Cindy Williams, star of ‘Laverne & Shirley’, dies at 75

But she is better known as Shirley.

“She was kind of optimistic, good-hearted, submissive, moody, fun-loving,” Mrs. Williams He once said about her character. “I always saw her as having that fear,” she added, noting that while Shirley’s desires were never made explicit on screen, both Laverne and Shirley sought the comforts of modern life.

“That was the sadness of those characters for me,” Williams added. “What if it doesn’t happen, where are we? And that was kind of my life, too.”

Born in Van Nuys, California, a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles, on August 22, 1947, Cynthia Jane Williams became interested in acting during high school and went to Los Angeles City College, where she majored in theater arts, according to the biographies she submitted. Mrs. Kranes. “I am what you might call a ‘valley girl,’” Ms. Williams wrote in her 2015 memoir, “Shirley, I Jst! Recorded lives.

I worked in a pancake houseas well as at the Whiskey a Go Go nightclub in Hollywood, according to Hollywood Reporter. Mrs. Williams went on to perform in commercials for deodorant and SunglassesShe said some of them were never broadcast in an interview with the Television Academy. Her early TV roles included parts in ‘Room 222’, ‘Nanny and the Professor’ and ‘Love, American Style’.

“I’ve always played the heroine’s best friend, always,” she said.

Then famous for her seemingly guiltless American Sweetheart, Ms. Williams turns that expectation inside out with an exceptionally sly performance in “The Conversation.” In the film, the viewer gathers her words from a surreptitiously recorded conversation, expecting her to be a helpless victim, not the damsel killer that she is. More dramatic roles might have followed, but she turned to situation comedies instead.

Mrs. Williams and Mrs. Marshall were writing partners at Zoetrope, a production company founded by Mr. Coppola, where they were working on a possible bicentennial TV parody, when Garry Marshall, Mrs. Marshall’s brother, asked if the two women would guest star on his show. “Happy Days” as easy dates for Fonzie (Henry Winkler) and Richie (Ron Howard). Fonzie Laverne claimed for himself, while Shirley was meant for Richie, reuniting Mrs. Williams with her American Graffiti co-star, Mr. Howard, who played her boyfriend in that movie.