Film and TV funnyman Garry Marshall, whose hits included ‘Happy Days’ and ‘Pretty Woman’, dies at 81

Writer-director Garry Marshall, whose deft touch with comedy and romance led to a string of TV hits that included Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley and the box-office successes Pretty Woman and Runaway Bride, has died. He was 81.

Marshall died Tuesday in at a hospital in Burbank, California of complications from pneumonia after having a stroke, his publicist Michelle Bega said in a statement.

The director also had an on-screen presence, using his New York accent and gruff delivery in colourful supporting roles that included a practical-minded casino boss unswayed by Albert Brooks’ disastrous luck in Lost in America and a crass network executive in Soapdish.

“In the neighbourhood where we grew up in, the Bronx, you only had a few choices,” Marshall said in a 1980s interview. “You were either an athlete or a gangster, or you were funny.”

Marshall, brother of actress-director Penny Marshall, earned a degree in journalism from Northwestern University and worked at the New York Daily News. But he found he was better at writing punchlines.

He began his entertainment career in the 1960s selling jokes to comedians, then moved to writing sketches for The Tonight Show with Jack Paar in New York. He caught the eye of comic Joey Bishop, who brought him to Los Angeles to write for The Joey Bishop Show.