A Hi-Bye Girl Recalls

Betty Garrett is still amazed that fans remember her from her stints on “Laverne & Shirley” and “All in the Family.”

“You can’t knock it,” she says of the recognition. “But it’s hard to believe those parts made such an impression. I always felt I had very little to do on the shows. I was lucky if I had one scene. Rue McClanahan, who was on ‘Maude,’ used to refer to us as the ‘hi-bye girls.’ You came through the door, said ‘Hi,’ told a joke, said ‘Bye’--and that was your part for the week.”

Although the actress enjoyed her six years on “Laverne & Shirley,” there were no regrets when the series was canceled.

“I was actually kind of glad,” she says. “You drive on the lot every day, the guard says, ‘Good morning, Miss Garrett,’ you have your own parking space, a dressing room with a refrigerator and typewriter--it’s like another little home. The whole thing gets dangerously comfortable. When it was over, I realized I hadn’t been doing a lot of the creative work I’d wanted to do. So that really got me off the dime.”

The result was a one-woman show of anecdotes and music, “Betty Garrett and Other Songs” (Theatre West, 1974, and Westwood Playhouse, 1976). Now she is back with a new piece, “No Dogs or Actors Allowed,” at the Pasadena Playhouse.

“There’s no singing in this one,” she says. “And it’s not so much about my life, although some of the stories are about me. They’re famous theatrical stories, dealing with the trials and tribulations actors go through--most of them funny . . . at least the ones I talk about.” Props are limited to a sign, a chair and an on-stage music stand with Garrett’s cue sheets. “When you tell a bunch of stories,” she says with a laugh, “it’s hard to remember what comes next.”

The title, “No Dogs or Actors Allowed,” refers to housing prejudices that theater people faced in turn-of-the-century Britain. “We’ve come a long way,” Garrett says, “but I’m still not sure the public really trusts us. How often have you heard a mother say, ‘I wish my daughter would meet a nice young actor and get married’--or a father who says, ‘Why do you want to be a lawyer? Why don’t you go into something respectable like the theater?’ ”