Laverne & Shirley - Opening Sequence

Opening Sequence

At the start of each episode, we see Laverne and Shirley skipping down the street, arm in arm, reciting a Yiddish-American hopscotch chant: "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Schlemiel! Schlimazel! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated," which then leads into the series' theme song entitled "Making Our Dreams Come True," sung by Cyndi Grecco. In the sixth and seventh seasons (which were set in Hollywood), the intro featured Laverne and Shirley coming out of an apartment building, but still singing their original chant, and then a re-recorded version of the original theme song. During the final season after Cindy Williams left the show, the show opened with Laverne watching a group of school children perform the chant before the theme song began.

The opening sequence has been parodied in many pop culture outlets, including the movie Wayne's World, where Garth and Wayne perform the theme song while visiting Milwaukee. In an episode of The Nanny entitled "Val's Apartment," Fran and Val say the chant before entering their apartment for the first time, but they stumble over the word "Hasenpfeffer." The sequence has also been parodied in other languages, on Friends in a Spanish-language track under the title Laverne y Shirley, and on Saturday Night Live, in faux Japanese, under the name Rabun to Shuri.

In the first season, the main title showed the full names of the characters (i.e., "Laverne De Fazio & Shirley Feeney"), but in subsequent seasons this was reduced to just their first names (i.e., "Laverne & Shirley"). During its syndicated run, the series was retitled Laverne & Shirley & Company from 1981 to 1983 due to the series still airing on ABC at the time (at the time, distributors would sometimes change the name of a show for syndication if it was still producing new episodes on a network—such as was the case with Happy Days, when it was retitled Happy Days Again in syndication).