Penny Marshall

NEW YORK — Penny Marshall, who starred in the top-rated sitcom “Laverne & Shirley” before becoming the trailblazing director of smash-hit big-screen comedies such as “Big” and “A League of Their Own,” has died at 75.

A spokesman for the family said Marshall died in her Los Angeles home on Monday night due to complications from diabetes. Marshall earlier fought lung cancer.

In “Laverne & Shirley,” among television’s biggest hits for much of its eight-season run between 1976-1983, the nasal-voiced, Bronx-born Marshall starred as Laverne DeFazio alongside Cindy Williams as a pair of blue-collar roommates toiling on the assembly line of a Milwaukee brewery.

Marshall directed several episodes of “Laverne & Shirley,” which her older brother, the late filmmaker-producer Garry Marshall, created.

Those episodes helped launch Marshall as a filmmaker. Marshall’s film, “Big,” starring Tom Hanks was a major success, making her the first woman to direct a film that grossed more than $100 million.

Marshall re-teamed with Hanks for “A League of Their Own,” the 1992 comedy about the women’s professional baseball league begun during World War II.