LAVERNE AND SHIRLEY

We can thank Arthur Fonzarelli for bringing this lovable duo into our lives. On a Happy Days episode Fonzie introduces Laverne DeFazio and Shirley Feeney to the world as a double date for he and Ritchie. The girls were a little rough around the edges and from the “other side of the tracks” and they were SO good that ABC decided to give them their own series. So in 1976…. it began.
Now, we could do the usual fare of explaining that Penny Marshall was Laverne and Cindy Williams was Shirley and Garry Marshall the producer was Penny’s brother and that the great character actor Michael McKean was hilarious as Lenny Kosnowski AND David Lander was Andrew “Squiggy” Squigman…WHEW! But lets cut to the chase. What we really want to know is this…what in the heck are they saying at the beginning of the show?

COOL TRIVIA ALERT: “One, two, three, four, five, six, severn, eight, schlemiel, shlimazel, hasenpfeffer incorporated!”
Well, we did some digging and here it is. Apparently, this is a yiddish-American hopscotch chant. Not that it makes much sense together but here’s what the words mean individualy. A Schlemiel is a yiddish term for a clumsy or clutzy person, A schlimazel is someone who is unlucky and last but not least Hasenpfeffer is a German dish made from rabbit. (Remember the Warner Bros cartoon Shishkabugs 1962 where the king is yealling for the cook, who is Yosemite Sam , to cook his hasenpfeffer!!!)

So now you know. You can rest easy tonight. Oh and by the way the show ended in 1983. 🙂