Marilu Henner

Marilu Henner plays Elaine Nardo on Taxi, the single-mom art-world refugee in Judd Hirsch’s garage of beautiful losers while Danny DeVito’s Louie tyrannizes the dispatcher booth. James L. Brooks character comedy at altitude: Christopher Lloyd, Andy Kaufman, Tony Danza, Henner. Bittersweet workplace sitcom after ABC, then NBC. Elaine is why the lot has a woman who wants out and still clocks in — a cab as a day job, a life as the night’s real fare.

Henner arrives on ABC/NBC from 1978–1983 inside Taxi, billed as Elaine Nardo. s01e01 is the desk's first hour. Like Father, Like Daughter opens the Sunshine garage. Hirsch's weary Alex already holds a bench of losers; Brooks character comedy without sugar from night one. The rest is proof, not a seminar. Henner on Taxi remains catalog craft on ABC/NBC from 1978–1983.

Henner does the close-up work ensemble television lives on. Elaine Nardo is that face. When the conversation asks what still plays, point at s02e01. Louie and the Nice Girl is DeVito's dispatcher tyranny as a romantic mismatch. The booth remains the series' smallest, meanest stage — workplace farce with teeth. s04e01 is the later check. Jim the Psychic lets Christopher Lloyd's Reverend Jim own an hour of beautiful brain damage. The garage's sainted space cadet as seasonal architecture, not a cameo. Elaine Nardo remains the occupancy.

Ensemble as a religion. Nardo photographs as glamour-in-a-uniform and plays as ambition with a time card. On TV Flash Henner is 1970s catalog steel: the Elaine who made a loser-comedy feel like it had an artist in it, then left the garage looking like a choice you could still reverse in the morning.