Teri Garr’s peak as an actor started in 1974 with the combo of her hysterical supporting performance in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein (“he would have an enormous schwanzstucker!”) and a smaller part in Francis Ford Coppola’s paranoid masterpiece The Conversation. After that heady year, Garr stayed in high demand on A-list projects for a little over a decade before heading into a hit-and-miss period that would then descend into a decline as the awful trope of the middle-aged actress impacted her career, and then a health diagnosis that ended her career.
While Garr may have broken through in the mid-seventies, she had paid more than a decade of dues as a guest actor on television and numerous minor roles on film. Hell, Garr appeared in five different Elvis Presley musicals in just two years (1963-64)–uncredited in each movie. She was in an episode of Adam West’s Batman, a Hardy Boys movie, another Elvis movie (Clambake) in ‘67, and the deeply odd Monkees movie Head in ‘68 before scoring 12 episodes on the Sonny & Cher Variety Show, playing various roles from 1971-74. Think about it: Elvis, the Monkees, and Sonny & Cher. How dynamically weird.
She was a multi-talent who could sing, dance, and excel in comedy and drama, but there was something about Teri Garr that belonged only to her. The adjective “quirky” (which I hate more than a little) was often applied to her, but I prefer eccentric.
Garr would prove her distinctiveness in numerous roles over her peak period. Let me roll out the fancy post-1974 list: Oh God!, Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Black Stallion, Coppola’s One From the Heart (her tango scene with Raul Julia is stunning), Tootsie, Mr. Mom, the criminally underseen Firstborn, and Scorsese’s anxiety-ridden mini-classic After Hours from 1985. Those eleven years would represent Garr’s salad days. Over that stretch, she gave fine performances in dramatic roles (Close Encounters and Firstborn), but it was in comedy that she truly excelled.
Focusing on Tootsie (in which she earned her only Oscar nod in the supporting actress category) and After Hours, has an actor ever played a better neurotic than Teri Garr? How she never turned up in a Woody Allen movie remains a permanent mystery. The legendary critic Pauline Kael once called her “the funniest neurotic dizzy dame on the screen.” Who could argue otherwise?
Her interplay with Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie (she has one of the best lines in a movie filled with plenty of great ones: “No, we are not friends, I don’t take this shit from friends, only from lovers!”), and Griffin Dunne in After Hours was not precisely the same, but in both performances, she displayed that distinctive Garrness that belonged to her and her only. While I would hesitate to compare her directly to Shelley Duvall, I do believe they existed in the same universe. They were specific unto themselves, extraordinary talents, and remain underappreciated by history.
When Garr’s decade in the sun eclipsed, she would sneak in the occasional outstanding performance in movies that deserved to be seen more widely than they were. The 1989 Richard Dreyfuss racetrack comedy Let it Ride (of which I will go to my death singing its praises), where she gave one of the truly great “by phone” performances, two episodes on the sadly forgotten pre-prestige TV HBO series Dream On, Dumb and Dumber in 1994, a supporting part in the odd John Travolta hit, Michael, from 1996 where he played an angel, three episodes as Phoebe’s mom in Friends (the casting director deserved a bonus for choosing her), the fondly thought of Michelle Williams/Kirsten Dunst comedy Dick in 1999, and an uncredited bit part in the extraordinary 2001 film Ghost World.
In 2011, Garr was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. It is a cruel disease under any circumstances, but especially for someone so good at producing joy for so many.
Notably, Garr played herself in Robert Altman’s The Player and on Garry Shandling’s landmark inside “late night TV” comedy series The Larry Sanders Show. Beyond 1985, that’s what Garr became best at: playing Teri Garr. As wonderful as she was numerous times on the screen after Hollywood could no longer figure out what to do with her, she did the best possible thing that any of us can do: she stayed true to her nature (okay, some people’s true nature is wretched, but you get what I mean).
Her appearances on Late Night with David Letterman are a testament to that argument, and her guest segments are worthy of a DVD compilation (if that’s still a thing). The chemistry between the disarming guest and the prickly host brought out the best in each other. The amount of unpredictable cheer she brought to Late Night cannot be overstated. She brought a strange currency of goofy wonder to every visit.
That’s how I will remember Teri Garr best: Teri Garr as Teri Garr. There will never be another.
Teri Garr died on October 29, 2024. She was 76 years old.
