Photos: Hometown Theater Honors Marion Ross With Bronze Statue

Stage and screen legend Marion Ross remarked, "How wonderful! I will forever be looking out across the lake at the old beach where I was a life guard and to my old home on High Street just over the hill from the beach. It is the perfect location! I couldn't be happier!"

Marion Ross' hometown of Albert Lea, MN is so proud of their famous TV mom that they have named a theatre after her and a street that bares her name. Now, the town has just dedicate a bronze statue of the favorite citizen and unveiled this week.

The statue is located outside the theatre that bares her name, The Marion Ross Performing Arts Center on Broadway in downtown Albert Lea at the corner of Broadway and Marion Ross Street which was recently renamed in her honor!

This was Ms Ross' first post-covid trip outside of her "Happy Days Farm" in California, to her hometown for the unveiling. The bronze statue is dressed as Mrs. Cunningham from the "Happy Days" series, which ran for 10 years from 1974-1984 and was sculptured using a screen accurate replica of a costume that Marion wore on the show and is seated on a park bench reaching out to invite any passerby to join her.

Following an exhaustive national search for a bronze artist, they found Chad Fisher and his dad, Fran, of Fisher Sculpture LLC, whose claim to fame consisted of sports heroes. However, as a nationally loved icon of television, Marion was the perfect choice for their first tribute to someone in the arts.

MARION ROSS (Happy Days - http://www.bhbpr.com/marionross.htm) - Currently, TV's happiest mother opens up about life on screen and off in her new memoir "My Days: Happy and Otherwise." For eleven seasons, Marion Ross was head of one of America's favorite television households. Before she was affectionately known to millions as "Mrs. C.," Marion Ross worked for two decades as a Paramount starlet, appearing in nearly every major TV series of the 1950s and 1960s-including Love, American Style, in which she donned an apron that would cinch her career. Soon after came the fateful phone call from producer Garry Marshall that made her an "overnight" success, and changed her life.

Marion admits that her first love is the stage, and she received critical acclaim for her Broadway and national tour, with Jean Stapleton, in ARSENIC & OLD LACE and the national tour of STEEL MAGNOLIAS. In 2012 she played the grandmother in LOST IN YONKERS in Toronto and in 2013 THE GAMES AFOOT at The New Theatre in Kansas City.

She starred in the acclaimed television series BROOKLYN BRIDGE, for which she was twice nominated for an Emmy and was a two-time winner for Best Comedy Actress of the year by Viewers for Quality Television. Marion won a Golden Globe nomination for her role as Rosie in the movie THE EVENING STAR with Shirley MacLaine. She has played Drew Carey's mother on THE DREW CAREY SHOW, the feisty matriarch on THE GILMORE GIRLS and the terrible mother-in-law on THAT 70's SHOW. She also played Sally Field's mother on BROTHERS & SISTERS and Leslie Nielson's wife in the movie SUPERHERO. Marion is the voice of SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS' grandma and Mrs. Lopart on HANDY MANNY. She recently did a guest voice over on the cartoon series GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY.

Marion hails from Albert Lea, Minnesota, and after college at San Diego State University, she proudly began her career under contract to Paramount Studios in the 50's with live TV at CBS in LIFE WITH FATHER. She's proudest of performing with Noel Coward in BLITHE SPIRIT, live at CBS with Sir Noel, Claudette Colbert and Lauren Bacall. In 2001, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and in 2008, was the renaming and dedication of The Marion Ross Performing Arts Center in her home town of Albert Lea. Marion is an Associate Artist at the Globe Theatre, in San Diego, and last appeared there in the summer of 2010 in THE LAST ROMANCE with her darling, the late Paul Michael. She's working on her autobiography which will be out May 2018.

In this warm and candid memoir, filled with loving recollections from the award-winning Happy Days team-from break-out star Henry Winkler to Cunningham "wild child" Erin Moran-Ross shares what it was like to be a starry-eyed young girl with dreams in poor, rural Minnesota, and the resilience, sacrifices, and determination it took to make them come true. She recalls her early years in the business, being in the company of such luminaries as Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Noel Coward, yet always feeling the Hollywood outsider-a painful invisibility that mirrored her own childhood. She reveals the absolute joys of playing a wife and mother on TV, and the struggles of maintaining those roles in real life. But among Ross's most heart-rending recollections are those of finally finding a soul mate-another secret hope of hers made true well beyond her expectations.

Funny, poignant, and revealing-and featuring Garry Marshall's final illuminating interview-as well as a touching foreword from her "TV son" Ron Howard, and a conversation with her real-life son and daughter, Marion Ross's story is one of inspiration, persistence, and gratitude. It's also a glowing tribute to all those who fulfilled her dreams-and in turn, gave us some of the happiest days of our own lives.

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