Teri Garr, a Scene-Stealer in ‘Tootsie’ and ‘Young Frankenstein,’ Dies at 79

Teri Garr, the Oscar-nominated actress best known for her scene-stealing comedic turns in Young Frankenstein and Tootsie—whom The New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael once called “the funniest neurotic dizzy dame on the screen,” died Tuesday, following a decades-long fight against multiple sclerosis, Variety reports. She was 79.

When remembering how he cast Garr in her breakout role as Inga, Dr. Frankenstein’s comely lab assistant in Young Frankenstein, Mel Brooks jokingly recalled, “Gene (Wilder) told me about this Teri Garr person. We had some film on Teri and I said, ‘She’s absolutely beautiful; can she act?’ And Gene said, ‘Who gives a shit?’”

She could act. In the 1970s and early 80s, Garr worked with Hollywood’s leading directors, including Francis Ford Coppola (The Conversation), Steven Spielberg (Close Encounters of the Third Kind), Carl Reiner (Oh, God!) and Martin Scorsese (After Hours).

She could also dance. Her earliest screen appearances were vivacious dancing roles in the seminal rock concert film The T.A.M.I. Show, Pajama Party and seven Elvis Presley films, including Viva Las Vegas.

Garr was also a sparkling and quick-witted talk show guest, most memorably on Late Night with David Letterman; the host called her one of his favorites. She and Letterman enjoyed a charming rapport. Perhaps her most audacious appearance came in 1985, when Letterman filmed a show entirely in his office and goaded her into taking a shower during the program. “I hate you,” she can be heard screaming behind the shower curtain. “Why am I doing this?”

Garr was born in Lakewood, Ohio on Dec. 11, 1945. Her father, Eddie Garr, was a former vaudevillian and nightclub entertainer who later appeared on Broadway. Her mother, Phyllis, was an original Radio City Rockette. Eddie died when Teri was 11, and her mother moved the family to California, where she became a costumer. Her credits included the TV series That Girl and the films Tell Me You Love Me, Junie Moon and Walking Tall.

Prior to her one dramatic scene in The Conversation, Garr appeared in several popular TV series, including Star Trek, Batman and It Takes a Thief. She was a member of the ensemble on The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, playing various characters in sketches. Jack Nicholson, a classmate in her acting class, got Garr a role in Head, the Monkees’ subversive anti-Hard Day’s Night movie that Nicholson scripted. Released in 1968, the film was not appreciated in its time but has since garnered a cult following. So has One From the Heart, Coppola’s 1982 Las Vegas-set musical, which afforded Garr a rare leading role but was a box office bomb.

Garr told the AV Club in 2008 that she was reluctant to take a supporting role in Tootsie, but that director Sydney Pollack promised her role—Sandy, the neurotic friend of Dustin Hoffman’s character—would be funny. He also told Garr that she would have creative input. “So I started writing stuff about (the character) right away and he let me do it,” she said. “And I loved that. Dustin had beaten him into submission, so he’d say, ‘If you have an idea, tell Sydney.’ So I said, ‘Put the camera over there, and I’m going to rush out of the bathroom and say, ‘What’s the matter with you people? I’ve been in there for a half an hour screaming!’ That was a good part in the movie, right? And I made that up.”

In her 2006 autobiography, Speedbumps: Flooring It Through Hollywood, Garr cited Ginger Rogers, Shirley MacLaine and Geraldine Page as her big-screen idols. She was often cast as the long-suffering spouse in films such as Close Encounters, Oh, God! and Mr. Mom. She explained to AV Club: “They only write those parts for women. If there’s ever a woman who’s smart, funny, or witty, people are afraid of that, so they don’t write that. They only write parts for women where they let everything be steamrolled over them, where they let people wipe their feet all over them. Those are the kind of parts I play, and the kind of parts that there are for me in this world. In this life.”

Other notable film credits included The Black Stallion and the Farrelly brothers comedy Dumb and Dumber. A new generation discovered her on Friends as Phoebe Buffay’s biological mother, who was introduced in the season three finale. Her last feature film credits were in the independent comedies Kabluey and Expired, which were released in 2007.

At the peak of her career in the early 1980s, Garr was plagued by a tingling in her right foot and was prone to stumbling accidents. It was not until 1999 that she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She went public in 2002 on Larry King Live. She told King that she did not let the disease get her down: “I switch gears. If there’s something I can’t do I do something I can do. It’s either sink or swim; you might as well swim.” She served as a chair of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and became a paid spokesperson for an MS treatment medication.

In 2006, her autobiography, Speedbumps: Flooring It Through Hollywood, was published. That same year, Garr suffered a brain aneurysm that left her comatose for a week. She spent two months relearning how to walk and talk, and recounted her health scares during her final appearance on Late Night with David Letterman in 2008. “I appreciate life every minute and I count my blessings,” she said. “Turns out I have so many blessings, I have a woman come in twice and week and count them for me.”