Teri Garr
Appearances
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
Then a couple days later, they said they want you to audition. I said, oh, this is fabulous. So I went and read, and they said they want you to fly to San Francisco to do a
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
screen test and I thought this must be some part this would be like the lead in a Francis Coppola movie so anyway I went I flew to San Francisco did this audition and then flew back he had me sing when the red red robin comes bob bob bobbing along you know I have to say Francis Coppola was one of the big influences of my life because I think back on things that he had me do from the get-go and what they how they were part of the creative process and he really taught me what that was about in a way and
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
So anyway, I went to San Francisco and auditioned. And then I came back and, well, that's that. I've done a screen test for Francis Coppola. I'm putting this on my resume. I never thought I would get the part. So then I got the part. And they said, you have to be here tomorrow for the cast reading up in San Francisco, which I couldn't do because I was working on Sonny and Cher.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
So that's how much I had planned on getting this job. But I lied to them on the Sonny and Cher show and said I was sick. I couldn't be there. And flew up to San Francisco and read the entire script and realized that there was only one scene in the entire movie. But still, I wasn't going to turn it down. I was very excited to have been in it.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
And I think it was really great to have that be the first kind of recognizable part in a film was in the conversation, even though the next movie to come out that I was in was Young Frankenstein where it was all funny and all that and it was a bigger hit movie. it still kind of created a balance there that this girl can act and act and be funny.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
Well, I don't know. I mean, I think it had something to do with he wanted to see that character, if she could be like ingenuous and naive and just jump in and do something cute and sweet. I mean, looking back on it now, I see that. It was his fantasy.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
He always wanted to have a girl that was just in a room that would just be there for him, that didn't know anything about him, but that was happy and positive and not bitching about being locked in a room.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
Well, that whole movie was his fantasy. It was more about his Catholic confessional thing of listening to what people were saying and very interesting, revealing movie about the man who wrote it, who was Francis Covill. But, yeah, that was what that was about.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
Well, I do suspect that, but I could be wrong. But I think it's one of the reasons I wrote about it in the book is because I want other people that have MS to think maybe there's something like this happened to them. But there's a theory out there that MS is a virus that's in you, but like everyone gets chickenpox or some kind of virus, it stays and lays dormant.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
But some kind of trauma or some kind of Something will exacerbate it. So I do remember dropping a broken champagne bottle, which is thick glass, on the top of my foot, and it broke. It severed the tendon in my foot, and I felt like it went boing-oing-oing in my head or something like that. And when I look back on that, I think, I wonder if that was the thing that started the MS. It activated it.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
You know, I could be dead wrong. But I did write that in my book because I thought that maybe was when I first started experiencing little, you know, things that weren't right. And I couldn't control my body as well as I could. I mean, here I was a dancer and a good one. And I just couldn't make myself do it. I thought, what's going on? Am I lazy and am I getting tired?
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
And I think that's when it started to happen. And the champagne bottle that you dropped, that was in a scene from One from the Heart, right? Right. I was supposed to be carrying groceries in and then I dropped it and it broke on my foot. Right.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
Well, I don't. The symptoms, I always have this ego that I'm fine and I'm a perfect physical specimen. Anything that did happen to me, I sort of ignored it. Oh, this is normal. Everybody gets this. But I know that one of the first things that happened to me was years ago, I'd feel like this buzzing in my foot, buzzing, like a cell phone or something.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
And then I thought, well, it couldn't be a cell phone because we didn't have cell phones back then. I mean, we had cell phones, but they were the size of canoes, so it wasn't that. But I didn't know what it was. And then it would go away. And then I had where I would run. I was a big jogger, and I would run in Central Park, and I would trip on something. I thought, what rock? What did I trip?
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
I almost just went flying leap. And then that would go away, so there would be this tingling and – Maybe a stabbing pain in my arm, which is another thing. When you heat up your body by exercising and running, it seemed to exacerbate these pains and it would make me be weaker.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
And then when I felt this stabbing pain in my arm in Central Park, I thought, well, maybe it is a knife because I'm in Central Park. But it wasn't. But they would get those symptoms, and then they would go away. So by the time I got myself to a doctor and said, now, check this out, it would be gone because MS is relapsing and remitting.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
So the doctors would go, honey, honey, there's nothing wrong with you. You're fine. You might feel crazy, a little hypochondria. And I'm just sitting there like, well, maybe they're right. I guess I'm a hypochondriac, but I never had been a hypochondriac. In fact, I would like to stay away from doctors as much as I can and not – I would go at the last minute.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
As the minuteness of the parts formed a great hindrance to my speed, I resolved, therefore, to make the creature of a gigantic stature. Of course. That would simplify everything.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
So by the time I'd get my butt to the doctor and he'd say, nothing wrong with you, I'd go, oh, I've wasted so much time. I could be in class right now or something reading. So not good.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
Oh, I think it was absolutely a wonderful thing to have been a dancer, to have that discipline and just to be able to roll with the punches and all the jobs that I did. And like I said, my mother teaching me that when they were a Rockettes, they had to learn the accordion in one day and all that. It was something that I thought – it's why I call the book Speed Bumps.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
It was just something that made me slow down and go, MS diagnosis? Okay, let's keep going. How my life had progressed I think was a great lesson in how to deal with an illness or a diagnosis. Because when you start out in Hollywood or in New York or wherever, show business, it's 99% get out of here, rejection. And you have to develop the height of a rhinoceros.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
But you still have to have the spirit of a butterfly inside in order to do your art. Yeah. And that really came in handy because I went, well, I can handle this. I'll handle this MS. I don't know what it is. I'll deal with it. I'll find out a way to do it. And I'm going to go on with my life. And that's what I did.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
Yeah. Well, that's a nice thing to say. But I've never been bitter and I've never had a – I don't really have any negative – I had little things along the way. For example, I went to a doctor who said, now, you're walking weakly on your right side. I could put a brace on your leg. And so he said, try the brace. I tried the brace. I walked up. This is fabulous. I'm walking around the office.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
This is wonderful. And then I looked. I said, I have to wear this all the time? He goes, yeah. I said, wait, you don't understand. I'm Terry Carr. I'm known for my fabulous legs. Now I've got to wear a brace on my leg. And he just said, well, it's a small price to pay. And it was instantly, I went, it sure is. I mean, I would be able to put it in perspective.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
that I have to wear long pants or long skirts forever now, but I can walk around better. So it was one of those things where I was able to say, what's better, showing off my stupid legs or walking better? So I walk better. Do you still wear the brace? Oh, yeah. Cut it out right now. How would you describe your walking now? Oh, it's not good. I mean, it's got, I've gotten weaker. It comes and goes.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
But, um, It's, you know, more than how am I walking is, it's my fatigue level. You know, I get really tired. For me to walk around the block is like someone climbing Mount Everest. And I think people who don't have MS don't understand that. So it takes a lot of energy. But I walk a little slower.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
But, you know, I walk across airports and I do a lot of traveling and people start walking fast and going ahead of me. I go... I'm getting there. I'm slow but sure. And I try to keep a sense of humor about it and a good attitude. I mean, not to say I make fun of myself, but I try to make it easier on other people because I always think it's harder on them than it is on me. I'm fine with it.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
I'm happy to be alive. But they must think, oh, you poor thing, you're suffering. And I'm not.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
Are you still acting now? Oh, yes. I just am on... Law and Order. I play a defense attorney named Minerva Graham Bishop. Good name, huh? And that's a great job. I'm a defense lawyer on that show. I've done one. I'm going to do another one and perhaps more. And does the MS get in the way of your performing? No. How could it get in the way? I get in my way. I feel like I'm a little bit rusty. But
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
No, it hasn't. You know, on the Law & Order show, there's a cinematographer who's quite brilliant, and he has MS. And so he had a little scooter, motorized scooter around the set. He said, do you want to borrow one of mine? I said, sure. And that was great.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
See, that's one of the reasons I go around talking about living with MS and talking about MS is that there's so many myths about it and that people can go on with their lives and they can do good work. And I think the myth is, no, they're dead. They're out. They're gone. They're in a wheelchair. In fact, I was going to call my book, Does This Wheelchair Make Me Look Fat?,
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
I was afraid if I put wheelchair out there, it's going to be another big, you know, checkmark against me. So I'm trying to, you know, I try to keep it on the upper positive level that those of us with MS can still go on and still function. And I want the rest of the world to believe it. And I also want the people that have MS to believe it because I think they're victims of the bad publicity too.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
You know, that they go, oh, I have MS. I better throw in the towel and go to my room and watch TV or something. And that's no, no, no. You have to go on with your life.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
And then she also was like a wardrobe person for several TV shows? Yes. Yeah, I think a lot of dancers go into wardrobe afterwards. I don't know why that happens, but it's true. And she became a costumer in L.A., and my father died when I was 11, and he was in vaudeville, and they met in a Broadway show, my parents.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
And then he came out to Hollywood to be in movies, and that didn't pan out, and he became very ill. And he passed away. So my mother had to support three kids, you know, by her wits. So she went and got a job in the studios as a costumer. In fact, she was a costumer on Young Frankenstein before I even got the job. And she told, don't tell anyone I'm your mother. What is this about? It's so weird.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
Anyway, I learned... Why didn't she want anyone to know? I do not know to this day.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
I don't know. But finally, I told Mel. I said, you know that lady over there? That's my mom. He was so great. Because he's just a great guy. And he, well, bring her over here. And he was wonderful. I just don't know what her motive was. But she was a great, interesting woman. You know, she... Her parents came from Austria. They settled in Ohio.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
And my grandfather said, girls, go to secretary school. And that's what they do. And you'd shut up and do that. And my oldest aunt did that. And my mother and my other younger aunt said, no, no, we're not doing that. They hitchhiked to New York when they were like 14 and 16 or something like that. My mother became a rockette.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
No, maybe they must have been a little bit older than that because they were out of high school. And my aunt was a brilliant artist and a concert pianist and all this stuff. So they had some aesthetic that they were not going to do what my grandfather said. So to me, it was always the early feminist, we're doing this, we're going off to New York to take care of ourselves.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
And unfortunately, she married my dad at the end of that. But Learning from it was that you do what you want to do and you independently take care of yourself and don't depend on a man. That was the idea that I got when I was a kid.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
Well, it did seem like a bad life. It seemed like not a fair life or a fickle business. I think it's true. I I just recently was reading the review of Elia Kazan's book, and he said the same thing. He got older. He said, tell anybody that wants to be a director not to do it because they throw you away. Well, then Mr. Kazan is for everybody.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
Everybody's got the same thing, that you have a peak and then it fades away. So that goes with life, I guess. But I didn't think that the show business looked –
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
that fair but I also somehow got it in my head that I was going to beat it and that I was going to get in there and do do it too and I was very influenced by my mother when she worked at the studios and I was young then and I would go visit her and take the bus down and hang out with her and it was so exciting to be at a tv studio where there was costumes and sets and people rushing around and music and orchestras I well I want to be part of this I just want to be part of this and then
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
because my parents were in vaudeville a lot of their friends came out to hollywood everybody wanted to be in the business and they didn't it didn't happen so they opened dancing schools so i got to have free dancing lessons in all these places where my parents who had worked with a dance team in philly and a dog act in boston out of this and they were all out there either mater d's or opening orange julius stands or something like that a very interesting eclectic way that the uh the fringe of show business kind of settled in in la
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
And I was in that world. But it was always out there, the show business thing. And he goes, well, it's there for you. You can try it. You can try. And I said, well, I think I will. I think I'll try. My two older brothers didn't want to do it. Your father was a comic.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
Well, I don't remember that too much. It's a very interesting thing about writing a book about your life. I seem to find a big, huge gap about, well, who was my father? He died when I was 11, and most of the time when I was alive, until he died, he was ill. So I couldn't really talk to him too much, and I had to be quiet because Dad is sick. What was his sickness? Well, he had heart trouble.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
When I was born, he was in – I don't know if this – He was in a USO show in the South Pacific, and he fell out of a Jeep and broke his back. And ever since then, he was not well. And they brought him back to Long Beach in a cast that was from the top of his chin to his knees. It was just a horrible—they didn't know how to treat a broken back.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
But something happened then, I think, that diminished his life. And he started having heart trouble and he started having all kinds of things. And he was always ill. He did character acting in movies. He did a movie with Marilyn Monroe. And I remember wanting to see that when I was a kid. And he kind of made a living, but he was always ill.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
So I don't think I had much of a relationship with my father. And therefore, I don't know who men are. I think it's something like that. I don't know. Yeah.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
You know, I really do, and I never thought about it until I wrote this book. I always thought, just like everybody else, well, there's just not enough good men out there. But then I see people with relationships and able to have them, and I think, well, no, I think it's something else.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
I think it's your relationship to your parents that make you have relationships with other people or something like that. But it's been a confusing mess, believe me, that end of it. But I go on. Even though I'm much older now, I still think there's hope of finding someone interesting. So you're not part of a couple right now? Not part of a couple, no.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
That's true. You know, most of the mothers that I play in movies, starting from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Right. Suburban mothers. I patterned them after my sister-in-law, because my brother married his high school sweetheart, and my other brother married, they both stayed married all this time.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
But my one sister-in-law is very Martha Stewart, and my brother's a surgeon, and so she's a doctor's wife, and she knows about gardening and centerpieces and stuff like that. Something that I completely never grew up knowing. And when I got those parts, I would think I have no role model because the role model I have is more like the Texaco man or something.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
So I went and, you know, would look at what my sister-in-law did and copy her. Terry Garth, thank you very, very much for talking with us. Well, Terry Gross, thank you for having me.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
Everyone asked me, what went on between you and Dave? I said, totally sexual.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
Fabulous films, Viva Las Vegas, Roustabout, Kiss and Cousins, all the good ones.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
I'm gonna tell you the truth, Sandy. I'm in love with another woman.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
Well, I think it didn't ring true because what the character was was supposed to be this independent woman. Of course, she was in the middle of trying to be connected to a man and truly connected to her career. So she was a little bit on the fence there. But I think initially if someone said, I'm not in love with you, I'm in love with someone else, you go, so what?
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
That's got nothing to do with me. And I suggested to – Sidney Pollack, that I write something about it. I had done a lot of research about the feminist movement at that time. So I was reading all the books at the time that were – Betty Friedan and Sherry Haidt had a book and all these – and I was reading all these books and some of them actually made me laugh so much.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
But I said, well, if you let me do one take where I just can spew out all this stuff that I've been reading, I think it will work. And so you wrote all the stuff about it. I did, and I did see that one line that said, I'm responsible for my own orgasm. And I remember when I read that. That was in Sherry Hyde's book. I went, what does that mean?
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
I didn't even know what it meant, but I thought, well, I'm throwing it anyway because it's funny. It's funny and it's very of its time. Yes, of its time is right.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
You know, some of these things are credits, some of them are debits, and that was filler.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
Yeah, among others. Yeah. At that time, he was doing about at least four movies a year, bad ones in Hollywood. But I had worked in West Side Story with the original cast of Jerry Robbins. So I was a really good, legit dancer. And one of the guys in the show became a choreographer for Viva Las Vegas. He said, you guys want to come down to this audition? So we went, well, sure, let's do that.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
So then once in those days, once you got into the union or the Central casting, they just called you again and again and again. So I started going to all the auditions. I mean, I danced in Elvis Presley movies, but I also danced in Shirley MacLaine movies, What a Way to Go, and John Goldfarb, Please Come Home, a big movie. And a lot of other little movies that they just called me for.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
So that's how that started. I'd be like one step ahead of being a cocktail waitress. Why?
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
Actually, it was great fun to dance in the Elvis movies.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
Oh, man, they were all pretty bad. I guess in that Clambake thing, there was something about digging for clams. Oh, man, they were all bad. But, you know, it was so funny because I grew up with my mother telling me stories about being a rockette. She goes, we had to do everything. We had to learn to play the violin one week and the drums the next week.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
So she was always telling me how they were so versatile. So that one... We did these silly clam bake and whatever they were with Elvis. I thought, well, I'm in the same boat with my mom. Your mom was one of the original Rockettes. Yes, she was. The original Rockettes. They were called the Roxettes or something when she first went in there. I know the history of the Rockettes. Believe me.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
Well, a little bit. I mean, you know, I'm sure there's been so much written about Elvis, but he was out there like, you know, a fish out of water. And he's in Hollywood making movies. And I also think he had a kind of a morbid fascination with his Colonel Parker and whatever he told him to do. You go to Hollywood, you make these movies. So there he was.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
And he brought all his boys with him and they'd hang out on the set. And he said, you girls want to come to a party at Elvis's tonight? I went, Well, yeah, okay. So we go to Elvis's, but he should have actually said, do you want to come and watch Elvis watch TV or something? That's more like what it was. But I was fascinated by the whole thing. I was fascinated by him.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
He was such a talented, you know, charismatic guy. And I looked at him. I thought, you know, he should be in front of an audience, not on the soundstage. He's just kind of wasting it. But anyway, I got to be kind of friends with him. You know, he was very funny. And I don't think people will talk about that. He really had a great sense of humor, very funny, and laughed all the time.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
67 or 68. Well, they were called things like the Watusi and the swim and the something like that. We also did mostly that same guy choreographed Viva Las Vegas, choreographed Shindig for a while. So we did some real dancing on that. Some numbers. We called them. I don't know.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
Well, you know, the minute I got into West Side Story and I had one line, even though I danced and I really wanted to be a ballerina and ABT and everything, I had this one line and I got a reaction from this one line. I thought, I want to be an actor. I want to be an actress. You know, I want to be in the front. I don't want to be in the back.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
So that's, I think when I got this thing about being on Shindig or Chivalry was another one I was on. Well, I really can't be on these permanently. I'm busy. I'm going on. I mean, I had it in my head then that I was going to move on and out of the chorus line. So please don't tie me down to a series. I'm sorry. I can't do this.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
Yes. I was very lucky to be able to do all these TV commercials at some point. And I think that was a big learning experience too because in a way, you know, selling some product is acting. So I was studying acting. I was trying to do plays. I was taking dancing jobs. But I was also doing all these commercials and going on all these commercial auditions. And there must have been
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
You know, you could go on six or seven auditions a day. So that's a great learning experience. I don't think people can do that these days. But, yeah, I did a lot of that. And then I started making a pretty good living just doing commercials. I said I could phase out these dancing jobs. But I never did. Not totally. I mean, it took me about 10 years. Okay.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
Yes, always. I remember once I did a commercial for Metrical. Do you remember what Metrical was? Yes, it was a diet fluid. The diet fluid that you ate for lunch. So I was doing this commercial. I was supposed to be in the teacher's lounge with Penny Marshall, who was one of the other teachers. And I drank so much Metrical that I was getting ready to puke.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
And I heard them say, all right, get the bucket. And Penny and I both looked at each other and went, what do they mean, get the bucket? I said, get the bucket.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
so they i would drink some of the metrical they would pan the camera off of me then i would spit the metrical into this bucket then they would pan back to me and i go delicious well i want to tell you it was very difficult to do without laughing because you'd hear this noise and then fabulous it's so delicious anyway we i had a good time doing many commercials they're funny they kind of do them by the seat of their pants but then in commercials everything has to be done legally correctly and i learned a lot about advertising and
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
Well, there was rumors going around town that there was a big movie being cast, and there was lots of girls going up for this audition, and I got my agent to get me in on it. You know, 500 girls. When I went there, Mel Brooks said, we're casting for the part of the fiancé, the financier, he called it. But I want Madeline Kahn to do it. I just want you to know.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
But she doesn't want to do it because she doesn't want to do a comedy, but I'm auditioning all these girls. So I went in, and I got a call back and call back, and I was very excited that I even got a call back.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
finally one day I got a call back and he said Madeline has decided to do this part but if you can come back tomorrow I'll give you a chance to audition for the part of Inga the lab assistant but you have to have a German accent And it was like 24 hours to get a German accent together. And I did. Because I copied Cher's wig maker who had a German accent.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
You were working on the Sonny and Cher show at the time. Yes, I was working on the Sonny and Cher show at the time.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
Well, I don't think you can learn comic timing. I think I must have innately grown up with my mother and father from Vaudeville and stuff and lots of jokes around the house. I had been working on Sonny and Cher Show as a dancer and also in these horrible comedy sketches. And I sort of had learned comic timing then. Also, I was an incredible fan of Mel Brooks, the 2,000-year-old man.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
I had listened to those records hundreds of times as a kid and memorized them and did them over and over again. So I sort of knew his rhythm. But he is one of God's gifts to this planet. Mel Brooks is just the funniest man in the world. He is really funny. What did he call you, a shiksa goddess? Shiksa goddess, my long-waisted shiksa goddess. And then he called Peter Boyle and I, come here, treif.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
We were both treif. I don't know what it means exactly. And then at one point— Not kosher. I said, well, Mel, you're so wonderful. I wish I was Jewish. You're Jewish. You are Jewish by injection. I don't know what he meant, but okay.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
I'd like you to meet my assistants, Inga and Igor. How do you do?
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
But I... What? Uh, Igor, would you give me a hand with the bags? Certainly. You take the blonde and I'll take the one in the tavern. Oh.
Fresh Air
Remembering 'Tootsie' Actor Teri Garr
If we're starting a movie career. I was absolutely in shock. I told you I was doing commercials at the time. So one of the commercial casting directors was casting his film for and she said, do you want to go up for this part? And I said, of course, I'd go up for everything. So I went and met with Coppola, and I thought that would be the end of it. I said, wow, you guys, I met Francis Coppola.