Death of Teri Garr: The unusual comic actress from “Young Frankenstein” and “Tootsie” has died

Teri Garr, the quirky comedy actress who rose from background dancer in Elvis Presley films to co-star in favorites like “Young Frankenstein” and “Tootsie,” has died. She was 79.

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

The actress, who was sometimes referred to as Terri, Terry or Terry Ann throughout her long career, seemed destined for show business since childhood.

Her father was Eddie Garr, a well-known vaudeville comedian; Her mother was Phyllis Lind, one of the first high-kick Rockettes at New York's Radio City Music Hall. Her daughter began dance lessons at age 6 and was dancing with the San Francisco and Los Angeles ballet companies at age 14.

She was 16 years old when she joined the road company of “West Side Story” in Los Angeles, and as early as 1963 she began appearing in supporting roles in films.

In a 1988 interview, she recalled winning the role in West Side Story. After being rejected from her first audition, she returned a day later wearing different clothes and was accepted.

From then on, the blonde, stately Garr found steady work as a dancer in films, appearing 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 and roll music show “Shindig,” the rock concert TAMI and a cast member of “The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour.”

Her big film breakthrough came in 1974 as Gene Hackman's girlfriend in the Francis Ford Coppola thriller “The Conversation.” That led to an interview with Mel Brooks, who said he would 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 did her accent,” Garr once recalled.

The film established her as a talented comedy actress, with New York film critic Pauline Kael calling her “the funniest neurotic ditzy on the screen.”

Her big smile and unconventional appeal helped her land roles in “Oh God!” opposite George Burns and John Denver, “Mr. Mom” (as Michael Keaton’s wife) and “Tootsie,” in which she played the girlfriend who Dustin Hoffman loses to Jessica Lange and learns that he has disguised himself as a woman to revive his career. (She also lost the supporting actress Oscar to Lange at this year's Academy Awards.)

Although Garr is best known for her comedies, she has shown that she can also handle drama in films such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Black Stallion and The Escape Artist.

“I would love to do 'Norma Rae' and 'Sophie's Choice,' but I never had the chance,” she once said, adding that she had been overshadowed as a comic actress.

She had a sense of spontaneous humor and often played the role of David Letterman in guest appearances on NBC's “Late Night With David Letterman” early in the series.

Their appearances became so frequent and the two's good-natured arguments so convincing that for a time there were rumors that they were in a romantic relationship. Years later, Letterman credited these early performances with helping make the show a hit.

During these years, Garr also began to feel a “slight beeping or ticking sound” in her right leg. It started in 1983 and eventually spread to her right arm, but she felt she could live with it. By 1999, the symptoms had become so severe that she sought medical attention. The diagnosis: multiple sclerosis.

Garr did not reveal her illness for three years.

“I was afraid I wouldn't get a job,” she explained in a 2003 interview. “People hear MS and think, 'Oh my God, that person has two days to live.'”

After going public, she became a spokesperson for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and gave humorous speeches at meetings in the United States and Canada.

“You have to find your center and take the hits, because that's a difficult thing: getting people to feel sorry for you,” she commented in 2005. “Just trying to explain to people that I'm fine, is tiring.”

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

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

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

She said she was born in Los Angeles, although most reference books list Lakewood, Ohio. When her father's career declined, 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 theater for two years at California State University, Northridge.

Garr remembered in 1988 what their father had told his children about a career in Hollywood.

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

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Associated Press reporter Mar Kennedy contributed to this report.