We remember actor Teri Garr, who died last week at age 79. She charmed audiences in her film roles and appearances on late night TV. She's best known for her role as the dim witted seductive lab assistant to Gene Wilder's mad scientist in Mel Brook's Young Frankenstein. She was later nominated for an Oscar for her performance in Tootsie. After being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, Garr became a spokeswoman for MS research and support. She spoke with Terry Gross in 2005. Also, Justin Chang reviews the new World War II drama Blitz, directed by Steve McQueen and starring Saoirse Ronan.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: Who was Teri Garr and what were her most notable roles?
This is Fresh Air. I'm David Bianculli. Terry Garr, whose movie roles included very memorable parts in Tootsie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Young Frankenstein, died Tuesday of complications from multiple sclerosis. She was 79 years old. Today, we'll replay an interview from our archive where she spoke with Terry Gross. And we'll start with an appreciation.
Terry Garr was a dancer and actress who quickly found roles that embraced her more bubbly and comic side. She also found her way into various points of pop culture. She danced in nine Elvis Presley movies, played a small part in a movie starring the Monkees, and played a time-traveling secretary from the 60s in an episode of Star Trek.
She was a member of the comedy troupe on Sonny and Cher's TV variety series and starred opposite Robin Williams in The Tale of the Frog Prince, the very first edition of Shelley Duvall's Fairytale Theatre.
She also made her mark on late-night TV, hosting Saturday Night Live three times and appearing often on David Letterman's talk show to charm him and the viewers with her funny and playful personality. Here she is from an appearance in 1985. You were just in Japan, weren't you? Yes, I was.
What were you doing there?
Vacationing, weren't you?
No, I was at the film festival.
Film festival what? What film festival?
The Japanese Film Festival. The International Film Festival of Tokyo.
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Chapter 2: What was Teri Garr's impact on pop culture?
Why didn't it ring true and how did you change what the character said?
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?
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.
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?
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.
You started off as a dancer. And among your accomplishments, you danced in nine Elvis Presley movies. I'm not sure that's an accomplishment.
You know, some of these things are credits, some of them are debits, and that was filler.
Okay, movies that you danced in include, correct me if I'm wrong here, Viva Las Vegas, all Elvis films. Viva Las Vegas, Roustabout, Kissin' Cousins, Speedway, Clambake.
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.
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Chapter 3: How did Teri Garr become involved in the film industry?
Excuse me, darling. What is it exactly that you do do?
Uh, well, I assist Dr. Frankenstein in the laboratory. We have intellectual discussions, aren't we? As a matter of fact, we were just having fun as you were driving us.
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.
Young Frankenstein. Terry Garr spoke with Terry Gross in 2005.
Now, the first real movie role you got, like major movie role, was in The Conversation. Right. Directed by Coppola, starring Gene Hackman. Does it get better than that? It doesn't.
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.
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
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
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.
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Chapter 8: What insights did Teri Garr share about her career and personal challenges?
The story also takes some darkly Dickensian turns, like when George meets a gang of robbers who are exploiting the Blitz to their crooked advantage. In one moving chapter, George is aided by a friendly air raid warden named Ife, nicely played by Benjamin Clementine. Ife is a Nigerian immigrant, and almost certainly the first black man George has ever seen in a position of authority.
It's here that the profundity of McQueen's vision comes into focus. He may be working in a more classical mode than he did in historical dramas like Hunger and Twelve Years a Slave... but there's something quietly radical about his perspective. He's showing us an England that was more racially diverse and more racially divided than most movies of the period ever acknowledged.
At times, Blitz plays like a prequel to McQueen's 2020 anthology series, Small Axe, a vibrant portrait of the West Indian community of London where he grew up. It also has some overlap with Occupied City, his 2023 documentary about Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, a very different film about a city under siege. Race isn't the only thing on McQueen's mind.
He also salutes the crucial role women played in the war effort, women like George's mom, Rita, who by day works in a munitions factory and by night volunteers in an underground shelter.
Once Rita learns that George is lost in London, Blitz becomes the heart-rending tale of a mother and child trying to find each other across a bombed-out landscape, a smoky ruin in Adam Stockhausen's brilliant production design. For all these stark and apocalyptic images, the London we see in Blitz also pulses with life.
The use of music throughout is inspired, and I don't just mean Hans Zimmer's brooding score. McQueen guides us into a dance hall, where black musicians perform for white partygoers, and through a busy pub where George's granddad tickles the ivories. One terrific scene unfolds on the factory floor, where Rita, a gifted singer, cheers up the crowd with a song.
an original tune, as it happens, co-written by McQueen and Nicholas Bertel. The music in these moments never feels like just a diversion. These are songs of defiance, and in them you can hear a nation's very will to survive.
Justin Chang is a film critic for The New Yorker. He reviewed Blitz, starring Saoirse Ronan. On Monday's show, Al Pacino. He talks about some of his classic films, including The Godfather, and tells us about growing up in the South Bronx with a single mother, little money and friends who never made it out alive.
He talks about getting his start in avant-garde theater in Greenwich Village, nearly dying of COVID and his life today. He has a new memoir. Join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our senior producer today is Roberta Sharrock.
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