Teri Garr, the Oscar-nominated actress who capitalized on her adorable flightiness in such films as Tootsie and Young Frankenstein before her career was derailed by multiple sclerosis, died Tuesday. She was 79.
Garr, who started out as a background dancer working alongside Elvis Presley in several 1960s party films, died in Los Angeles “surrounded by family and friends,” publicist Heidi Schaeffer said.
Garr revealed that she had MS, the chronic, degenerative disease of the nervous system, on Larry King’s CNN show in October 2002, and she survived emergency surgery to treat a brain aneurysm four years later. Her final onscreen appearance came in 2011.
Garr’s career breakthrough came as Gene Wilder’s comely Transylvanian lab assistant in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein (1974). She received her supporting actress Oscar nomination for playing Dustin Hoffman’s insecure actress friend in Sydney Pollack’s Tootsie (1982).
Those films ranked Nos. 13 and 2, respectively, on an AFI list (released in 2000) of the funniest American movies of all time.
Garr, whose flair for comedy was complemented by a capacity to portray the pain underneath, also stood out as the girlfriend of paranoid surveillance expert Gene Hackman in The Conversation (1974); played John Denver’s resilient wife in Carl Reiner’s Oh, God! (1977); was Richard Dreyfuss’ indulgent mate in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977); had an affair with Raul Julia in Francis Ford Coppola’s ill-fated musical One From the Heart (1981); and was the working wife of Michael Keaton in Mr. Mom (1983), written by John Hughes.
Garr dressed up such Elvis movies as Kissin’ Cousins (1964), Viva Las Vegas (1964) and Clambake (1967) and was a pajama girl in the Annette Funicello-starring Pajama Party (1964). During this time, the vivacious actress go-go danced on such hit music series as Shindig! and Hullabaloo and played a stumbling Statue of Liberty on roller skates in a 1970 summer show at Disneyland.
Much later, she had a recurring role on NBC’s Friends as the estranged birth mother of Lisa Kudrow’s Phoebe.
Several publications list Terry Ann Garr’s birth date as Dec. 11, 1944. She was born in Lakewood, Ohio, and had two older brothers. Her father, Eddie, was a song-and-dance man in vaudeville, and her mother, Phyllis (nickname: “Legs”), was a Rockette from Radio City Music Hall.
Her father died when she was 11, and the family moved often. Her mother wound up working in Hollywood in the costume department at NBC.
Garr studied ballet, and soon after she graduated from North Hollywood High School, she landed a job in a road production of West Side Story. She met actor-producer-choreographer David Winters, who went on to cast her in many of her early movies, and studied at The Actors Studio in New York, where she met Jack Nicholson.
From 1966-68, Garr landed small roles on TV in Batman, The Andy Griffith Show, Star Trek (in the 1968 episode “Assignment: Earth”) and That Girl and garnered her first movie speaking role in The Monkees’ Head (1968), co-written by Nicholson.
Garr sang, danced and played various characters during the 1971-72 season of The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, then had recurring roles on the two NBC shows: the short-lived Sally Field sitcom The Girl With Something Extra and, as a ditzy policewoman, on the Dennis Weaver cop show McCloud.
Wilder recommended Garr for the role of Inga in Young Frankenstein.
“Gene told me about this Teri Garr person, and we had some film on Teri,” Brooks, who was coming off his huge hit Blazing Saddles, recalled in 2014. “And I said, ‘She’s absolutely beautiful — can she act?’ And Gene said, ‘Who gives a shit?’ … Teri came in, read about half a page and we both said, ‘Yay!’
“There was a line she had when Cloris [Leachman] was undoing the monster’s straps and setting him free, and Teri was on the stairs looking down and she said, ‘No, no — You muzn’t!’ Muzn’t? You’re hired!”
Said Garr, who had sought the Madeline Kahn role in the movie: “At first I didn’t know there was an accent, and [when she found out] I was doing Sonny & Cher. Cher’s hairdresser was German, and I just copied everything she said.”
She went to her audition wearing a bra stuffed with socks. “People pay over $5,000 for a boob job today. Mine cost under $5 at Woolworths and got me the part, my biggest to date,” she wrote in the 2005 memoir, Speedbumps: Flooring It Through Hollywood.
In the film, Garr goes for “ze roll roll roll in ze hay” with Wilder’s Frederick Frankenstein and innocently wonders about the size of the monster’s schvontztucker (or something to that effect).
For Tootsie, Garr — who was coming off One From the Heart — told Pollack that she would only appear in the film as Julie (Jessica Lange’s role) and nothing else. But the director talked her into playing Sandy.
“I squelched my inner diva, who had said she’d only accept the lead, and took what turned out to be one of the most rewarding roles in my life,” she wrote in her book. Lange also was nominated for supporting actress in Tootsie, and she won the Oscar.
Garr also appeared in such films as Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976), The Black Stallion (1979) and its 1983 sequel, Witches’ Brew (1980), The Sting II (1983), Firstborn (1984), After Hours (1985), Miracles (1986), Full Moon in Blue Water (1988), Waiting for the Light (1990), The Player (1992), Dumb and Dumber (1994), Dick (1999) and Expired (2007).
When film roles became scarce, she starred in the 1990s sitcoms Good & Evil, the Designing Women spinoff Women of the House and Good Advice, but all were short-lived.
Garr hosted Saturday Night Live three times (in 1980, 1983 and 1985) and was a frequent visitor on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. She also appeared often on David Letterman’s shows; in 1985, she showered in his office during one installment.
“Dave reminded me of my older brothers; he was always trying to get my goat, and he usually succeeded,” she wrote.
Garr, who dated and lived with producer and future MGM co-CEO Roger Birnbaum for several years, was married to contractor John O’Neill from 1993 until their divorce in 1996. They adopted a daughter, Molly.
Survivors also include her grandchild, Tyryn.
Garr served as a national ambassador for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and chaired the society’s Woman Against MS programs.
After her moment in the Oscar spotlight, Garr wrote in her memoir, “In my mind, it was all going according to plan. But it ain’t always so, is it?
“My body had a trick or two up its sleeve. A stumble here, a tingling finger there. I was trained as a dancer and knew better than to indulge the random aches and pains that visited now and then. Being a successful Hollywood actress may be challenging, but little did I know that the very body that had always been my calling card would betray me.”
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