Actress Teri Garr, who has died aged 79, had a direct connection to Marilyn’s early career. Born near Cleveland, Ohio in 1944, she moved to North Hollywood with her family at a young age. Teri’s father, Eddie Garr, was a comedian and actor who made his name on the vaudeville circuit, while her mother Phyllis was a model and Rockette who later worked as a wardrobe mistress.
In March 1948, Eddie was cast as comedian Billy MacKay in Ladies of the Chorus, a low-budget musical filmed over six days at Columbia Studios. He first appears in a flashback scene, performing a knockabout skit with burlesque queen Mae Martin (Adele Jergens.) In the present day, he’s known as ‘Uncle Billy’ to Peggy, Mae’s daughter – as played by 21-year-old Marilyn Monroe, in only her third screen credit.
Peggy has followed her mother into the world of burlesque, and when she becomes engaged to another rich bachelor, Billy makes sure she isn’t snubbed by her posh in-laws – and along the way, he finally wins Mae’s heart. While Ladies of the Chorus was strictly B-grade material, it gave Marilyn her first leading role, her first screen kiss (with Rand Brooks), and a chance to develop her song and dance skills.
Sadly, Eddie Garr died from a heart attack in 1956, when Teri was just 11 years old. At 19, she dropped out of college to join the Actors Studio in New York.
Back in Hollywood, choreographer David Winters took Teri under his wing, and she worked steadily as a background go-go dancer with stars like Marvin Gaye and Nancy Sinatra on television, and in six Elvis Presley films, as well as What a Way to Go!, the 1964 musical starring Shirley MacLaine that was originally planned for Marilyn Monroe.
Her first significant acting role was in a 1968 episode of TV’s Star Trek; and in the same year, Jack Nicholson – himself on the cusp of stardom – wrote a small part for Teri in his screenplay for The Monkees’ movie, Head. By 1972 she was a regular cast member on The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, and would also appear on The Bob Newhart Show and M*A*S*H.
After a supporting part in the acclaimed conspiracy thriller, The Conversation (1974), came Teri’s breakthrough role as Inga, comely assistant to Dr. Frankenstein (Gene Wilder) in Mel Brooks’ horror comedy, Young Frankenstein. She went on to appear in Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi classic, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), and in other successful films, like Oh, God! and The Black Stallion.
Francis Ford Coppola cast Teri in his extravagant musical, One From the Heart (1981), a box-office disaster. Nonetheless her performance was well-regarded, and a restored version was released in cinemas in 2024.
She then earned an Oscar nomination as Dustin Hoffman’s actress friend in Tootsie (1982) – the most popular drag comedy since Some Like It Hot – and played Michael Keaton’s breadwinner wife in Mr. Mom (1983.)
Teri’s quick wit made her a favourite with TV talk-show hosts Johnny Carson and David Letterman; and while presenting Saturday Night Live that year, she played Marilyn Monroe in a sketch parodying the wildly exaggerated rumours about Monroe and the Kennedys.
Teri played a kooky waitress in Martin Scorsese’s black comedy, After Hours (1985), and rejoined her Conversation co-star, Gene Hackman, for a romantic drama, Full Moon in Blue Water (1988.) She played herself in Robert Altman’s Hollywood satire, The Player (1994), and appeared in the buddy comedy, Dumb and Dumber.
She also played the long-lost birth mother of Phoebe Buffay (Lisa Kudrow) in the TV sitcom, Friends, and was a guest star on Sesame Street, Frasier, and ER. Her later films included the Watergate satire, Dick (1999), and a cult teen comedy, Ghost World (2001.)
In 2002, Teri announced that she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Her autobiography, Speedbumps: Flooring It Through Hollywood, was published in 2005. She suffered a ruptured brain aneurysm a year later and was in a week-long coma, but recovered her speech and motor skills after months of therapy.
Her final movie was Kabluey (2007), again with Lisa Kudrow; and in 2008, she looked back on her long career in a frank and funny interview for the AV Club website. A short-lived TV series, How to Marry a Billionaire, followed before her retirement in 2011.
Teri Garr – once described by film critic Pauline Kael as ‘the funniest neurotic dizzy dame on the screen’ – died at home in Los Angeles on 29 October, 2024, and is survived by her daughter, Lisa O’Neill, and grandson, Tyryn.
The Marilyn Report 