Teri Garr: A Tribute

Actress Teri Garr passed away on October 29 due to complications from multiple sclerosis.  She was 79.  We pay tribute to one of film’s biggest stars of the 1970s and 80s.

Teri Garr is a name that may not readily come to mind when considering the greatest movie stars of the past half-century.  Many minimize her work as lightweight comedy lacking in appreciable acting acumen.  However, a closer look at Garr’s career reveals a much different reality.

Yes, it’s fair to maintain that Garr is largely known for her co-starring turns in primarily comic movies.  Among them are such acclaimed classics as Oh, God!, Mr. Mom, and an Oscar-nominated performance in Tootsie.

Mel Brooks recalled that Garr “invented” her German accent for Young Frankenstein the night before her audition. Her endearing on-screen innocence allowed the writers to give her the naughtiest lines.

And yet, consider her more drama-centric roles in several other films, including Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1979).  Her barely-contained tears of anguish and helplessness as her UFO-obsessed husband Richard Dreyfuss frantically fashions a mound of mashed potatoes on the family kitchen table is heart-wrenching.

Or consider her work in one of Garr’s lesser-known productions, 1984’s Firstborn.  She portrays a divorced single mom overwhelmed by new “friends” who threaten the safety of her and her two sons.  Here Garr brings us a conflicted woman still in love with her ex-husband.  Initially, we see her as weak and easily manipulated by others.  But when her children are threatened, we witness Garr infuse her character with strength and resolve that she didn’t realize she was capable of.

Some of the most memorable moments of Garr’s career came to us on the small screen.  Her many appearances on Late Night with David Letterman in the 1980s are the stuff of legend.  Hearing Garr spit out “Choke-up-on-it” during a segment of the “Top Ten List” is priceless.  Reading the phrase cold off a note card it’s clear that this is the first time Garr has ever seen these four words strung together in her life.  It is debilitatingly funny.

Garr was also a good sport.  On an unusually muggy November day in New York City, Letterman elected to tape his show in his office with Garr as a guest.  After continually prodding her to cool off in an adjacent shower, Garr, wrapped in a towel, finally relented and took the plunge at the end of the episode.  Talk about a gamer.

On the small screen, Garr memorably played Lisa Kudrow’s “floopy” mom on Friends and also got an early start in an episode of Star Trek.

Tina Fey is one of a host of female entertainers who credit Garr with inspiring them to follow in her footsteps.  For Fey, it came down to authenticity, “Her [Garr’s] body was real, her teeth were real, and you thought that she could be your friend.”

-John Smistad

Photo: Teri Garr with David Letterman, 1982 (Bernard Gotfryd via Wikimedia Commons)