Diagnosed with advanced cancer, actress Marcia Strassman got by with a little help from her friends—Penny Marshall, Laraine Newman and Anjelica Huston.
(Join the discussion: how does friendship heal you?)Marcia Strassman ignores the scrum of photographers gathered on the sidewalk as she briskly strides into Orso, a West Hollywood bistro frequented by the showbiz crowd. The actress, who doesn’t look much different from when she played Gabe Kaplan’s fresh-faced wife on the 1970s hit sit-com Welcome Back, Kotter, is here for a late lunch with two of her best pals, actress-director Penny Marshall and Saturday Night Live alum Laraine Newman.
Heads bob in the upscale eatery when Marshall, instantly recognizable in shorts and black sneakers, arrives along with the very petite Newman. They join Strassman, and the three repair to a corner table on the restaurant’s tree-shaded patio. As they mull over the menu, the longtime confidantes fall into a comfortable conversational shorthand, gently ribbing one another about their highly specific food preferences.
“I only eat vegetables and fruit—no sugar, no gluten, no wheat, no bread—and plenty of fish,” Strassman says.
“But the mercury is OK?” Marshall shoots back, peering dolefully at Strassman over the rimless shades that are perched on her nose.
“You’re busting my chops,” Strassman jokingly complains.
COMRADES IN CANCER
Their banter covers up a poignant back story. In March 2007, Strassman was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer that had spread to her bones. Since then, Marshall and Newman have been with her for every stage of her treatment, forming the nucleus of an extensive support network.
There’s no way of proving that the protective cocoon created by her friends has played a key role in Strassman’s continued well-being. But recent research suggests that her pals may have helped buffer her from the ravages of her disease. The famous Nurses’ Health Study from Harvard, for one, found that women who developed breast cancer and had 10 or more close friends were much more likely to survive the disease than women who lacked that kind of network. And research at Ohio State University discovered that women who participated in an intervention program with group support showed improved immune functioning. So, for a cancer sufferer like Strassman, meeting friends for lunch isn’t just fun—it’s also good, perhaps lifesaving, medicine.
ON THE HOLLYWOOD CIRCUIT
As two wisecracking New York transplants, Strassman and Marshall became fast friends when they met in L.A. more than 35 years ago. They both lived in West Hollywood, had the same hairdresser and hung out with the same crowd. Marshall, who has managed to live in car-culture central without ever getting behind the wheel, often called on Strassman to chauffeur her.
After Kotter, Strassman played the mom in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and its sequel Honey I Blew Up the Kid, and had recurring roles on the TV shows Providence, Tremors and Third Watch; Marshall went on from the success of starring in the Laverne and Shirley series to become the director of such hit movies as Big, Awakenings and A League of Their Own. As their careers developed, the two women continued to bond.
At lunch, Marshall recalls how she always knew she could count on Strassman, giving as an example the time, some years back, when her daughter, Tracy Reiner, now 45, was in a car accident: “Marcia was the most reliable, making sure everything was OK—I trust her with my own child.”
In the early 1980s, L.A. native Newman joined the gang after meeting Strassman at one of Marshall’s annual birthday bashes. Another longtime friend is actress Anjelica Huston, who couldn’t make the lunch but later explained, “We were all part of a pack of headstrong women who liked having fun.”
A CHILLING DIAGNOSIS
When Marshall heard about Strassman’s health trouble, she wasn’t terribly upset—at first. “It was breast cancer, which I could deal with because I have other friends who had it,” says Marshall, in the Bronx accent she made famous as Laverne DeFazio. “But when we found out it was in the bone,” she adds, “that was new.”
Strassman was surprised by the seriousness of her situation, since she had followed all the rules—she went in for annual checkups and mammograms, didn’t smoke, ate right and exercised. “I was lying in bed one Saturday night watching TV with my arms crossed over my chest when I felt this mound on my breast,” she recalls. “It was the size of a dollar pancake. ”
A biopsy revealed she had invasive lobular cancer, a relatively rare form that occurs in the milk-manufacturing lobules rather than, like most breast cancers, in the ducts that carry milk to the nipples. Invasive lobular cancer, which accounts for about 15 percent of cases, is more difficult to detect with a mammogram. “I was sitting with my dog Ollie when my doctor called,” says Strassman, whose daughter was away at college at the time. “I thought, now I have to find a surgeon. But I figured I’d just have a lumpectomy.”
Unfortunately, more tests revealed that the cancer had spread to her bones, so after the lumpectomy, her oncologist immediately started treatment with a combination regimen. One drug, Femara, an aromatase inhibitor in pill form that Strassman takes every morning, starves tumors of the estrogen they need to grow. The other, Zometa, which is administered in monthly infusions in her doctor’s office, is a bone-building bisphosphonate that can slow deterioration in people with bone metastases.
Shortly after the diagnosis, Marshall stopped by for a visit, but Strassman couldn’t talk—she was too busy fielding phone calls from friends. “I yelled at her because I knew she shouldn’t be on the phone that much—she really needed to take care of herself,” says the gruffly protective Marshall. That’s when she hatched the idea of cobbling together an e-mail list of Strassman’s family and various circles of friends. Marshall planned to fire off daily updates, which would spare Strassman from having to explain her condition over and over again.
The e-mail chain would also be a way of mobilizing Strassman’s battalion of well-wishers, who could be assigned to visit on different days and share errands like driving her to the doctor. “I offered to have her move in with me, but Marcia is fiercely independent. She’s the original ‘I’m fine’ girl—but she wasn’t,” Marshall says. “I didn’t want her to be alone, but I also didn’t want everyone coming on the same day and taxing her energy. Besides,” she adds, smiling. “I’m a director—what can I say?”
“She likes talking to people on megaphones,” Strassman says.
“I mumble or scream,” Marshall mumbles.
“Crouching mumble, hidden scream,” Newman says with a smile.
THE ENTERTAINMENT COMMITTEE
Strassman had no inkling Marshall had set up the e-mail list. “I was clueless,” the actress says, “until about two weeks into it someone called me and said, ‘I heard you had pasta last night.’ Of course, my question was, ‘And you know that because . . . ?’ ”
For her part, Newman did something that she knew would make Strassman laugh. She downloaded photos of her friend’s face from the Internet, then superimposed them on ads and stories in Town & Country. Each photo had a bubble of dialogue coming out of her mouth. “I picked that magazine because it’s so straitlaced, which is the opposite of Marcia,” Newman says.
“It is hilarious,” says Strassman, pulling out the treasured magazine from its plastic casing and spreading it across the table. The three friends chuckle over a faux ad of Strassman suggestively sprawled across a rug.
Newman is convinced Strassman will beat her disease. “It never enters my mind something will happen to one of my friends,” she says.
THE FRIENDSHIP BUFFER ZONE
Strassman doesn’t look like someone who’s battling a grave illness. Once her condition was stabilized by the combination drug therapy, she had surgery to remove remaining cancerous cells and several lymph nodes. Since then, bone scans have revealed no further deterioration, which is excellent news. She will take some form of therapy for the rest of her life. “This is cancer—but it’s a speed bump,” Strassman insists. “You slow down, but once you pass it, you keep going.”
Her friends have been crucial in helping her stay the course. “Just knowing that I can pick up the phone whenever I want, day or night, has made a big difference,” the actress says. “Penny was The General, but all my friends have been unbelievably nurturing. My friends know me—I don’t like being fussed over, so they made me
laugh and took my mind off my illness.”
Strassman admits, “I don’t want my life to be defined by my cancer, especially since it is incurable. But I’m lucky because most of the time I lead a normal life, and every once in a while I have to go to the doctor.”
All too soon, two hours have whizzed by, and lunch is over. Strassman fishes her car keys out of her purse. She’s ferrying Marshall to a meeting—happy, one would guess, to be back in the driver’s seat.
Join the discussion: how does friendship heal you?