In this LitStack Rec, we remember the inimitable actress Teri Garr, and recommend her memoir Speedbumps.
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In This LitStack Rec of Speedbumps
Remembering Teri Garr and Speedbumps
“Bubbly, conflicted, and yearning, she created her own sublime archetype.”
That’s how screenwriter Paul Rudnick described Teri Garr, the sui generis actress, following the news of her death this past year. Her life, like her work, might have had the appearance of being eclectic and impromptu, but Garr was a hardworking actor, She was a classic triple-threat—actor, singer, and dancer—who famously appeared in nine Elvis Presley films, worked with some of Hollywood’s most prestigious directors, and was the recipient of an Oscar nomination for her role in “Tootsie.” She was diagnosed with MS in 2002, and retired from acting in 2011. She died in Los Angeles of complications in October 2024.
Heir to the Family Tradition
I first became aware of Teri Garr in the role of Inga, the laboratory assistant in the classic Mel Brook’s homage to silent horror, Young Frankenstein—though it was in her many appearances on the era’s late night talk shows that I first noticed her.
Garr’s fashion sense, a hybrid style of vintage and contemporary, caught my attention. This was in the eighties, and her sartorial originality was a tonic in an era of mannered silhouettes and power suits. That, and her natural approach to hair and makeup projected the ease of having grown up in southern California. She was relatable, yet polished, and her trademark sharp and often deprecating humor—toward herself and others—made her unlike any other actress of her time.
She was born Terry Ann Garr, in 1944 into a show business family. Her mother Phyllis was one of the original Rockettes, and her father Eddie was an actor, comedian and a regular on New York’s vaudeville circuit. On joining the Actor’s Guild, Terry was advised against having two Rs in both her first and last names, and she became Teri. Eddie died when she was eleven, and Phyllis, became a single mother and the sole breadwinner, working in the costume department at Twentieth Century Fox. Teri was her only daughter, and the one child of three who followed her parents into show business, trained in ballet at ABT, and at the Actors Studio and Lee Strasberg’s Theatre Institute.
Garr’s rise, and fall, in the business are detailed in her 2005 memoir, Speedbumps: Flooring it Through Hollywood, first reviewed here in 2017. We learn of the numerous roles, the meticulous character studies, and Garr’s takes on life, art, and her years as a working actor and woman in Hollywood before #MeToo. Though the title’s significance links to a more defining event, the diagnosis of MS in 2002, as a metaphor for the obstacles and optimism of an actor living with multiple sclerosis:
“Well, speed bumps, I was thinking, you know you’re driving along, everything’s OK and then there’s a speed bump…and you [have to] keep going and I just thought it was kind of a nice metaphor for life.”
Garr’s Salad Days
But before that, there were Garr’s salad days, and they brought the kind of stories not likely to befall today’s up-and-coming actors. She recalls heading home with Elvis and other dance extras after a day of filming, as Garr says, to “watch Elvis watch TV.” Or, later in the sixties, ending up at Cass Elliot’s apartment in London where the Beatles stopped in to hang out. She appeared in the first episode of Shelly Duvall’s Fairy Tale Theater.
We learn of the terror of the script read of her first significant role, when she’s cast in Francis Ford Coppola’s, The Conversation (1974), with Gene Hackman—a break that soon led to her role in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein that same year. She would go on to appear in a string of now-classic films, directed by renowned directors. Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Francis Ford Coppola’s One From the Heart, and The Black Stallion, as well as short films, television appearances, and a spoof on movie-making,
A Series of Unexplained Symptoms
Garr recounts the story of her protracted health issues, which began as a series of unexplained symptoms in the early 1980s and went undiagnosed until 1999. Speedbumps is a candid portrait of what it is to live with a progressive disease. Though when revealing her MS on Larry King Live in 2002, Garr’s positive attitude left King bewildered: “He kept probing, and I kept saying I was fine. I know that isn’t provocative, but it’s the truth.”
In recounting these challenges, Garr retains her trademark wit, quipping that she initially hoped to title the book Does This Wheelchair Make Me Look Fat? Her health struggles, along with her career and her romances, are told with the same frankness and comedic style. Case in point: Chapter One is titled, “Hollywood: This Mess is a Place.”
Art, Literature, and Cinematic Icons
There are details, too. Her love of art and literature, the roles of her non-comedic “earnest period,” as well as behind-the-camera looks at making films with Coppola, Brooks, Altman, Pollack, and Spielberg. Garr has worked with more than a few cinematic icons—from Elvis to Jackie Gleason, Gene Hackman, Francois Truffaut, Shirley MacLaine, Cher, and Lana Turner. In One From the Heart, she dances in a dream sequence choreographed by Gene Kelly. These greats of classic Hollywood recognized Garr’s talent and range. When Elaine May finished her rewrite of the Tootsie script, she informed director Sydney Pollack that Garr was the only actress who could play the role of the beleaguered feminist, Sandy.
Garr’s career has left us with irreplicable characters in now classic films of the late twentieth century: the exasperated midwestern housewife Ronnie Neary in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (a character Garr confesses to have no insight of, and so turned to her brother’s wife). The struggling actress Sandy Lester in Sydney Pollack’s Tootsie, a role that yield one of cinema’s most inspired feminist monologues, recounted here. In Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (her first film), and in his musical romance, One From the Heart, and in the adventure epic, The Black Stallion.
A Career Made Fragile
Yet at the center of Garr’s memoir is the long, often uncertain path of MS and the challenges it posed to her as an actress and mother (Garr adopted her daughter, Molly, in 2001). After multiple misdiagnoses and false positives (MS can go into remission and becomes nearly undetectable), Garr began treatment in 2002. By then, at fifty-eight, there were few film roles in the offing, and rather than fret over her “fragile career,” she dedicated her efforts to advocating for others with MS.
Garr’s memoir is a fascinating read, not only in its account of an actor’s life but as a woman working in a field shaped by a male-centered aesthetic. During her long career, she was outspoken about the inequities women face in Hollywood, and this thread runs alongside the central conflict of career versus health, showing us another side to the outspoken, off-kilter girl-next-door. Or as Garr with her trademark irony and insight puts it, “The wife of the man something happens to.”
A Legacy as a Legend
In 1982, film critic Pauline Kael called Teri Garr “the funniest neurotic dizzy dame on the screen,” and John Hodgman deemed her “a comedic legend.” She’s influenced actor-comedians from Tina Fey to Jenna Fischer, and recent remembrances by co-stars such as Dustin Hoffman and Richard Dreyfus describe her as a brilliant and singular actor with a heart of gold. It’s not likely an actor of her range, wit, and authenticity will come our way again soon.
Watch Teri Garr in a 2012 performance at The Moth, recounting a real-life episode of revenge on an unfaithful boyfriend.
~ Lauren Alwan
About Teri Garr, Author of Speedbumps
Terry Ann Garr (December 11, 1944 – October 29, 2024), known as Teri Garr, was an American actress. Known for her comedic roles in film and television in the 1970s and 1980s, she often played women struggling to cope with the life-changing experiences of their husbands, children or boyfriends. She received nominations for an Academy Award and a British Academy Film Award for her performance in Tootsie (1982), playing a struggling actress who loses the soap opera role of a female hospital administrator to her male friend and acting coach.
Teri Garr Movies on Prime
Other Titles to Consider
Other LitStack Resources
Be sure and look at our other LitStack Recs for our recommendations on books you should read, as well as these reviews by Lauren Alwan, and these reviews by Rylie Fong, Allie Coker, and Sharon Browning.
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