Teri Garr, 'Young Frankenstein' and 'Tootsie' actor, dead at 79

Teri Garr smiling while hanging onto wrought iron fencing with one hand

Oct. 29, 2024 Updated 12:49 PM PT

Teri Garr, an actor with a flair for comedy who was known for film roles in “Young Frankenstein,” “Oh, God!” and “Tootsie” — she earned an Oscar nomination for the latter — has died.

Garr, who became a spokeswoman for multiple sclerosis after publicly revealing her diagnosis in 2002, died peacefully of the illness Tuesday in Los Angeles surrounded by family and friends, her publicist Heidi Schaeffer confirmed to The Times. She also had undergone surgery in 2006 to repair a brain aneurysm. Garr was 79.

Michael Keaton, Garr’s “Mr. Mom” co-star, praised more than just her acting skills, writing on social media that she was also a wonderful woman.

“[Garr was] not just great to work with but great to be around,” Keaton wrote with a photo of the “Mr. Mom” poster. He also encouraged followers to revisit his late co-star’s comedic work. “Man, she was great!!”

David Letterman, Michael McKean, Patton Oswalt and Paul Feig also honored Garr on social media. To “L.A. Story” actor Marilu Henner, Garr “was always an icon.”

“I was in awe of her dramatic chops, her comedy ease, and her very big heart,” Henner tweeted. “Any time I saw her, no matter the struggles, she was always a blast.”

When Garr played Dustin Hoffman’s long-suffering girlfriend in the 1982 hit film “Tootsie,” New Yorker critic Pauline Kael called the actor “the funniest neurotic dizzy dame on the screen.” Ms. Magazine said she “radiated insecurity and satire at the same time.”

Frazzled housewives were a specialty: She was Richard Dreyfuss’ alarmed spouse in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” John Denver’s disbelieving wife in “Oh, God!” and a workaholic mother opposite Keaton in “Mr. Mom.”

“I seem to excel at those parts,” Garr told Reuters in 1986. “If you get your foot in the door doing one kind of part, that’s the kind of role they call you for. I can’t say I resent it — then I would resent my whole career.”

In her first big movie — Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Conversation” — she had a small role as Gene Hackman’s girlfriend and received favorable reviews. The same year, she had a breakthrough part in “Young Frankenstein,” the Mel Brooks parody of monster movies. Playing a liberated lab assistant with a German accent, Garr proved she was “a splendid comedienne,” The Times’ review said.

The two performances “kind of created a balance, you know, that this girl can act and be funny,” Garr told National Public Radio in 2005.

When she played an insecure, nutty waitress who sketches her idols from the 1960s in “After Hours,” The Times called her performance “touchingly bizarre.” Kael praised her “glittering eccentricity.”

Gene Wilder, Teri Garr and Marty Feldman in a scene from the movie "Young Frankenstein."

In “One From the Heart,” Coppola gave her an early lead role, and Garr — a former professional dancer — tangoed down a Las Vegas street with Frederic Forrest. During filming, a piece of glass sliced a tendon in Garr’s foot; later, she would wonder if the accident had triggered her multiple sclerosis.

After Garr publicly announced that she had MS — a degenerative disease affecting the nervous system — she often joked that she continued to get parts “even though, you know, in Hollywood getting older is worse than having a handicap.”

As a paid spokeswoman for MS LifeLines, an educational program sponsored by drug companies, Garr traveled the country speaking about the disease.

She first noticed the illness in 1983 when her foot “buzzed” while she jogged. It remained undiagnosed until 1999 when she sought out the chairman of the neurology department at what’s now the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

“MS is a sneaky disease. Like some of my boyfriends, it has a tendency to show up at the most awkward times and then to disappear entirely,” she wrote in “Speedbumps: Flooring It Through Hollywood,” her 2005 autobiography.

Teri Garr sitting and holding her hand to her chin while talking with Johnny Carson who is seated behind a desk

Teri Ann Garr was born into a show-business family in Los Angeles but spent her early years moving around the country so her father, Eddie Gonnaud, later Garr, could work in vaudeville. Her mother, Phyllis, was a Rockette.

The family, which included two older brothers, moved to North Hollywood when Garr was 8. Her father worked in television and on the Marilyn Monroe film “Ladies of the Chorus.”

Born Dec. 11, 1944, Garr was cagey about her age but repeatedly said she was 11 when her father died of a heart attack. His obituary ran in the New York Times in September 1956, which means she would have been born in 1944, a year cited in early biographical references.

Garr credited her optimism to her mother, a “tough cookie” who found creative ways to make their finances work after she was widowed, including renting out the front of the family home. Her mother also was a costumer at NBC.

By the end of fourth grade, Garr’s comic timing was so apparent that her teacher handed her a note that said, “Someday you will be a great comedienne,” she recalled in her autobiography.

Garr fancied herself a prima ballerina, obsessively pursuing that goal after her father died. In high school, she toured with a San Francisco-based professional ballet company, but an Elvis Presley song that wafted through her hotel window made her yearn to perform to popular music.

After graduating from North Hollywood High, she toured in a stage production of “West Side Story.” She had one line, got a laugh — and wanted to be an actor.

Teri Garr in a black blazer and a white blouse standing on a stage behind a clear podium against a red background

Her first real success came in television commercials, and she dropped out of Cal State Northridge after studying speech and drama for two years to try show business full-time.

With characteristic wit, Garr told the Ottawa Citizen in 2000, “I remember once saying that I clawed my way to the middle.”

She shimmied on ABC’s musical showcase “Shindig!” in the mid-1960s and danced in nine Presley movies, including “Viva Las Vegas.”

In one early role, Garr played a dippy secretary on a 1968 episode of “Star Trek.” To showcase her big break, she tweaked a Hollywood tradition, placing an ad in Variety that invited readers to watch her “smile on ‘Star Trek.’” The accompanying photograph showed X-rays of her teeth.

For a couple of years in the early 1970s, she was Cher’s sidekick in skits on “The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour” on CBS, once playing Cher’s dog.

After her film career crested in the mid-1980s, Garr increasingly turned toward 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.

Although she had vowed never to marry, fearing it would hurt her career, Garr found herself in her late 40s yearning for a family. She married John O’Neil, a contractor, the same day their adopted daughter, Molly, was born in 1993. The marriage ended after three years.

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 her grandson, Tyryn, whom she adored.

Times staff writer Alexandra Del Rosario contributed to this report.