A “knuckle-headed greaser,” who lived in the apartment above Laverne and Shirley, often came to the door with his “equally-challenged” buddy, Lenny, and said, “HELLOOOOOO,” in a voice only he could manage. All my buddies recognized it and tried to imitate it. We loved the guy! We loved his “hair worm.” We loved his belief that he could be the boy-friend of the girls. We loved that he loved life and had fun and did not know anyone was laughing at him—only with him!
His “real” name was David L. Lander, but most of us of my era knew him as “SQUIGGY,” a stereotypical “greaser,” identified with the 1950s era.
His character was described as a “thug wannabe minus the muscle” and with a “voice that was both nasal and squeaky.” He had a “thing” for neighbor, Shirley, and entered every room with his signature— “Hellooooo!”—and his certain way of walking.
Lander was born in Brooklyn three years before my 1950 birthday and graduated from Manhattan’s High School of the Performing Arts and then attended Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
Most of us have either or both high school and college classmates, who are forever parts of our lives and helped form our identities. His counterpart was Michael McKean from Mellon. He was the LENNY to David’s SQUIGGY—and they invented and perfected those two characters long before the LAVERNE & SHIRLEY comedic masterpiece of the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The two of them were part of a comedy group called “The Credibility Gap,” and they had met while painting a chair for a school theatre set. They remained life-long friends, the type friendship of which we all dream!
How did these two men “get” their parts on the above show, whose main stars were Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams? Well, how do you think? Of the two women stars, who most reminds you of Lenny and Squiggy?
Well, she was the one who “suggested” the pair for the show, and the “rest is history,” as the cliché goes! (In case you have never seen the show, Penny Marshall played “Laverne;” Cindy Williams played “Shirley,” and it was Penny who introduced the two men to fame!)
But, there was so much more to the REAL DAVID LANDER than the goofy Squiggy that portrayed a character we all had known at one time or still do know in our personal lives—the nerdy, bothersome, pestering, no one’s real boyfriend but thinks the women love him, loveable in his own way guy, whom we would miss if he were gone!
David Lander had numerous other serious roles in film and on television and was known for his excellent “voice-overs.”
He also helped to raise the public awareness and acceptance of the problems that can be caused by MS— Multiple Sclerosis—“the nervous system disease.”
Lander came to the realization and helped to spread the message that “I don’t think we are ever going to find a cure. It’s just basically becoming aware that you can live with it!”
In 1999 he made a public disclosure of his disease, after receiving the personal diagnosis in 1984. And, just a couple weeks ago, DAVID LANDER’S “living with the disease” ended peacefully from complications of MS with his wife, daughter, and son-in-law at his side.
He detailed his “journey” with the disease in a memoir, titled “Fall Down Laughing: How Squiggy Caught Multiple Sclerosis and Didn’t Tell Nobody.”
According to his best friend, Michael KcKean, who “tweeted” an old photo of the two “best friends together” upon David’s passing, “He physically had gone down as time passed, but he had lost nothing mentally!”
HHEELLLOOOOOOO and now “Good-bye!”
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