Teri Garr, actress of Young Frankenstein and Tootsie, dies at 79

Teri Garr, the unlikely comedienne who went from being a supporting dancer in Elvis Presley films to co-starring in such beloved films as “Young Frankenstein” and “Tootsie,” has died. She was 79.

Garr died Tuesday of multiple sclerosis “surrounded by family and friends,” publicist Heidi Schaeffer told The Associated Press and NBC News.

Garr has battled other health problems in recent years. In January 2007, she underwent surgery to repair the aneurysm.

The actress, who was sometimes called Terry, Terry or Terry Ann during her long career, seemed destined for show business from childhood.

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

She was 16 when she joined the touring cast of West Side Story in Los Angeles, and in 1963 she began appearing in bit parts in films.

In a 1988 interview, she recalled landing the role in West Side Story. After being eliminated from the first audition, she returned a day later wearing a different outfit and was accepted.

The statuesque blonde Garr then found regular work dancing in films and appeared in the chorus of nine Presley films, including Viva Las Vegas, Rustabout and Clambake.

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

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

“Cher hired a German woman, Renata, who made wigs, so I picked up the accent from her,” Garr once recalled.

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

Her wide smile and off-center attractiveness helped her land roles in Oh My God! opposite George Burns and John Denver, “Mr. Mom” (as Michael Keaton’s wife) and “Tootsie”, in which she played a girl who lost to Dustin Hoffman’s Jessica Lange and learned that he had dressed as a woman to relaunch his career. (She also lost the Supporting Actress Oscar at that year’s Academy Awards to Lange.)

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

“I would love to do Norma Rae and Sophie’s Choice, but I never had the opportunity,” she once said, adding that she became a typecast comic actress.

She had a talent for spontaneous humor and often impersonated David Letterman during guest appearances on NBC’s Late Night with David Letterman during its early run.

Her appearances became so frequent, and the couple’s good-natured quarrels so compelling, that for a time there were rumors of a romantic relationship. Years later, Letterman noted that these early performances helped make the show a hit.

It was during those years that Garr began to feel a “slight buzzing or ticking” sensation 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 became so severe that she saw a doctor. Diagnosis: multiple sclerosis.

For three years, Garr did not report her illness.

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

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

“You have to find your center and roll with the punches because it’s a difficult task: making people feel sorry for you,” she commented in 2005. “Just trying to explain to people that I’m okay is exhausting.”

She also continued acting, appearing on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Greetings from Tucson, Life with Bonnie, and other television shows. She also had a short recurring role on the 1990s series Friends as Lisa Kudrow’s mother. After several failed relationships, Garr married contractor John O’Neill in 1993. They adopted a daughter, Molly, before divorcing in 1996.

In her 2005 autobiography, Striking Hollywood, Garr explained her decision not to discuss her age.

“My mother taught me that people in show business never tell their real age. She never revealed hers or my father’s,” she wrote. California voting records list her date of birth as December 11, 1947.

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

The Garrs eventually returned to California, settling 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 that her father told his children about a career in Hollywood.

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