Teri Garr, Star of ‘Young Frankenstein’ and ‘Tootsie,’ Dead at 79
Teri Garr, the Oscar-nominated actress best known for her work in hit comedies like Tootsie and Young Frankenstein, died Tuesday, Oct. 29, at her home in Los Angeles, The New York Times reports. She was 79.
Garr’s publicist confirmed her death, saying it was caused by complications from multiple sclerosis. Garr was diagnosed with MS in 1999 and revealed it publicly in 2002. In 2006, she suffered a brain aneurysm that left her in a coma for several days, though she eventually regained her ability to speak.
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Over four decades, Garr enjoyed a wildly successful and multi-faceted career, excelling in comedy but also making memorable turns in dramas, thrillers, and sci-fi epics. The same year she broke through in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein, she had a supporting role in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation. A few years later, she starred opposite George Burns and John Denver in Oh, God!, as well as Richard Dreyfus in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Garr’s 1982 performance as Sandy Lester — the frustrated girlfriend of Dustin Hoffman’s Michael Dorsey/Dorothy Michaels — earned her an Oscar nomination, though she ultimately lost to her costar, Jessica Lange. In her 2006 memoir, Speedbumps: Flooring it Through Hollywood, Garr revealed she almost refused the role of Sandy, so determined was she to be the lead. And while she called the character “one of the most rewarding roles of my life,” she also wasn’t afraid to call out its shortcomings.
Describing the film in a 2008 interview with The AV Club, Garr quipped: “They put a man in a dress, and he’s supposed to know what it feels like to be a woman. But of course, he doesn’t. I think what Dustin [Hoffman] says is, ‘I realize now how important it is for a woman to be pretty. And I wasn’t pretty.’ God! That’s all you realized? Jesus Christ. Oh well. Don’t quote me. Actually, quote me.”
Garr was born and raised in Los Angeles, the daughter of an actor/vaudevillian and a former Rockette (her father, Edward, died when she was 11, and her mother, Phyllis, went on to become a costumer to support the family). Garr began her career with small parts in commercials, as well as an uncredited dancer in various films (including several starring Elvis Presley).
She finally started to secure speaking roles in film and on TV in the mid-Sixties, like a 1968 episode of Star Trek and the Monkees’ film Head, which arrived the same year. In the early Seventies, right before her film career took off, she scored a regular recurring role on The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour. Along with giving her the chance to hone her comedic chops, Garr also was able to borrow a German accent from Cher’s wig stylist for her performance as Inga — the assistant to Gene Wilder’s Dr. Frederick Frankenstein — in Young Frankenstein.
“That really put me on the map, being in that movie,” Garr told The AV Club. “I had no idea it was going to be such a big hit, and it’s still hot. People still look at it all the time. I had no idea. It really was the first time I ever had my name on the poster, co-starring and all that stuff. So I’m really grateful that I was even in it.”
Other highlights from Garr’s run during the Seventies and Eighties included major box office hits like the drama The Black Stallion and the comedy Mr. Mom, as well as cult favorites like Martin Scorsese’s After Hours. She later went on to work twice with Robert Altman — The Player and Prêt-à-Porter — while also delivering memorable supporting returns in movies like Dumb and Dumber, Dick, and Ghost World.
On TV, Garr popped up for guest spots on shows like M*A*S*H, ER, Felicity, and Friends, where she appeared in several episodes as the birth mother of Lisa Kudrow’s Phoebe.
“Teri Garr was a comedic acting genius who was and is a huge influence on me and I know I’m not alone in that. I feel so lucky and grateful I got to work with Teri Garr,” Kudrow tells Rolling Stone in a statement.
Arguably, her most memorable TV performances came on late-night: She hosted Saturday Night Live three times and was a regular on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, but she was probably best known for her many appearances opposite David Letterman.
Sarah Jessica Parker remembered Garr’s appearances on the late show, crediting her as the “perfect soufflé of humor, delight and her own special magic.” The actress added, “RIP and thank you for your every role and appearance on the big and little screen.”
Garr and Letterman’s fantastic repartee often teetered between flirty and contentious, which inevitably led to bits that haven’t aged all that well (like when Letterman convinced Garr to take a shower in his office).
While Garr enjoyed sparring, in an interview with Roger Ebert around the release of her 1988 film, Full Moon in Blue Water, she spoke about the way her Letterman appearances seemed to reinforce this perception of her as a “ditz,” and an actress only capable of doing comedy.
“I started out in the 1970s doing the Wife, the Bimbo, and the Ditz, and if I somehow get a serious role, they all wanna know the same thing: When are you going back to comedy?” she said.
She added: “I make a serious movie, it doesn’t work, it’s back to the comedy, honey. I’m going to hang in there, and keep tapping them on the shoulder. Maybe I’ll get a chance to do other stuff, and maybe I won’t. You have to want to be an actor, and not just a movie star. You have to be satisfied if you just do roles, and go as far as you can, because becoming a movie star is like winning the lottery. It’s a big joke. You have to be in the right place at the right time.”
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