OBITUARY

The programme's creator, Garry Marshall, knew [Al Molinaro] from The Odd Couple, a previous hit series which they had made together. They had been introduced by Marshall's sister [Penny Marshall], who was later to star in a spin-off from Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley. Meanwhile, after...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inIrish independent
Main Authors Al Molinaro US televison actor Born June 24 1919, died October 30 2015
Format Newspaper Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Dublin Independent News & Media 07.11.2015
Subjects
Deaths
Klugman, Jack
Marshall, Garry
Molinaro, Al
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Summary:The programme's creator, Garry Marshall, knew [Al Molinaro] from The Odd Couple, a previous hit series which they had made together. They had been introduced by Marshall's sister [Penny Marshall], who was later to star in a spin-off from Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley. Meanwhile, after some 170 episodes, Molinaro hung up his cook's apron to appear in another off-shoot of the programme, Joanie Loves Chachi, although this only survived for a year. Starring Jack Klugman and Tony Randall as the mismatched flatmates, it ran for five years. By then Molinaro's battered features had become familiar to US audiences. In one episode, trying to ascertain whether Klugman's character was in, Molinaro pushed his nose through the door's peephole. "Oh, hi, Murray!" calls out Klugman at once. After leaving Happy Days, Molinaro appeared in several short-lived series before retiring in the early 1990s. As Big Al he reappeared in 1994 in the video 'I can't work in movies with Garry because I'm so square that I won't be in a movie that has four-letter words in it' for the song 'Buddy Holly' by the band Weezer. For more than two decades, he also promoted frozen dinners in television commercials.