Actress Teri Garr (December 11, 1944-October 29, 2024) was in the chorus in a dozen movies, including nine starring Elvis Presley, and was a featured dancer on the show “Shindig!” and the rock concert performance “The T.A.M.I. Show,” before she started getting “real” roles in TV and films. She admitted to “Sunday Morning” in 2005 that, in order to get a foot in the door, she fibbed about her credits: “I put in the résumé a few things that looked better, like ‘Desire Under the Elms’ on Broadway,” she said. “And then on the side of it was an asterisk. And the bottom of the page of the asterisk, I put ‘L.I.E.’ And no one ever noticed that — ‘What does that mean, L.I.E.?’ It’s a lie! That’s not true! I didn’t want them to, you know, think I was dishonest in any way!”
She appeared in “That Girl,” “The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour,” the Monkees movie “Head,” a time-traveling “Star Trek” episode (the pilot of an unsold series about an alien on 1960s Earth), and Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Conversation,” before appearing in the comedy that made her a star: Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein,” in which she displayed her ample charms and quirky humor in the role of lab assistant Inga.
Garr went on to a series of dramatic and comic performances, including “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Oh, God!,” “The Black Stallion,” “One From the Heart,” “The Escape Artist,” “Mr. Mom,” and “Tootsie,” earning an Oscar nomination playing the girlfriend whom Dustin Hoffman dumps. Her off-beat sense of humor also made her a frequent guest on David Letterman’s show in the 1980s and ’90s. Letterman later credited her appearances with helping make his show a hit.
In 1999 she was diagnosed with MS, a disease that cost her much of the use of her right arm and leg. Though she didn’t reveal the diagnosis for three years, rumors of it spread, and acting work grew scarce. But she managed to keep her career going. “It took the wind out of that sail a lot, but I kept going and kept pursuing people and trying to get work,” Garr said. She appeared in “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” “Greetings From Tucson,” “Life With Bonnie,” and had a recurring role as Lisa Kudrow’s mother on “Friends.”
Another role she played was as a spokesperson for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, mixing humor with her stories about the illness. At an appearance in 2005 Garr told her audience, “MS is a strange disease and it effects everyone a different way. Actually my doctor asked me the other day about sexual functions, and I said, ‘Well, I don’t know. I haven’t been invited to any lately.’”