USA DAWN: NEWS AND UPDATES

The late great director paved a path for stories that were unapologetically about and for women in Hollywood Gary Marshall Garry Marshall, who died on Tuesday at the age of 81, will be remembered as a prolific writer, director, producer and creator of classic television series and films. To me, he’ll also always be one of my first and most enduring great feminist role models. Throughout his career, the Bronx-born maestro consistently gave the world funny, messy, independent, complicated female characters, and helped generations of women grow up with the message that we too could do it our way. I was a kid when “Laverne and Shirley” premiered. It was a spinoff of Marshall’s retro and bland “Happy Days” — the vehicle that also, unfortunately,  would give us all Scott Baio.  Like “Happy Days,” it took place in Milwaukee in the Eisenhower era. Unlike “Happy Days,” which focused on a group of affable male youths, or the later “Mork & Mindy,” about a conte...