He died at the age of 73. L. David Lander, who played “Squiggy” Andrew on the popular ABC sitcom Shirley & Laverne, passed away. He appeared in all eight seasons of the show.
Kathy Fields, Lander’s wife, declared on Friday that he passed away at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles due to complications arising from multiple sclerosis. The actor had kept his diagnosis with the illness concealed for 15 years until May 1984.
In the year 1980, Robert Zemeckis used cars and cast his longtime comedy partner, Michael McKean, opposite Shirley and Laverne. He also played a geeky tech neighbor in Hollywood Hills, while David Lynch cast him as Tim Pinkle, a taxidermist on ABC’s Twin Peaks. Additionally, he provided the voice for Jerry Lewis in a cartoon on Saturday morning in the 1970s.
In 1976, ABC sold a show featuring Shirley & Laverne. The writers hired for the show were McKean and Lander, who were known for their raunchy comedy act. They had met as freshmen at Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh and had been performing together as Anthony & Lenny, a raunchy comedy act, ever since.
Stated in 2011 during a conversation on The Interviews chat for the TV Academy Foundation website, Lowell Ganz, the co-creator of Laverne & Shirley, mentioned, “We included them in the initial episode and continued to include them in every subsequent episode. We even shut down their writers’ office and made them a part of the cast.” The producers recognized that the duo could also be utilized when the script required “two comedic characters to quickly fetch a bag of sauerkraut.”
On Twitter, McKean shared this image, without any accompanying text:.
pic.twitter.com/G804z4F5bR
— Michael McKean (@MJMcKean) December 5, 2020
In the late 1950s, the romantic entanglements of two idealistic roommates and brewery workers, Cindy Williams and Shirley Feeney, and the wisecracking exploits of Penny Marshall and Laverne DeFazio, were the central focus in Milwaukee.
Squiggy and Lenny Kosnowski, who were dim-witted greasers employed as truck drivers for the brewery and lived in the apartment above Laverne and Shirley’s, had a Polish surname that translated to “Assistance, there’s a pig in my kitchen.”
In 1978, Lander informed People magazine, “Squiggy gazes into the mirror and believes he is the most attractive man on the planet.” Lander stated, “There exist individuals similar to them who have not moved past their foolish aspirations. You experience greater liberty when portraying individuals you detest. Squiggy embodies a blend of individuals I was acquainted with and held in contempt.”
Dolls Squiggy and Lenny, from the market line, even went to record their guitar on Tap Spinal, featuring Guest Christopher Tufnel Nigel, for the 1979 album “The Squigtones” from Casablanca Records, McKean and Lander.
David Leonard Landau, who grew up in the Bronx, was born on June 22, 1947, as the younger of two sons. His parents, Sol and Stella, were both teachers.
According to McKean, they were “not invited to return” for a second year due to their busy schedule working on their performance and inability to attend classes. Lander and McKean crossed paths in 1965 at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Tech, where they were both first-year students, following their graduation from the High School of the Performing Arts in Manhattan.
Cream and Jimmy Durante, along with Steve Allen, were featured in that lively special on NBC in 1968. They wrote it with a touch of class, putting in their classmate Rob Reiner from Carnegie Tech. Before heading to Hollywood for Albert Brooks, Earl Wilson and Walter Winchell, columnists, they wrote one-liners for NYU and moved to Lander.
On the radio and in clubs, a comedy group named The Credibility Gap collaborated with McKean, with whom he had reunited. Simultaneously, he made guest appearances on episodes of Barney Miller, Rhoda, and The Bob Newhart Show after mimicking Lewis’s character in the ABC animated series Will the Real Jerry Lewis Please Sit Down in 1970. Meanwhile, Lander imitated Lewis’s character in the ABC animated series Will the Real Jerry Lewis Please Sit Down, and subsequently appeared on episodes of Barney Miller, Rhoda, and The Bob Newhart Show.
Ganz remembered, “they acted just like you would witness on The Dick Van Dyke Show when Rob Petrie would visit Alan Brady’s residence and individuals would put on a performance,” The female performer and the duo were invited to Marshall and her then-spouse Reiner’s residence for a gathering intended to commemorate the approval of Laverne & Shirley, a spinoff of Happy Days.
Could you put any television on there in a way that makes sense to you only then? It was sewn in, that was part of the comedy. They could be as vulgar as they were really dirty. They were really funny, in the funny kind of way that caused pain in my ears.
If Penny’s brother Marshall answered, Garry and Ganz with Shirley & Laverne created Mark Rothman, who said “TV on anything else than funnier, it’s still funny as it’s a fifth way.”
Lenny and Squiggy were conveniently included in the premiere by Lander and McKean, who were employed for the writers’ room alongside Harry Shearer, who was also part of The Credibility Gap.
In 2009, Lander observed, “Lenny is the unintelligent individual who perceives Squiggy as a prodigy; Squiggy is the unintelligent individual who perceives himself as a prodigy.”
In 1983, The Agency Talent Squignowski series came to an end, prompting Shirley and Laverne to drive to Burbank in order to find new opportunities. Unfortunately, they ended up losing their job as bottle-cappers at the Brewery Shotz. This happened right at the start of the sixth season of their show.
Lander also appeared in Steven Spielberg’s 1941. He played the character of Rabbit Roger in Robert Zemeckis’ Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), and voiced the character of Ass Smart in Keenen Ivory Wayans’ A League of Their Own (1992). He also showed up as Squiggy Principal in Wayans’ Scary Movie (2000).
Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius and his voice work in On the Air, the short-lived Lynch ABC comedy, and The Bold and the Beautiful soap on CBS, are among the various projects included in his résumé, along with Beverly Hills, Teenage Alien Fighters and the Series 101 Dalmatians (2001).
The Seattle Mariners scouted for the Anaheim Angels, while the Pittsburgh Pirates owned a piece of Lander, a onetime affiliate minor-league team of the Pirates. Additionally, the Pirates also owned a piece of Lander, a onetime affiliate minor-league team of the Portland Beavers. Furthermore, Lander was a fan of the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Lander expressed in 2001: “I simply sensed that they would not employ me if they were aware of my MS. Why disclose it to anyone? Therefore, I reasoned that as long as I did not exhibit any symptoms, why inform anyone? I was not experiencing any cognitive difficulties, I was not using a wheelchair, and I was not facing any cognitive impairments, nor was I using a wheelchair, and I was not encountering any cognitive impairments, nor was I using a wheelchair, and I was not encountering any cognitive impairments, nor was I using a wheelchair, and I was not encountering any cognitive impairments, nor was I using a wheelchair, and I was not encountering any cognitive impairments, nor was I using a wheelchair, and I was not encountering any cognitive impairments, nor was I using a wheelchair, and I was not encountering any cognitive impairments, nor was I using a wheelchair, and I was not encountering any cognitive impairments, nor was I using a wheelchair, and I was not encountering any cognitive impairments, nor was I using a wheelchair, and I was not encountering any cognitive impairments, nor was I using a wheelchair, and I was not encountering any cognitive impairments, nor was I using a wheelchair, and I was not encountering any cognitive impairments, nor was I using a wheelchair, and I was not encountering any cognitive impairments, nor was I using a wheelchair, and I was not encountering any cognitive impairments, nor was I using a wheelchair, and I was not encountering any cognitive impairments, nor was I using a wheelchair, and I was not encountering any cognitive impairments, nor was I using a wheelchair, and I was not encountering any cognitive impairments, nor was I using a wheelchair, and I was not encountering any cognitive impairments, nor was I using a wheelchair, and I was not encountering any cognitive impair
He would become a goodwill ambassador for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, and he didn’t tell anyone that he revealed his part in the publication of the book “Sclerosis Multiple Caught Squiggy How Laughing: Down Fall” in 2000.
Survivors of the actress include her wife, whom she married in 1979, and her father-in-law, the late Hollywood agent Freddie Fields.