Teri Garr, actor, comedian and multiple sclerosis ambassador, dies at 79

Teri Garr, an actor and comedian who later became an ambassador for multiple sclerosis after her own diagnosis in 1999, died Tuesday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 79 years old and died of complications from multiple sclerosis.

Garr started her entertainment career as a dancer in nine Elvis Presley films, including Viva Las Vegas and Clambake. She shifted from dancing to acting with bit parts on Dr. Kildare, Batman, Star Trek, That Girl, The Bob Newhart Show and Maude.

“She hit a number of the high spots of that period in terms of what would be considered quality TV then,” observed Kelly Kessler, associate professor of media and cinema studies at DePaul University. “But then we see her popping up kind of making this natural transition from the early dance stuff that she did in the Elvis movies … to the variety scene on television in the 1970s, where she performs alongside Cher and the Pointer Sisters.”

Garr starred in some of the biggest movies of her time, including The Conversation, Mr. Mom, Oh God!, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But her breakout role was as sexy Inga in Young Frankenstein with Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks.

“And I guess she got that role just responding to a cattle call,” Kessler said.

Garr earned an Oscar nomination for her role as Dustin Hoffman’s neurotic girlfriend Sandy in the 1982 film Tootsie. Martie Cook, who teaches comedy at Emerson College, said Garr perfected and inverted a stereotype: “the smart dumb blonde.” Her rueful cleverness tempered the ditzy roles Garr often played.

“She had a vulnerability that made audiences really like her. I thought that her role as Sandy was just incredible,” Cook said. “By taking that character to another level, she in fact helped to open the door for roles like Phoebe on Friends.“

Garr would later appear on Friends as Phoebe Buffay’s biological mom. It was perfect casting, Cook said. “In a way, she had helped define that role for the writers for Phoebe.”

After her 1999 diagnosis with multiple sclerosis, Garr kept working. The last part of her career was a lot like the beginning, with small roles on big TV shows. After her memoir came out in 2005, Garr told WHYY’s Fresh Air that her life as an actor had unexpectedly equipped her for living with chronic illness.

“Because when you start out in Hollywood it’s 99% ‘get outta here!’ rejection and you have to develop the hide of a rhinoceros,” Garr said. “But you always have to keep the spirit of a butterfly inside.”

Garr may be “an overlooked comic genius by so many generations,” Kessler says. “If you were not around and paying attention to what she was doing in the ’70s and the ’80s, then you missed it.”