LOS ANGELES (AP) — Terry Carr, the towering comedian who went from being a background dancer in Elvis Presley movies to co-starring in “Young Frankenstein” and “Tootsie,” has died. She is 79 years old.
Carr died Tuesday of multiple sclerosis “surrounded by family and friends,” publicist Heidi Schaefer said. Garr has battled other health issues in recent years and underwent surgery in January 2007 to repair an aneurysm.
Fans took to social media to honor him Writer-director Paul Feig Calling her “truly one of my comedy heroes. I couldn’t have loved her more” and Screenwriter Cinco Paul “Never a star, but always shining. She made the best of everything she was.
The actor, sometimes credited as Terry, Terry or Terry Ann during his long career, seemed destined for show business from his childhood.
His father was Eddie Carr, a well-known vaudeville comedian; His mother was Phyllis Lind, one of the original high-kicking rockets at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. Their daughter began dance lessons at age 6, and by age 14 was dancing with the San Francisco and Los Angeles ballet companies.
He was 16 when he joined the road company “West Side Story” in Los Angeles, and as early as 1963 he began appearing in bit parts in films.
In a 1988 interview he recalled how he won the role on “West Side Story.” After being eliminated from his first audition, he returned a day later in a different costume and was accepted.
From there, the blonde, statuesque Carr found steady work dancing in movies, and she appeared in the chorus of nine Presley films, including “Viva Las Vegas,” “Roostabout” and “Clampback.”
He also appeared in several television shows including “Star Trek,” “Dr. Kildare” and “Batman” as well as the rock ‘n’ roll musical “Shindig,” a featured dancer on the rock concert show Tommy, and a performer on “The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour.”
Her big film break came as Gene Hackman’s girlfriend in the 1974 Francis Ford Coppola thriller “The Conversation.” This led to an interview with Mel Brooks, who said he would hire him for the role of Gene Wilder’s German lab assistant in 1974’s “Young Frankenstein” — if he spoke with a German accent.
“Sir had this German girl, Renata, make a wig, so I got the accent from her,” Carr once recalled.
The film established her as an accomplished comedian, with New Yorker film critic Pauline Gale declaring her “the screen’s funniest neurotic delirious dame”.
His big smile and off-center appeal “Oh my God!” Opposite George Burns and John Denver, “Mr. Mom” (as Michael Keaton’s wife) and “Tootsie” starring Dustin Hoffman as Jessica Lange, who loses her lover and learns that she has been dressing as a woman to revive her life. (She also lost a supporting actress Oscar to Long at that year’s Academy Awards.)
Although best known for comedy, Carr showed he could handle drama equally well in films like “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “The Black Stallion” and “The Escape Artist.”
“I wanted to do ‘Norma Rae’ and ‘Sophie’s Choice,’ but I never got the chance,” he once said, adding that he was typecast as a comedian.
He had a talent for spontaneous comedy, beginning with frequent readings of David Letterman’s foil during guest appearances on NBC’s “Late Night with David Letterman.”
His appearances became more frequent, and the pair’s good-natured squabbles were so believable that for a time they were rumored to be romantically involved. Years later, those early appearances on Letterman helped make the show a success.
It was during those years that Garr began to feel “a little tingling or ticking” in his right leg. It started in 1983 and eventually spread to her right arm, but she felt she could live with it. By 1999 the symptoms had become so severe that she consulted a doctor. Diagnosis: Multiple Sclerosis.
Carr did not disclose his illness for three years.
“I was afraid I wouldn’t get a job,” he explained in a 2003 interview. “People hear MS and think, ‘Oh, my God, that person has two days to live.'”
After going public, he became a spokesperson for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, giving humorous speeches at meetings in the United States and Canada.
“You have to find your core and roll with the punches, because that’s the hardest thing: getting people to feel sorry for you,” he opined in 2005. “It’s exhausting trying to explain to people that I’m fine.”
She continued to act, appearing in “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” “Congratulations to Tucson,” “Life with Bonnie” and other television shows. She had a brief role in the 1990s series “Friends” as Lisa Kudrow’s mother. After several failed romances, she married car contractor John O’Neill in 1993. They adopted a daughter, Molly, before divorcing in 1996.
In his 2005 autobiography, “Speedbumps: Flooring It Through Hollywood,” Carr explained his decision not to discuss his age.
“My mother taught me that showbiz people never tell their real age. She did not disclose anything of hers or my father,” he wrote.
He said he was born in Los Angeles, although most reference books list Lakewood, Ohio. As her father’s business declined, the family, including Teri’s two older brothers, lived with relatives in the Midwest and East.
Curse eventually moved to California, settling in the San Fernando Valley, where Teri graduated from North Hollywood High School and studied speech and theater for two years at California State University, Northridge.
Carr recalled in 1988 when his father told his children about pursuing a career in Hollywood.
“Don’t engage in this business,” he told them. “It’s too low. It’s humiliating people.
Carr is survived by his daughter, Molly O’Neill, and a grandson, Tyrin.
___
AP Entertainment Writer Mark Kennedy contributed to this report.
