By BOB THOMAS

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Teri Garr, the quirky comedienne who rose from background dancer in Elvis Presley movies to co-star in such favorites as “Young Frankenstein” and “Tootsie,” died. She was 79 years old.

Garr died Tuesday of multiple sclerosis “surrounded by family and friends,” publicist Heidi Schaeffer said. Garr has battled other health issues in recent years and underwent surgery in January 2007 to repair an aneurysm.

Admirers took to social media in her honor, with screenwriter-director Paul Feig calling her “truly one of my comedy heroes. I couldn’t have loved her more” and screenwriter Cinco Paul saying, “Never the star, but always shining. She did her best.”

The actor, who was sometimes credited as Terri, Terry or Terry Ann during her long career, seemed destined for the show from childhood.

Her father was Eddie Garr, a well-known vaudeville comedian; her mother was Phyllis Lind, one of the original Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall in New York. Their daughter started dance lessons at 6 and by 14 was dancing with ballet companies in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

He was 16 years old when he joined the road company “West Side Story” in Los Angeles and, as early as 1963, he began to appear in a few parts in films.

She recalled in a 1988 interview how she won the “West Side Story” role. After being dropped from her first audition, she returned a day later in different clothes and was accepted.

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

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

Her big film break came as Gene Hackman’s girlfriend in 1974 Francis Ford Coppola the thriller “The Conversation”. That led to an interview with Mel Brooks, who said he’d hire her to play Gene Wilder’s German lab assistant in 1974’s “Young Frankenstein” — if she could speak with a German accent.

“Cher had a German woman, Renata, who did wigs, so I got the accent from her,” Garr once recalled.

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

Her big smile and off-kilter appeal helped land her roles in Oh My God! alongside George Burns and John Denver, “Mr. Mom” (as Michael Keaton’s wife) and “Tootsie” in which she played the role of the girlfriend who loses Dustin Hoffman to Jessica Lange and learns that he has dressed as a woman to revive his career. (She also lost the Supporting Actress Oscar at that year’s Academy Awards to Lange.)

Although 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’d love to do ‘Norma Rae’ and ‘Sophie’s Choice,’ but I haven’t had the chance,” she once said, adding that she became a comic actor.

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

Her appearances became so frequent, and the pair’s good-natured bickering so compelling, that for a time they were rumored to be romantically involved. Years later, Letterman credited those early appearances with helping make the show a success.

It was also during those years that Garr began to feel “a little bit of a beeping or ticking” in his 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 had become so severe that he consulted a doctor. The diagnosis: multiple sclerosis.

For three years, Garr did not disclose his illness.

“I was afraid I wouldn’t get work,” she explained in a 2003 interview. “People hear MS and think, ‘Oh my God, the 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 US and Canada.

“You have to find your center and roll with the punches because it’s a hard thing to do: to make people feel sorry for you,” she commented in 2005. “Just trying to explain to people that I’m OK it’s tiring”.

He also continued to act, appearing in “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” “Greetings From Tucson,” “Life With Bonnie” and other TV shows. She also had a brief recurring role on Friends in the 1990s as Lisa Kudrow’s mother. Garr married entrepreneur John O’Neil in 1993. They adopted a daughter, Molly, before divorcing in 1996.

In her 2005 autobiography, Speedbumps: Flooring It Through Hollywood, Garr explained her decision not to discuss her age.

“My mother taught me that showbiz people never tell their real age. She never disclosed hers or my father’s,” she wrote.

She said she was born in Los Angeles, although most reference books 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 moved back to California, settling in the San Fernando Valley, where Teri graduated from North Hollywood High School and studied speech and theater for two years at California State University, Northridge.

Garr recalled in 1988 what her father had told his children about pursuing a career in Hollywood.

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

Garr is survived by her daughter, Molly O’Neil, and a grandson, Tyryn.

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Bob Thomas, a longtime Associated Press journalist who died in 2014, was the lead writer for this obituary. AP Entertainment Writer Mark Kennedy contributed to this report.

Originally published: October 29, 2024 at 11:16 a.m. MDT