Garry Marshall was a great writer, producer, director and actor. (Actor, you say? Yeah. His scenes as the hapless casino host opposite Albert Brooks in Lost in America are about as perfect as comedy scenes get.) His credits in the other categories are equally impressive, starting with all the scripts he penned for sitcoms in the sixties with his longtime partner, Jerry Belson. Their scripts for The Dick Van Dyke Show alone were legendary.
Obits like this one will tell you what else he did but they don't all mention the long, long list of top writers, actors and directors (and other professions) who got their start — or a job when no one else would hire them — on a Garry Marshall production. I could list twenty-five just among my friends. And I may be missing one exception but as I'm sitting here writing this, I can't think of one who ever had an unkind word to say about the man himself. That is not true of very many people who hired that many people.
I never worked for Garry but I ran into him all the time. We had the same doctor, the same favorite restaurant for lunch in Burbank (this place) and a lot of mutual friends. Garry loved it when people knew all he'd done, not just Happy Days or Laverne & Shirley or Pretty Woman or any of his biggest or most recent hits. So I'd ask him, "Hey, are you one of the guys responsible for Hey, Landlord or Evil Roy Slade and he'd laugh and tell me something about it.
One time, I asked him about The Joey Bishop Show — the 1961-1965 sitcom, not the subsequent talk show. Garry had not enjoyed the experience and he told me a story. I don't know if it was an episode that he and his partner wrote but there was one where Joey played a dual role — a twin brother or cousin or something. Garry said Joey started complaining because the other character was getting all the good jokes. I laughed (of course) and he said, "You know, I hated that show but it was worth it just to get that anecdote." Spoken like a true comedy writer.