Students, alumni and relatives of the late Garry Marshall gathered around display cases showcasing items ranging from a baseball glove to hand-drawn storyboards on Thursday. Each piece tells the story of Marshall’s life and acclaimed career as a film director and screenwriter.
The public reception was held at the University Library, where parts of the Garry Marshall Collection will remain on display through the end of Fall Quarter.
Northwestern’s University Historian Kevin Leonard helped bring the collection to campus. He said that he and his colleagues chose a variety of items that they felt best represented the extent of the collection.
Leonard met with Marshall several times to discuss and coordinate the collection. Their first meeting took place at Marshall’s office in Burbank, California. Leonard recalled thinking he would only get five minutes of the esteemed NU alum’s time, but Marshall instead invited him to sit on his couch for an hour, mixing business with jokes.
“If (Marshall) said something funny, I got the sense that if I didn’t laugh hard enough he would dig deeper and find something funnier to tell me,” Leonard said.
Leonard left the meeting with a few cartons of material, which included a hand-drawn storyboard from Marshall’s movie “Pretty Woman.” Two years later, he and his wife found themselves in Marshall’s office, packing over 100 linear feet worth of material for the collection.
The materials included a baseball glove, drumsticks, a bathrobe and an army shirt. Leonard said the baseball glove was Marshall’s own and an ode to his love for the sport.
However, the drumsticks were given to Marshall. Someone who wanted a job working with Marshall had written their resume on them in pen. According to Leonard, they were meant to tug on Marshall’s heartstrings since he was previously a drummer in NU’s Alpha Tau Omega fraternity.
The display cases also featured one of Marshall’s many bathrobes. The director had a new one tailor made for each of his major projects and would wear it after showering during afternoon breaks, Leonard said.
Marshall’s army shirt, which he wore while writing for an armed forces newspaper and doing broadcast work in Korea, was also displayed among annotated scripts, photographs and letters from people he worked with.
Barbara Marshall, Garry Marshall’s wife, was also in attendance at the reception with their three children. She said she thought the display was “beautiful.”
“The fact that this is here where everybody walks around, so you don’t have to come just to see that like you’re going to a museum, is lovely,” Barbara Marshall said.
The items in the display cases and on the surrounding walls were only a fraction of the extensive collection. Extra material, including Garry Marshall’s personal scrapbooks, final scripts and a director’s chair, are stored in Deering Library and a site in Waukegan, Illinois. Some items remain with the family as well.
Garry Marshall’s son, Scott Marshall (School of Communication ’91), learned the business of writing and directing by shadowing his father. Scott Marshall observed that on set, his father always made sure to have fun.
“Garry didn’t direct a movie. He hosted a movie,” Scott Marshall said. “He was a camp counselor as a teenager, so it was camp. He had parades. He had pumpkin carving contests.”
While working with his father and after going through his various materials, Scott Marshall said he realized how important the school was to his father.
“He became what he became because of what he learned and the experience he had here at Northwestern,” Scott Marshall said. “He always tried to give back to the school because of what it meant to him. And he’s still doing it.”
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