Brian Damage
07-13-2008, 03:58 PM
Laverne and Shirley was a show about two working-class women who toil in a Milwaukee brewery in the late '50s. They had two greaser neighbours named Lenny and Squiggy. The concept was spun from the retro TV hit sitcom Happy Days. Michael McKean played Lenny and David Lander played a second banana named Squiggy.
Lander says he and McKean worked on the characters in a routine in college. "It had nothing to do with Laverne and Shirley. We just did a takeoff on two guys that we each knew. We had a good time using their sense of logic."
Despite writing their own creations into a top-rated network sitcom, Lander says he and and McKean had to share a dressing room, were paid as apprentice writers and considered day players.
Each week they told us, clear out the dressing room, 'cause the guest star is coming in next week. We'd say, 'No, we're in next week's show.' 'No, you're not,' they would say. 'Well we are, because we just wrote ourselves into it.' "
Lander was funny on TV, but, his private life was no laughing matter. He had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
"I was cast in Conan The Destroyer with Arnold Schwarzenegger. We were in Mexico and I caught a really bad flu on the second week of shooting. They couldn't wait for me to get better, so after two weeks they replaced me. When I got home, I started noticing I couldn't do certain things. I'd jog, and fall down after five feet. Then one morning I woke up and I couldn't walk."
In Hollywood it would be less of a stigma to be thought of as a drunk than to have it known he was sick. I told my wife, "Don't tell anybody I have MS. And we didn't. For 15 years."
Then one day his old co-star Penny Marshall called.
"Penny called me up, very hesitantly, and said, David, is it true you're fighting MS? And I had never heard that expression before. It was as if she was quoting a slogan, you know? So I said, 'If fighting MS is hiding MS, then I guess I'm fighting it.'
From that day on, David Lander decided to take his battle public. He wrote a book about his experience called Fall Down Laughing: How Squiggy Caught Multiple Sclerosis and Didn't Tell Nobody, and he became the Goodwill Ambassador for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.
So whatever happened to David Lander?
Believe it or not, in 1997 David found a new career as a baseball scout, and now works for the Seattle Mariners.
http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/entertainment/story.html?id=cafbcd29-b397-46cf-92ac-cc5e5c8d6c0a
Lander says he and McKean worked on the characters in a routine in college. "It had nothing to do with Laverne and Shirley. We just did a takeoff on two guys that we each knew. We had a good time using their sense of logic."
Despite writing their own creations into a top-rated network sitcom, Lander says he and and McKean had to share a dressing room, were paid as apprentice writers and considered day players.
Each week they told us, clear out the dressing room, 'cause the guest star is coming in next week. We'd say, 'No, we're in next week's show.' 'No, you're not,' they would say. 'Well we are, because we just wrote ourselves into it.' "
Lander was funny on TV, but, his private life was no laughing matter. He had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
"I was cast in Conan The Destroyer with Arnold Schwarzenegger. We were in Mexico and I caught a really bad flu on the second week of shooting. They couldn't wait for me to get better, so after two weeks they replaced me. When I got home, I started noticing I couldn't do certain things. I'd jog, and fall down after five feet. Then one morning I woke up and I couldn't walk."
In Hollywood it would be less of a stigma to be thought of as a drunk than to have it known he was sick. I told my wife, "Don't tell anybody I have MS. And we didn't. For 15 years."
Then one day his old co-star Penny Marshall called.
"Penny called me up, very hesitantly, and said, David, is it true you're fighting MS? And I had never heard that expression before. It was as if she was quoting a slogan, you know? So I said, 'If fighting MS is hiding MS, then I guess I'm fighting it.'
From that day on, David Lander decided to take his battle public. He wrote a book about his experience called Fall Down Laughing: How Squiggy Caught Multiple Sclerosis and Didn't Tell Nobody, and he became the Goodwill Ambassador for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.
So whatever happened to David Lander?
Believe it or not, in 1997 David found a new career as a baseball scout, and now works for the Seattle Mariners.
http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/entertainment/story.html?id=cafbcd29-b397-46cf-92ac-cc5e5c8d6c0a