STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Sorry to tell you Teri Garr has died. She appeared in everything from Elvis movies to Francis Ford Coppola dramas.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Garr began her career as a dancer. She then transitioned to acting in comedies, which, like dance, demand perfect timing. She appeared in Mel Brooks' "Young Frankenstein."
INSKEEP: That's Frankensteen (ph).
MARTIN: Sorry. She played Inga - the fetching lab assistant to Gene Wilder - as they devised a way to reanimate the dead by using body parts of a gigantic stature.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN")
TERI GARR: (As Inga) His veins, his feet, his hands, his organs would all have to be increased in size.
GENE WILDER: (As Dr. Frederick Frankenstein) Exactly.
GARR: (As Inga) He would have an enormous schwanzstucker. Oof.
INSKEEP: Teri Garr earned an Academy Award nomination in 1983 opposite Dustin Hoffman in "Tootsie."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "TOOTSIE")
GARR: (As Sandy Lester) I never said I love you. I don't care about I love you. I read "The Second Sex." I read "The Cinderella Complex." I'm responsible for my own orgasm. I don't care. I just don't like to be lied to.
MARTIN: Garr continued working steadily, even after she revealed in 2002 that she was fighting multiple sclerosis. She appeared on WHYY's Fresh Air after that to talk about her memoir.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
GARR: One of the reasons I go around talking about living with 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 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?" But...
TERRY GROSS: (Laughter).
INSKEEP: Teri Garr continued working almost a decade after that interview. She retired from acting in her 60s and died yesterday at the age of 79.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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