Teri Garr, the quirky comedy actor who rose from background dancer in Elvis Presley films to co-star of such favorites as Young Frankenstein and Tootsie, has died. She was 79.
Garr died Tuesday of a number of sclerosis “surrounded by family and friends,” stated publicist Heidi Schaeffer. Garr battled different well being issues lately and underwent an operation in January 2007 to restore an aneurysm.
Admirers took to social media in her honour, with writer-director Paul Feig calling her “truly one of my comedy heroes. I couldn’t have loved her more” and screenwriter Cinco Paul saying: “Never the star, but always shining. She made everything she was in better.”
The actor, who was generally credited as Terri, Terry or Terry Ann throughout her lengthy profession, appeared destined for present enterprise from her childhood.
Her father was Eddie Garr, a widely known vaudeville comic; her mom was Phyllis Lind, one of many unique high-kicking Rockettes at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. Their daughter started dance classes at 6 and by 14 was dancing with the San Francisco and Los Angeles ballet corporations.
She was 16 when she joined the street firm of West Side Story in Los Angeles, and as early as 1963 she started showing in bit elements in movies.
She recalled in a 1988 interview how she received the West Side Story position. After being dropped from her first audition, she returned a day later in numerous garments and was accepted.
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From there, the blonde, statuesque Garr discovered regular work dancing in films, and she or he appeared within the refrain of 9 Presley movies, together with Viva Las Vegas, Roustabout and Clambake.
She additionally appeared on quite a few tv exhibits, together with Star Trek, Dr. Kildare and Batman, and was a featured dancer on the rock ‘n’ roll music present Shindig, the rock live performance efficiency T.A.M.I. and a forged member of The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour.
Her large movie break got here as Gene Hackman’s girlfriend in 1974’s Francis Ford Coppola thriller The Conversation. That led to an interview with Mel Brooks, who stated he would rent her for the position of Gene Wilder’s German lab assistant in 1974’s Young Frankenstein — if she might communicate with a German accent.
“Cher had this German woman, Renata, making wigs, so I got the accent from her,” Garr as soon as recalled.
The movie established her as a gifted comedy performer, with New Yorker movie critic Pauline Kael proclaiming her “the funniest neurotic dizzy dame on the screen.”
Her large smile and off-centre enchantment helped land her roles in Oh God! reverse George Burns and John Denver, Mr. Mom (as Michael Keaton’s spouse) and Tootsie wherein she performed the girlfriend who loses Dustin Hoffman to Jessica Lange and learns that he has dressed up as a girl to revive his profession. (She additionally misplaced the supporting actress Oscar at that yr’s Academy Awards to Lange.)
Although greatest identified for comedy, Garr confirmed in such movies as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Black Stallion and The Escape Artist that she might deal with drama equally effectively.
“I would like to play Norma Rae and Sophie’s Choice, but I never got the chance,” she as soon as stated, including she had turn out to be typecast as a comic book actor.
She had a aptitude for spontaneous humour, usually enjoying David Letterman’s foil throughout visitor appearances on NBC’s Late Night With David Letterman early in its run.
Her appearances turned so frequent, and the pair’s good-natured bickering so convincing, that for a time rumours cropped up that they had been romantically concerned. Years later, Letterman credited these early appearances with serving to make the present successful.
It was additionally throughout these years that Garr started to really feel “a little beeping or ticking” in her proper leg. It started in 1983 and finally unfold to her proper arm as effectively, however she felt she might stay with it. By 1999 the signs had turn out to be so extreme that she consulted a health care provider. The prognosis: a number of sclerosis.
For three years Garr didn’t reveal her sickness.
“I was afraid that I wouldn’t get work,” she defined in a 2003 interview. “People hear MS and think, ‘Oh, my God, the person has two days to live.’”
After going public, she turned a spokeswoman for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, making humourous speeches to gatherings within the U.S. and Canada.
“You have to find your centre and roll with the punches because that’s a hard thing to do: to have people pity you,” she commented in 2005. “Just trying to explain to people that I’m OK is tiresome.”
She additionally continued to behave, showing on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Greetings From Tucson, Life With Bonnie and different TV exhibits. She additionally had a short recurring position on Friends within the Nineteen Nineties as Lisa Kudrow’s mom. After a number of failed romances, Garr married contractor John O’Neill in 1993. They adopted a daughter, Molly, earlier than divorcing in 1996.
In her 2005 autobiography, Speedbumps: Flooring It Through Hollywood, Garr defined her choice to not talk about her age.
“My mother taught me that showbiz people never tell their real ages. She never revealed hers or my father’s,” she wrote.
She stated she was born in Los Angeles, though most reference books checklist Lakewood, Ohio. As her father’s profession waned, the household, together with Teri’s two older brothers, lived with family members within the Midwest and East.
The Garrs finally moved again to California, settling within the San Fernando Valley, the place Teri was graduated from North Hollywood High School and studied speech and drama for 2 years at California State University, Northridge.
Garr recalled in 1988 what her father had instructed his kids about pursuing a profession in Hollywood.
“Don’t be in this business,” he instructed them. “It’s the lowest. It’s humiliating to people.”
Garr is survived by her daughter, Molly O’Neil, and a grandson, Tyryn.
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AP Entertainment Writer Mark Kennedy contributed to this report.
