HOLLYWOOD -- Garry Marshall brought laughs to millions of TV viewers with such shows as 'The Odd Couple' and 'Laverne and Shirley,' and went on to make three hit comedy movies, but he's hit his stride with No. 4.
Marshall directed three certifiable hits -- 'The Flamingo Kid,' 'Nothing in Common' and 'Young Doctors in Love' -- but they pale in comparison with the newly released 'Overboard,' starring Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, one of the the most eagerly awaited comedies of the holiday season.
Marshall is getting the hang of combining funny scripts with top box-office stars, a formula that almost guarantees big bucks.
The tall, lean producer-director has probably made more people laugh than any of his contemporaries, thanks to his work on more than 1,000 television sitcom episodes. Only Norman Lear approaches the same tally.
Most of Marshall's shows are now in syndication, including 'Happy Days,' 'Laverne and Shirley, 'Mork and Mindy,' 'The Odd Couple,' 'Hey, Landlord' and 'Angie.'
With associate Jerry Belson, Marshall also wrote more than 100 episodes for such hit series as 'The Lucy Show,' 'The Danny Thomas Show' and 'The Dick Van Dyke Show.'
He obviously knows comedy and was delighted to be tapped to direct 'Overdrive,' a wonderfully wacky tale of one of the world's richest women (Hawn) who falls off her yacht, suffers amnesia and finds herself stuck with a poverty-stricken carpenter (Russell) who claims she is his wife and the mother of his four brats.
For Marshall, the difference between TV and movie comedy is freedom.
'In 'Overboard' I had the obligation to take a man who commits a felony and make him charming and sympathetic,' he said. 'You can't do that in TV comedy because the networks won't go for it.
'Also in movies your comedy pallet is broader. Slapstick works better. A lot of writers and directors are afraid of slapstick, but I use a great deal of it in 'Overboard.'
'I learned about slapstick while I was writing for Lucille Ball and I taught it during my years with 'Laverne and Shirley.' The secret with good slapstick and women stars is to make the physical action graceful.
'The great thing about using slapstick in a major movie is that the physical humor needs no translation. There is no language barrier.'
In making the transition from television to the big screen, Marshall found it somewhat difficult working with people he had never met.
'I had to start all over again,' he said. 'The movies are a little meaner than TV. People aren't as friendly because there is so much at stake with every film.
'In TV if a show doesn't work, you can fix it the next week. Nobody gets uptight, but in a movie you only get one shot and there may be more than $25 million riding on the outcome. That makes people nervous.'
Why, then, with a string of superhits and earning more money than he can ever count, did Marshall decide to leave the friendly confines of the tube?
'I made the change because I didn't want to wear out my welcome in TV,' he said. 'I was in TV long enough and who knows, I may go back again. I made 'Nothing in Common' from a movie to a TV series last year and it didn't work. It was time to take a break.
'I've learned that movies have bigger budgets, biggers screens and smaller committees. In a TV deal you get involved with a dozen people at the network every week and there's a crisis every 10 minutes.
'In movies it's generally just the producer and director, so when something goes wrong, I'm used to a crisis and it's no big deal.'
As Marshall's movie career expands, so do his budgets. 'Young Doctors in Love' cost $6 million, 'The Flamingo Kid' came in at $8.5 million and 'Nothing in Common' cost $11.5 million. The budget for 'Overboard' was $20 million.
'You can see I'm moving right along,' Marshall laughed. 'They are trusting me more with every picture, but it helps when you have a star like Goldie with all that clout.'
