Teri Garr, an artist with a flair for humor who was known for film jobs in” Young Frankenstein”,” Oh, God”! and” Tootsie”, a piece that earned her an Oscar nomination, has died.
After being publicly exposed as a multiple sclerosis advocate in 2002, Garr passed away peacefully on Tuesday in Los Angeles, her writer Heidi Schaeffer confirmed to The Times. She even had undergone surgery in 2006 to fix a brain hemorrhage. Garr was 79.
When she played Dustin Hoffman’s long-suffering girl in the 1982 hit picture” Tootsie”, New Yorker critic Pauline Kael called Garr” the funniest paranoid dizzy lady on the display”. According to Ms. Magazine, she “radiated sarcasm and vulnerability at the same time.”
Stressed women were a niche: She was Richard Dreyfuss ‘ worried family in” Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, John Denver’s disbelieving family in” Oh, God”! and a mother who works from” Mr. Mom”.
” I seem to thrive at those elements”, Garr told Reuters in 1986. If you can get your feet in the entry by playing one particular function, that’s the role they’ll call you for. I ca n’t say I resent it — then I would resent my whole career”.
In her first major film — Francis Ford Coppola’s” The Discussion” — she had a smaller role as Gene Hackman’s girl and received positive reviews. The same year, she had a miracle part in” Young Frankenstein”, the Mel Brooks movie. Playing a freed test associate with a German accent, Garr proved she was” a magnificent comedienne”, The Times ‘ assessment said.
The two shows “kind of created a balance, you know, that this girl you action and get funny”, Garr told National Public Radio in 2005.
When she played an insecure, nuts waiter who sketches her gods from the 1960s in” After Hours”, The Times called her performance” poignantly crazy”. Kael praised her “glittering eccentricity”.
Coppola gave her the responsibility of the first female guide in” One From the Heart,” and Garr, a previous professional dance, danced tango with Frederic Forrest down a Las Vegas city. During shooting, a piece of crystal sliced a muscle in Garr’s foot, eventually, she would know if the incident had triggered her multiple sclerosis.
After Garr made the public announcement that she had MS, a chronic condition that affects the nervous system, she frequently joked that she would continue to find parts “even if, you know, in Hollywood, getting older is worse than having a handicap.”
As a paid spokesperson for MS LifeLines, an education plan sponsored by pharmaceutical companies, Garr traveled the country speaking about the condition.
She initially noticed the condition in 1983 when her finger “buzzed” while she jogged. Up until 1999, she sought out the chair of the neuroscience office at what is now USC’s Keck School of Medicine.
” MS is a stealthy condition. Like some of my companions, it has a tendency to show up at the most uncomfortable days and then to dissipate entirely”, she wrote in” Speedbumps: Flooring It Through Hollywood”, her 2005 book.
Teri Ann Garr was born into a show-business home in Los Angeles but spent her early ages moving around the country so her parents, Eddie Gonnaud, after Garr, may work in theater. Her family, Phyllis, was a Rockette.
The home, which included two older brothers, moved to North Hollywood when Garr was 8. Her father was active in both the Marilyn Monroe movie” Women of the Chorus” and broadcast.
Born Dec. 11, 1944, Garr was cagey about her age but frequently said she was 11 when her father died of a heart attack. His death certificate was published in the New York Times in September 1956, which indicates that she would have been born in 1944, the year that first historical sources mention.
She attributed her enthusiasm to her mother, a” hard doughnut,” who discovered creative ways to manage her money after she became married, including letting out the front of the family residence. At NBC, her mother likewise worked as a movie.
By the end of third grade, Garr’s graphic timing was thus evident that her tutor handed her a note that said,” Tomorrow you will be a wonderful comedienne”, she recalled in her autobiography.
After her father passed away, Garr pursued that dream of becoming a premier gymnast. She traveled with a specialist dance organization in San Francisco when Elvis Presley sounded through her resort window in high school, but she soon felt the need to play.
She staged” West Side Story” for a period production after graduating from North Hollywood High. She had one column, got a chuckle — and wanted to be an actor.
After two years of studying talk and crisis, she decided to pursue full-time show business, and her first real success was in television commercials.
Garr once said,” I remember clawing my way to the middle,” Garr said to the Ottawa Citizen in 2000 with the trademark wit.
She shimmied on ABC’s music demonstrate” Shindig”! in the mid-1960s and danced in nine Presley videos, including” Viva Las Vegas”.
In one earlier position, Garr played a dippy director on a 1968 show of” Star Trek”. She altered a Hollywood custom to include an advertisement in Variety that invited viewers to view her” smile on Star Trek.” To display her great break, she changed the ad. X-rays of her teeth were visible in the following photo.
For a couple of times in the early 1970s, she was Cher’s companion in plays on” The Butch &, Cher Comedy Hour” on CBS, after playing Cher’s puppy.
After her film career slowed down in the middle of the 1980s, Garr gradually turned her attention to the small screen.
She starred in the 1986 soap opera send-up” Fresno” on CBS and in a couple of short-lived TV series. Mainly, she took guest roles on dozens of shows, including playing the eccentric birth mother of Lisa Kudrow’s character, Phoebe, on NBC’s” Friends” in the late 1990s.
Popular on the talk-show circuit, Garr was such a frequent guest on David Letterman’s late-night show that she often had to deny rumors of a romance.
Garr found herself in her late 40s year yearning for a family despite vowing never to marry and fearing it would hurt her career. She married John O’Neil, a contractor, the same day their adopted daughter, Molly, was born in 1993. After three years, the marriage came to an end.
Garr, who walked with a leg brace for years, was serious when she blamed ageism, not her illness, for slowing down her acting career, though she continued to appear occasionally on television and in films, including” Unaccompanied Minors” in 2006.
” Actually, I thought,’ What’s the difference — being handicapped in Hollywood or being a woman over 50?'”
Garr is survived by her daughter, Molly O’Neil, and grandson, Tyryn, whom she adored.
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