to me are so loving because they love that character. And right back at them, because it's such an honour to have done it."

Trash TV?

Despite its top spot on the ratings totem pole, Laverne and Shirley became a lightning rod for criticism of TV, with detractors citing it as an example of just how bad things had become. True, the show was based on slapstick physical comedy, but Laverne and Shirley actually represented something of a primetime breakthrough. Even though Roseanne would be heralded, some 15 years later, as the first series that depicted the American working class without derision (unlike, say, All in the Family), in fact one could argue that Laverne and Shirley holds that distinction.

"I was just commenting about that to my husband the other day," says Williams. "Lots of programs take place in the workplace, but who are they? They're attorneys, editors, doctors. They're all upper end." Williams says a lot of building up her character--and the comedy that grew from Shirley--had to do with her own childhood experiences; one episode had a wealthy suitor hand Shirley a bouquet of flowers. "Oh my goodness," she responded, sniffing the roses. "These smell just like bathroom freshener!"

Toilet humour

Indeed, Williams' mother was a waitress and her father was an electrical technician. "They were the kind of people who simply never would have received fresh-cut flowers. I also loved that line in the show where I say that the Feeney family comes from a proud tradition of bathroom attendants. That was all drawn from my family. I wanted to make sure this character was drawn with humour but also with love."

In the final season of the series, Williams ended up in a legal squabble with Paramount, which culminated in her walking off the set, never to return (then pregnant, she was protesting the long shooting hours--often 14 a day--that were required for the show). Tabloid headlines, many not entirely off the mark, reported that Williams and co-star Penny Marshall didn't always get along. The show ended in 1983, with Shirley gone, the setting moved from Milwaukee to California, the ratings in a slump.

Lesbo Laverne?

However, Williams was happy to reunite with Marshall and other cast members in 1996 for a Laverne and Shirley reunion special, which proved a ratings success. Plans are also afoot for Marshall's company to produce a made-for-TV movie in which the show's characters' lives would be updated. Meanwhile, Williams will appear in the forthcoming Patty Duke Show, does the dinner-theatre circuit (she's now playing in Edmonton) and is a spokesmodel for the Jenny Craig weight loss program.

How does Williams feel about the theory, convincingly argued by author Alexander Doty in his book Making Things Perfectly Queer, that there was a lesbian subtext to Laverne and Shirley?

"We never read that into the show--we were totally guy crazy. But if there were lesbians who wanted to watch the show and wanted to think of it that way, then that was great. People wrote about that idea when the show was running. I found it quite flattering."