Quirky comedy actress Teri Garr dies at the age of 79

Her father was Eddie Garr, a famous vaudeville comedian; her mother was Phyllis Lind, one of the first energetic Rockettes to play at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. Their daughter began dancing at the age of 6, and at 14 she was dancing with ballet companies in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

She was 16 when she joined the road crew of “West Side Story” in Los Angeles, and by 1963 she began appearing in films in cameo roles.

In a 1988 interview, she recalled how she landed the role in “West Side Story.” After she was kicked out of her first audition, she came back a day later in different clothes and was accepted.

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

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

Her big film break came in 1974, when she played Gene Hackman’s girlfriend Francis Ford Coppola thriller “The Conversation”. This led to an interview with Mel Brooks, who said he would hire her to play Gene Wilder’s German laboratory assistant in 1974’s “Young Frankenstein” – if she could speak with a German accent.

“Cher had a German woman, Renata, make wigs, so I picked up her accent,” Garr once recalled.

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

Her wide smile and off-center charm helped her land a role in “Oh God!” alongside George Burns and John Denver “Mr. Mom” (as Michael Keaton’s wife) and “Tootsie,” in which she played a girl who loses Dustin Hoffman to Jessica Lange and finds out he disguised himself as a woman to revive his career. (She also lost the Supporting Actress Oscar at this year’s Academy Awards to Lange.)

Though best known for comedy, Garr has shown in films like “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “The Black Stallion” and “The Escape Artist” that she can handle drama just as well.

“I would love to be in ‘Norma Rae’ and ‘Sophie’s Choice,’ but I never had the opportunity,” she once said, adding that she was considered a comedic actress.

She had a knack for spontaneous humor, often playing David Letterman’s foil during guest appearances on NBC’s “Late Night With David Letterman” in its early days.

Her appearances became so frequent, and the couple’s good-natured bickering so convincing, that for a time there were rumors that they were having an affair. Years later, Letterman credited these early appearances with making the series a hit.

It was also around this time that Garr began to feel “a little bit of squeaking or ticking” in his right leg. It started in 1983 and eventually spread to her right arm as well, but she felt she could live with it. By 1999, her symptoms had become so severe that she sought medical attention. Diagnosis: multiple sclerosis.

For three years, Garr did not reveal her illness.

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

After going public, she became a spokesperson for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, giving humorous speeches at gatherings in the U.S. and Canada.

“You have to find your center and roll with the punches, because that’s a hard thing: to make people pity you,” she commented in 2005. “Just trying to explain to people that I’m fine is exhausting.”