The Laverne & Shirley star, who died late last month after a brief illness, rose from humble, working-class origins to bring joy to millions of viewers.

NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE A fter a brief illness, Cindy Williams, the pretty brunette with a bob who enchanted audiences in American Graffiti, Happy Days, and, most of all, Laverne & Shirley, died late last month at the age of 75.

There was a purity to Williams’s celebrity. While she had roles in every decade of her life, it is difficult to separate the woman Cindy Williams from her iconic, and I do mean iconic, role as Shirley in the wildly popular Laverne & Shirley. Williams was just that — an icon — for the millions who adored the gal-pal comedy and its tittering reenactments of young adulthood’s pitfalls, victories, and pratfalls.

Her origins are worth considering when weighing her brilliance:

Cynthia Jane Williams was born in Van Nuys, Los Angeles, in 1947. Her father, Beachard, worked in electronics; her mother, Francesca (née Bellini), was a waitress. Cindy inherited “funny bones” from her father, a brilliant mimic. When he was sober, the house was full of laughter, but that was only some of the time. Her parents separated and Cindy would watch TV with her grandmother, mimicking commercials and putting on shows in the garage. Struggling with dyslexia and ADHD, acting was her outlet, though at Birmingham High School in Los Angeles she lost out for the best parts to a girl called Sally Field. Williams went on to study theatre at Los Angeles City College and in the late Sixties appeared in the type of commercials she aped as a child.

That which was most endearing about Williams’s on-screen presence was her ability to communicate as a wide-eyed working-class woman, spouting punchy one-liners that conveyed the dreams and passions of women in an awkward, heady time when the workforce was opening up for them. Williams was no Hollywood princess pretending at labor. Instead, she was a young woman of limited means who knew what she could do well, made connections, and pursued every opportunity, toiling to make a break for herself and her writing pal Penny Marshall, who would go on to play Laverne.

Williams and Marshall were first cast together when the Fonz and Archie needed dates on an episode of Happy Days. Acting as girls who would “date the fleet” — an anachronistic shorthand for loose women who smoke and have more than a passing interest in sailors — the girls were so popular that they earned themselves their own show, albeit one a little more family-friendly than those original roles had been.

Set in Milwaukee for its first five seasons, Laverne & Shirley explored the world of female friendship, walking a thematic path that had first been charted by I Love Lucy and a handful of other shows. The more demure of the titular duo, Williams’s Shirley was a reflection of the woman herself — a serious lady who knew how to be funny. Years later, she would describe Shirley as “an optimistic, kind-hearted girl who would occasionally flip out. Laverne would be the one saying, ‘I’d like to make out with him.’ I’d be the one reining her in but at the same time going, ‘Me too.’” This dynamic, the push and pull of want and ought, has since been replicated in female buddy comedies from Two Broke Girls to Sex and the City to Broad City. But Laverne & Shirley made more of it than those latter-day imitators.

Because of our distance in time from the show that made Williams a household name, I think it would be all too easy to treat her as a “has-been.” She would never again get anything close to the recognition she’d gotten for L&S, and she ended her career with much smaller parts on and off Broadway. But, sometimes, a role is a person, and often a quiet but busy career is better than a thrashing attempt to force oneself back into the limelight. After eight seasons and amid a fight with executives who were not thrilled by her pregnancy, Williams accepted the end, hitting her antagonists with a justified lawsuit on her way out. She knew that the show was over and chose to go on being not just a funny girl, but a funny mother. Images of her in her later years show a woman who accepted ageing with more grace than many of her peers, and she never lost any of her humility: To commemorate American Graffiti’s 50th anniversary, she trekked well off the beaten path to rural Wisconsin for an appearance at the Iola Car Show.

Personally, I came to know of Williams through a DVD set of L&S’s first season, purchased at a Cracker Barrel. My sister and I would sing along, delighted, as the two Milwaukee girls would shout, “Schlemiel, Schlimazel, Hasenpfeffer Incorporated.”

While Williams and her co-star were not Jewish — Williams was a Catholic mystic — those funny Yiddish words fit with the slang — “klutz,” “schlep” — my grandmother would sprinkle into conversation. Growing up in the Midwest, I was surrounded by Protestants of northern-European ancestry; I didn’t know many Jews. Though I knew of the biblical Hebrews, of course, Abraham’s descendants were of little concern to many of the local non-Evangelical churches. But I loved the logic and sound of the language and would come to love the people and the culture associated with those words, words that just sounded right.

So, thank you, Cindy, for the joy you brought to so many and the gift you inadvertently provided me. R.I.P.