Gire remembers late Garry Marshall: 'I like to make people laugh'

"I rose to great heights of mediocrity in many different fields."

That's how TV producer/movie director Garry Marshall described his career during our first interview in 1982 in Chicago.

The former newsman, joke-writer, jazz musician and Northwestern University graduate had returned to his Windy City stamping grounds to promote his comedy "Young Doctors in Love," the first feature he'd ever directed.

"Directing is total concentration," Marshall told me. "In television you can produce two or three shows. But when you direct, you've got to just direct that project. I was amazed at how much responsibility a director has."

Marshall, 81, died of complications from pneumonia following a stroke in Burbank, California.

He leaves behind a rich, cultural legacy of humorous movies, among then "Pretty Woman," "The Princess Diaries," "The Flamingo Kid" and the Chicago-shot "Nothing in Common" as well as the hit TV shows he created, including "Happy Days," "The Odd Couple" and "Laverne and Shirley."

"I like to make people laugh, and I'll do it on whatever canvass I can, be it in television, Broadway, the movies, whatever," Marshall said in 1982. "Comedy is what I like to do."

After Northwestern, Marshall landed a job as a copy boy for the New York Daily News. There, he fed gags to newspaper columnists, then began sending jokes to entertainers.

One of them, Joey Bishop, a member of Frank Sintra's infamous Rat Pack, brought young Marshall to Los Angeles where he teamed up with partner Jerry Belson to write more than 100 episodes for "The Dick Van Dyke Show," "Danny Thomas" and "The Lucy Show" before producing their own "The Odd Couple."

Marshall credited French filmmaker Jacques Tati - known for placing funny things in the backgrounds of scenes - for saving him when he clutched on the set of "Young Doctors in Love,"

One of Marshall's first scenes wasn't working. The cast and crew were losing faith in their new director.

"I thought, I've got to do something fast!" Marshall recalled. "I've got to show them I'm a filmmaker!"

After failing to come up with something great, he concluded he wasn't a filmmaker, yet. "I'm learning to be a filmmaker," he said.

So, Marshall shot the scene with two actors talking in the foreground. He added a short actor in the background, fumbling to place a telephone on a hook too high for him to reach.

"It came out to be funny scene," Marshall said. "After that, they were wonderful to work with."

This week, many actors, writers, producers and other showbiz professionals are saying the same about him.