How ‘Laverne and Shirley’ Brought ‘Blue Collar Girls’ to TV
Laverne & Shirley.
The characters had originally shown up on TV in 1975, appearing for the first time in an episode of
Happy Days. Garry Marshall, the hugely successful television producer, based the duo on two women he’d met during his dating days in Brooklyn.
“We took these two girls out and we walked into this diner at three o’clock in the morning. And some girl at one of the booths said something to the girl I was with,” Marshall recalled to the Archives of American Television. Tensions between the women soon escalated. “My date said, ‘Hold my coat, and took the girl out of the booth and punched her in the head. And they were killing, four girls, beating each other up.” Though Marshall never saw his date again, the character remained in his brain: “That’s what we should do. We should get two girls like that.”