Teri Garr, the comedic actress from ‘Young Frankenstein’ and ‘Tootsie’, has died

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Teri Garr, the quirky comedy actress who rose from background dancer in Elvis Presley movies to co-star in such favorites as “Young Frankenstein” and “Tootsie,” has died. She was 79.

Garr died Tuesday of multiple sclerosis “surrounded by family and friends,” publicist Heidi Schaeffer said. Garr battled other health problems in recent years and underwent surgery in January 2007 to repair an aneurysm.

Admirers took to social media in her honor, with writer-director Paul Feig calling her “truly one of my comedy heroes. I couldn’t have loved her more” and screenwriter Cinco Paul says: “Never the star, but always shining. She made everything she was in better.”

The actress, sometimes credited as Terri, Terry or Terry Ann during her long career, seemed destined for show business from her childhood.

Her father was Eddie Garr, a noted vaudeville comedian; her mother was Phyllis Lind, one of the original high-kicking Rockettes at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. Their daughter began dance lessons at the age of 6 and by the age of 14 she was dancing with the ballet companies in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

She was 16 when she joined the road company “West Side Story” in Los Angeles, and as early as 1963 she began appearing in bit parts in films.

She recalled in a 1988 interview how she won the “West Side Story” role. After being dropped from her first audition, she returned a day later in different clothes and was accepted.

From there, the blond, statuesque Garr found steady work dancing in films, and she appeared in the chorus of nine Presley films, including “Viva Las Vegas,” “Roustabout” and “Clambake.”

She also appeared in numerous television shows, including “Star Trek,” “Dr. Kildare” and “Batman,” and was a featured dancer in the rock ‘n’ roll music show “Shindig,” the rock concert performance TAMI, and a cast member of “The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour”.

Her big film break came as Gene Hackman’s girlfriend in the 1974 Francis Ford Coppola thriller “The Conversation.” That led to an interview with Mel Brooks, who said he wanted to cast her as Gene Wilder’s German lab assistant in 1974’s “Young Frankenstein ” – if she could speak with a German accent.

“Cher had this German woman, Renata, make wigs, so I got the accent from her,” Garr once recalled.

The film established her as a talented comedic performer, with New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael proclaiming her “the funniest neurotic giddy lady on the screen.”

Her big smile and off-center appeal helped land her roles in “Oh God!” opposite George Burns and John Denver, “Mr. Mom” ​​(as Michael Keaton’s wife) and “Tootsie”, where she played the boyfriend who loses Dustin Hoffman to Jessica Lange and learns that he has dressed as a woman to rekindle his career. (She also lost the Supporting Actress Oscar at that year’s Academy Awards to Lange.)

Although Garr is best known for comedy, in films like “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “The Black Stallion” and “The Escape Artist,” he showed she could handle drama just as well.

“I wanted to do ‘Norma Rae’ and ‘Sophie’s Choice,’ but I never got the chance,” she once said, adding that she had been typecast as a comic actor.

She had a flair for spontaneous humor and often played David Letterman’s foil during guest appearances on NBC’s “Late Night With David Letterman” early in its run.

Her appearances became so frequent and the pair’s good-natured bickering so compelling that for a time rumors surfaced that they were romantically involved. Years later, Letterman credited those early appearances with helping make the show a hit.

It was also during these years that Garr began to feel “a little beeping or ticking” in her right leg. It began in 1983 and eventually spread to her right arm as well, but she felt she could live with it. By 1999, the symptoms had become so severe that she consulted a doctor. The diagnosis: multiple sclerosis.

For three years, Garr did not reveal his illness.

“I was afraid I wasn’t going to get a job,” she explained in a 2003 interview. “People hear MS and think, ‘Oh, my God, the person has two days to live.’

After going public, she became a spokeswoman for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and gave humorous speeches to gatherings in the United States and Canada.

“You have to find your center and roll with the punches because that’s a hard thing to do: to get people to feel sorry for you,” she commented in 2005. “Just trying to explain to people that I have the good, is tiring.”

She also continued to act, appearing in “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” “Greetings From Tucson,” “Life With Bonnie” and other television shows. She also had a brief recurring role on “Friends” in the 1990s as Lisa Kudrow’s mother. After several failed romances, Garr married contractor John O’Neill in 1993. They adopted a daughter, Molly, before divorcing in 1996.

In his 2005 autobiography, “Speedbumps: Flooring It Through Hollywood,” Garr explained his decision not to discuss his age.

“My mother taught me that showbiz people never tell their real age. She never revealed hers or my father’s,” she wrote. California’s voter registration records gave her date of birth as December 11, 1947.

She said she was born in Los Angeles, although most reference books list Lakewood, Ohio. As her father’s career waned, the family, including Teri’s two older brothers, lived with relatives in the Midwest and East.

The Garrs eventually moved back to California and settled in the San Fernando Valley, where Teri graduated from North Hollywood High School and studied speech and drama for two years at California State University, Northridge.

Garr recalled in 1988 what her father had told his children about pursuing a career in Hollywood.

“You shouldn’t be in this business,” he told them. “It’s the lowest. It’s humiliating for people.”

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AP Entertainment Writer Mark Kennedy contributed to this report.