Teri Garr was arguably one of the most beloved comediennes of American cinema. She seemed born in the wrong era, her style of witty, effervescent comedy better suited for the screwball genre of the 1930s, and yet, she flourished in the 1970s and 1980s, bringing an innate likability and charm to her roles. Though some of the characters could be considered ditzy, she never condescended to her roles, instead giving the characters dignity. In fact, she bristled at the term’ ditz,’ and instead preferred the term “refreshingly intelligent”.
Garr was an important figure in American film, making her mark in films like Steven Spielberg‘s 1977 classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind, stealing scenes in Mel Brooks‘ Young Frankenstein (1974) and Sydney Pollack‘s brilliant comedy Tootsie (1982), and gracing the screen with a subtle turn in Stan Dragoti’s crowd pleaser Mr. Mom (1983). As a comedic performer, she brightened everything she was in with a tart, vibrant presence. Her iconic appearances on Late Night with David Letterman were almost as legendary as her film work, sparring with Letterman to the delight of his studio audience.
It’s hard to choose just one moment of transcendence in Garr’s filmography. Her work has brought so much happiness to her fans. Her most celebrated performance is in Tootsie. In Pollack’s sharp comedy, Garr is Sandy Lester, a struggling actress and friend of Dustin Hoffman’s out-of-work actor Michael Dorsey (who dons drag and becomes employed soap actress Dorothy Michaels). Garr’s turn is justly celebrated, as she brings pathos to the bubbly yet complex Sandy.
The best scene illustrating this range is when she confronts Michael after being ignored, only to be told he’s in love with another woman. Garr then leaps up, her hands scraping her face, as she lets out a shrill shriek before launching into a hilarious – if oddly empowered rant – as she roughly slaps away Michael’s entreaties. It’s an uproarious scene, with Garr’s Sandy building up on her outrage yet maintaining confidence, shouting, “I don’t care about ‘I love you’! I read The Second Sex! I read The Cinderella Complex! I’m responsible for my own orgasm!” Garr’s brilliant, layered performance adds depth to what could have been a goofy spoof on second-wave feminism.
Yet Garr was ambivalent about Sandy Lester, Syndey Pollack, and Tootsie. Despite her excellent work in the film and the critical and commercial success it brought her, she had a complicated relationship with that role, suggesting that the role – and that scene – were deeply flawed. “I thought that [Sandy] was caught between trying to have a career and trying to be a sexual woman, and it just doesn’t work,” Garr said. “At least it didn’t in that movie because it was made by sexist men. I can say that now because Sydney [Pollack] isn’t with us anymore. [Laughs.] But he was a fine director.”
That complex, complicated approach to her career made Teri Garr so interesting. She looked like a 1940s pinup but had a clear-eyed view of women’s place in culture and comedy. Like many of her comedic peers of her generation—Diane Keaton, Madeline Kahn, Goldie Hawn, Lesley Ann Warren—she was finding herself at a strange crossroads: battling reductive, sexist typecasting in an era that saw women making unprecedented strides.
One of her most successful films, Mr. Mom, encapsulates these questions of gender and gender roles. As women’s place in the workplace grew, Hollywood responded with films that attempted to address these changes. Mr. Mom features a characteristically charming and likable performance by Garr. Her character is that of a former stay-at-home mother who returns to the workforce after her husband loses his job, and they trade places. Much of the comedy arose from costar Michael Keaton’s wonderful work, but Garr – in a somewhat more subdued, straighter role – is masterful, showing a range and ability to elevate a supporting role.
“I did what I could to make that character more complex,” Garr wrote about Mr. Mom. Though her character’s rise on the corporate ladder was informed by her experience in domesticity, she acknowledged that Mr. Mom “doesn’t sell [her character] out; in the end, she and her husband find compromises that make the family work without requiring them to return to typical gender roles, not like in real life.” (Garr, Speedbumps: Flooring It Through Hollywood)
Like Marilyn Monroe, another comedy icon who wrestled with the patriarchy, Teri Garr sought to find more interesting roles and to break out from the ironclad image of the sexy, voluptuous sex kitten. “I started out in the 1970s doing the Wife, the Bimbo, and the Ditz,” she groused to the late/great Roger Ebert. “If I get a serious role, they all wanna know the same thing: When are you going back to comedy?”
If Garr was an indelible screen comic who found depth and complexity in roles she sometimes found thin and wanting, it’s her appearances with David Letterman that we get the wide scope of her talents and wit. Letterman’s screen persona – the curmudgeon and crank – contrasted sharply with Garr’s spirited persona. She challenged Letterman, and the two shared a chemistry despite their divergent approaches to comedy. “I owe David Letterman a lot since he helped put me on the map,” she said.
In her last appearance with Letterman in 2008, to promote one of her final films, Cecilia Miniucchi’s 2007 dramedy Expired, Garr was in fine form, even though she was recovering from a brain aneurism as well as the effects of her multiple sclerosis (in response to Letterman’s appalled awe, Garr quipped, “I’m just lucky, I get everything.”) It was a lovely, fitting end, to a chapter in her career that brought her a whole new audience, too young to experience her for the first time in films like Tootsie or Young Frankenstein.
In 2002, Garr announced that she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Since the mid-1990s, she had experienced symptoms, so her film career slowed down. She transitioned to character actress work and looked to television, most notably playing Lisa Kudrow’s mother on several episodes of Friends and starring in the Delta Burke vehicle Women of the House. In 2011, she quietly retired from acting, ending an unconventional and incredible career, bringing joy to millions.
In a touching tribute to Garr on social media, fellow comedy legend Paul Feig, who directed her in his 2006 film Unaccompanied Minors, called the actress his “comedy hero.” In a 2006 New York Times article compiled by John Hodgman, Feig praised Garr, celebrating her talent, writing, “For you see, I spent most of my teenage and young-adult years in love with her. Ever since I saw her in ‘Young Frankenstein’, she has been my dream girl. She was funny, she was pretty, she was quirky. I thought she was the perfect woman. The minute I got to the set and met her, I realized that my angst had been misplaced. She was a wonderfully warm person, just the way I had always hoped and imagined she would be. As soon as the cameras started rolling, Teri Garr was funny. She ad-libbed, taking jokes I had written and making them funnier.”
Summing up his feelings for working with Teri Garr, he wrote lovingly, “And I was suddenly a teenager sitting in a Michigan multiplex, in love with her all over again.”