Recent Reviews
The Cagneys
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)
Something to Sing About (1937)
Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)
A Lion Is In the Streets (1953)
Man of a Thousand Faces (1957)
Never Steal Anything Small (1959)
Shake Hands With the Devil (1959)
Tuesday December 31, 2024
Teri Garr (1944-2024)
Even in an early episode of “McCloud,” Garr's personality, her smart-ditziness, shines through.
On a press junket in the early 1980s, Teri Garr talked about the acting niche she often found herself in: partnered with seemingly crazy men whom her character supported (“Young Frankenstein,” “Oh, God!”), abandoned (“Close Encounters of the Third Kind”), or simply clashed with (“Tootsie”). During this time, too, she went from love interest in “Young Frankenstein” to problematic other woman/friend in “Tootsie,” and apparently during the press conference she lamented her looks. But one of the reporters spoke up for her. He told her she was very pretty. That reporter was my father. Afterwards, a female journalist for The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel told Dad he should ask her out. “She really brightened when you said that,” she said.
Here's what I don't get: How did she not get a rash of great roles after her turn as Inga in “Young Frankenstein”? Leading up to it, she appeared in TV sitcoms and variety shows (“M*A*S*H,” “The Odd Couple,” “The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour”), did her roll in the hay as Inga, which was one of the biggest box-office hits of 1974; and then, while costars Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn and Marty Feldman went on to greater things, often writing and directing their own comedies, Garr went back to appearing in TV sitcoms and variety shows (“Maude,” “The Sonny and Cher Show”). Feels like a missed opportunity, Hollywood.
She's been called the master of the smart-ditzy blonde. Francis Ford Coppola loved her but might not have been the right director for her light-comedic touch. He cast her in a small role in “The Conversation,” as the mother in “The Black Stallion” (which he produced), and as the romantic lead in “One From the Heart,” one of the big box-office bombs of the early 1980s. A lot of her early '80s output I've never heard of—“Honky Tonk Freeway”? “Witches' Brew”?—and as the decade progressed she was increasingly cast as the mom, either work-obsessed in “Mr. Mom” or boyfriend-obsessed in “Firstborn.” The ones who brought out her best may have been talk show hosts. She was on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson 42 times between 1977 and 1992, and, more memorably for me, 30 episodes of “Late Night with David Letterman” in the 1980s. She was also perfectly cast as Phoebe's long-lost mother in three episodes of “Friends.”
In the late 1990s she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and became a spokesperson for MS research in the 2000s. In her 2005 memoir, per the New York Times, she wrote of the disease, “I really do count my blessings. At least I used to. Now I get so tired I have a woman come once a week and count them for me.” She died in October.