Cindy Williams, who was among the most recognisable stars in America in the 1970s and 1980s for her role as Shirley opposite Penny Marshall's Laverne on the beloved sitcom Laverne & Shirley, has died, her family said on Monday.
Williams died in Los Angeles at age 75 last Wednesday after a brief illness, her children, Zak and Emily Hudson, said in a statement released through family spokeswoman Liza Cranis.
"The passing of our kind, hilarious mother, Cindy Williams, has brought us insurmountable sadness that could never truly be expressed," they said. “Knowing and loving her has been our joy and privilege. She was one of a kind, beautiful, generous and possessed a brilliant sense of humour and a glittering spirit that everyone loved.”
Williams worked with some of Hollywood's most elite directors in a film career that preceded her full-time move to television, appearing in George Cukor's 1972 Travels With My Aunt, George Lucas' 1973 American Graffiti and Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation from 1974.
But she was best known for Laverne & Shirley, the Happy Days spin-off that ran on ABC from 1976 to 1983 that in its prime was among the most popular shows on US TV.
Williams played the straitlaced Shirley Feeney to Marshall's more libertine Laverne DeFazio on the show about a pair of blue-collar roommates who toiled on the assembly line of a Milwaukee brewery in the 1950s and 1960s.
“They were beloved characters,” Williams said.
DeFazio was quick-tempered and defensive; Feeney was naive and trusting. The actors drew upon their own lives for plot inspiration.
“We’d make up a list at the start of each season of what talents we had,” Marshall said in 2002. “Cindy could touch her tongue to her nose and we used it in the show. I did tap dance.”
Williams said in 2013 that she and Marshall had “very different personalities”, but tales of the two clashing during the making of the show were “a bit overblown”.
The series was the rare network hit about working-class characters, with its self-empowering opening song: “Give us any chance, we’ll take it, read us any rule, we’ll break it."
That opening would become as popular as the show itself. The duo's chant of “schlemiel, schlimazel” as they skipped together became a cultural phenomenon and oft-invoked piece of nostalgia.
Marshall, whose brother, Garry Marshall, co-created the series, died in 2018.
The show also starred Michael McKean and David Lander as Laverne and Shirley's oddball hangers-on Lenny and Squiggy. Lander died in 2020.
As ratings dropped in the sixth season, the characters moved from Milwaukee to Burbank, California, trading their brewery jobs for work at a department store.
In 1982, Williams became pregnant and wanted her working hours curtailed. When her demands weren’t met, she walked off the set, and filed a suit against its production company. She appeared infrequently during the final season.
Williams was born one of two sisters in the Van Nuys area of Los Angeles in 1947. Her family moved to Dallas soon after she was born, but returned to Los Angeles, where she would take up acting while attending Birmingham High School and major in theatre arts at LA City College.
Her acting career began with small roles in television starting in 1969, with appearances on Room 222, Nanny and the Professor and Love, American Style.
Her part in Lucas's American Graffiti would become a defining role. The film was a forerunner to a nostalgia boom for the 1950s and early 1960s that would follow. Happy Days, starring her American Graffiti co-star Ron Howard, would premiere the following year. The characters of Laverne and Shirley made their first TV appearance as dates of Henry Winkler's Fonzie before they got their own show.
Lucas also considered her for the role of Princess Leia in Star Wars, a role that went to Carrie Fisher.
In the past three decades Williams made guest appearances on dozens of TV series, including 7th Heaven, 8 Simple Rules and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. In 2013, she and Marshall appeared in a Laverne & Shirley tribute episode of the Nickelodeon series Sam and Cat.
Last year, Williams appeared in a one-woman stage show full of stories from her career, Me, Myself and Shirley, at a theatre in Palm Springs, California, near her home in Desert Hot Springs.
Williams was married to singer Bill Hudson of musical group the Hudson Brothers from 1982 until 2000 and had two children with him. He was previously married to Goldie Hawn and is also the father of actor Kate Hudson.
Scroll through the gallery below to see other famous people who have died so far in 2023
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American comedian Kelly Monteith died on January 1 aged 80. Getty Images -
Daredevil rally driver Ken Block died on January 2 aged 55. EPA -
Child actor Adam Rich died on January 7 aged 54. AP -
British guitarist Jeff Beck died on January 10 aged 78. AFP -
German model Tatjana Patitz died on January 11 aged 56. Reuters -
Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of Elvis Presley, died on January 12 aged 54. Reuters -
Italian movie star Gina Lollobrigida, one of the last from the Golden Age of Hollywood, died on January 16 at 95. PA News -
Wrestlers and brothers Jay, right, and Mark Briscoe. Jay died on January 17 aged 38. jaybriscoe84 / Twitter -
American folk-rock star David Crosby died on January 18 aged 81. EPA -
Balkrishna Doshi, one of India’s most distinguished architects, died on January 24 aged 95. AP -
TikTok star Randy Gonzalez died on January 25 aged 35. @enkyboys / Instagram -
Cindy Williams, who played Shirley on the hit sitcom Laverne & Shirley, died on January 25 aged 75. AFP -
Barrett Strong, one of Motown’s founding artists, died on January 29 aged 81. AP -
The Last of Us and 24 actress Annie Wersching died on January 29 aged 45. AP -
South Indian director and actor K Viswanath died on February 2 aged 92. Photo: Wikimedia Commons -
Fashion designer Paco Rabanne died on February 3 aged 88. Reuters -
Veteran Indian singer Vani Jayaram died in Chennai on February 4 aged 78. Photo: Twitter -
Pop composer Burt Bacharach died on February 8 aged 94. AFP -
South African rap sensation Kiernan Forbes, popularly known as AKA, died on February 10 aged 35. AFP -
David 'Trugoy the Dove' Jolicoeur of the US hip-hop band De La Soul died on February 12 aged 54. EPA -
Manga artist Leiji Matsumoto died on February 13 aged 85. AP -
American actress Raquel Welch died at the age of 82 on February 15. EPA -
Stella Stevens, pictured in New York in 1968, died on February 18 aged 84. AP -
Law & Order actor Richard Belzer died aged 78 on February 19. AP -
Jansen Panettiere, who appeared in shows such as Major Crimes and The Walking Dead, died aged 28 on February 19. Getty -
Football commentator John Motson died on February 23 aged 77. PA -
Hollywood film producer Walter Mirisch died aged 101 on February 24. AP -
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French football player Just Fontaine died aged 89 on March 1. EPA -
Pulp bassist Steve Mackey, right, died aged 56 on March 2. Getty -
Wayne Shorter, an influential jazz musician, died aged 89 on March 2. AFP -
Architect Rafael Vinoly died aged 78 on March 2. Getty -
Saving Private Ryan actor Tom Sizemore died aged 61 on March 3. Reuters -
Gary Rossington, a founding member of Lynyrd Skynyrd, died aged 71 on March 5. EPA -
Pakistani actor Qavi Khan died aged 80 on March 5. Photo: Parveen Shah Productions -
Bollywood actor, comedian, writer and director Satish Kaushik died aged 66 on March 8. Jeff Topping / The National -
Israeli actor Chaim Topol died aged 87 on March 8. AP -
British TV presenter and comedian Paul O'Grady died on March 28 at the age of 67. PA -
Moonbin, a member of K-pop boy band Astra, died at the age of 25 on April 19. AFP -
Bodybuilding social media influencer Jo Lindner, popularly known as Joesthetics, died on July 1 at the age of 30. @joesthetics / Instagram -
Peter Hellyer, who moved to the UAE in the 1970s, died on July 2 at the age of 75. Pawan Singh / The National -
British-French actress and singer Jane Birkin, who inspired the famous Hermes Birkin bag, died aged 76 on July 16. AFP -
American musician Tony Bennett died on July 21 at the age of 96. Reuters -
Acclaimed Irish singer Sinead O’Connor died at the age of 56 on July 26. Sarah Dea / The National -
Matthew Perry, one of the stars of TV sitcom Friends, died on October 28 aged 54. AFP -
Former US first lady Rosalynn Carter died at the age of 96 on November 19. AP -
South Korean actor Lee Sun-kyun, best known for his role in Parasite, died on December 27 aged 48. Reuters
