David Lander, Squiggy of Laverne & Shirley's Lenny & Squiggy, dies at 73

The Hollywood Reporter

Lander died Friday in Los Angeles after secretly battling multiple sclerosis for 15 years. Lander is best known for playing Andrew "Squiggy" Squiggman along with Michael McKean's Lenny Kosnowski on all eight seasons of Laverne & Shirley. Lander and McKean met as students at Carnegie Mellon University and formed a raunchy comedy act known as Lenny & Anthony. Later, they partnered with Harry Shearer to form the comedy troupe The Credibility Gap. After ABC ordered Laverne & Shirley, a spinoff of Happy Days, to series in 1976, Penny Marshall and her then-husband Rob Reiner invited Lander and McKean to perform at their home. "They were really funny, the kind of funny where I had pain in my ears," Laverne & Shirley co-creator Lowell Ganz recalls. "They were really dirty, as vulgar as you could be. That was part of the comedy, it was sewn in. … Then, your only sense was, 'Is there any way you could put them on television?'" Lander, Shearer and McKean were all hired as writers on Laverne & Shirley, and Lander and McKean wrote Lenny & Squiggy into the premiere. Lander's other roles including voicing Jerry Lewis in a 1970 Saturday morning cartoon and taxidermist Tim Pinkle on ABC's Twin Peaks after he was cast by his neighbor David Lynch. McKean paid tribute to Lander by tweeting an image of them together. Shearer remembered Lander as "just the most masterful person.” “You could throw a ball into the air, and David could hit it for a mile in terms of a punchline,” said Shearer of Lander. ”It was magical.” Lander's Happy Days colleagues Henry Winkler and Don Most also paid tribute.