Part of the reason probably is because she's in movies we revisit over and over and over again ... possibly in the triple digits ... and the other is because she was so unique as an actor and a person that if Hollywood needed a "Teri Garr type," it had to go to the actual Teri Garr. She could do so much with a word or a look, and there was no one like her.
So picking our favorite Teri roles is something of a formidable task. Do we pick them for the project? She impacted every one of them for the better. (For example, The Conversation. She had one incredible scene with Gene Hackman that added texture to a striking film.) Or do we pick them for performance? Because there are a heck of a lot of those to choose from. One of us came thisclose to picking her M*A*S*H episode as one of the more memorable paramours of Hawkeye Pierce (Alan Alda).
In the end, we just went with our respective hearts, choosing ones that we think of when someone mentions the amazing Teri Garr. We avoided overlap to get more entries onto the list. But for two people who love ranking things, it was too much of a chore to play favorites, so we're going in chronological order instead.
Sestra Leah:
Tootsie (1982)
Out of the five movies/TV shows I’m reviewing, I saw this one last. Last Sunday, to be exact. And it was the very first time I watched it. Teri Garr received an Academy Award nomination for her role as Sandy Lester, a struggling actress living in New York City. Sandy attends her acting classes, goes to auditions and runs lines with her bestie, Michael (Dustin Hoffman), who ends up winning the soap opera role that Sandy did not get. Of course Michael, who goes by Dorothy Michaels for this acting gig, doesn’t want Sandy to know so he seduces her to cover his tracks. Gullible Sandy then falls into a relationship with Tootsie -- I mean Michael -- but he’s an awful, neglectful boyfriend who happens to be in love with someone else (Jessica Lange) so it implodes. I guess a certain peace is reached because Michael raised funds for his roommate’s off-off-off-off (so many "offs") Broadway play and there’s a role for Sandy. But her devastation over Michael’s actions is apparent.
This was on cable a lot in the 1980s, and I do mean a lot. I started crushing on Michael Keaton because of Johnny Dangerously so it was easy to watch this one frequently. Keaton and Garr play Jack and Caroline Butler, a married couple and parents to three entertainingly exhausting children. He’s a carmaker; he makes cars. (His words, not mine.) She’s a stay-at-home mom who -- luckily -- has a college degree. When Jack gets laid off, Caroline steps up and brings home the bacon (tuna?). They both endure amusing fish-out-of-water moments before overcoming their issues and getting their way-too-tidy happy ending. Garr and Keaton are clearly comfortable around each other. When the characters are happy, stressed, angry or just plain ol’ discombobulated, you can relate because it feels genuine. But Garr gets to give Keaton one of my favorite examples of “stink eye.” After Jack tries but fails to impress Caroline’s boss Ron Richardson (Martin Mull), Caroline kisses Jack goodbye and gives him quite the exasperated stare. I’ve used that look a few times in my lifetime.
Firstborn (1984)
Here’s another frequently aired movie from 1980s cable and
it’s an interesting follow-up to Mr. Mom, in which Garr played the “perfect” mom. Here Garr is Wendy Livingston, divorcee and flawed mother to teenager
Jake (played by Christopher Collett) and pre-tween Brian (Corey Haim). To cope with the knowledge
that her ex moved on without her, Wendy hooks up with a crazy drug dealer named
Sam (Peter Weller). Things go south very quickly as Wendy chooses Sam and
cocaine over her sons and Jake reluctantly becomes the parent to Brian and Wendy. Too bad Jake and Brian’s
absentee father is no help. Sure, Wendy eventually sides with her boys to get Sam
out of their lives, but we know her path to sobriety will be a rocky one, if
she even tries at all. I almost want a sequel to learn Wendy’s fate. Maybe it’s
addressed in the movie tie-in novel that I own but have still never read.
After Sestra “asked” me to save Close Encounters of the Third Kind for her to review, I told her I’d cover Garr’s other movie with Richard Dreyfuss. It doesn’t seem to be common knowledge they did two movies together. I don’t even remember Let It Ride getting released in theaters, just on video. Garr and Dreyfuss play Pam and Jay Trotter, another couple in a troubled marriage. Unfortunately, Jay likes to gamble, even though it could mean the end of his relationship. Pam should have been a detective because she baits Jay perfectly during her interrogation until he realizes just how screwed he is. Of course her emotions get the better of her, and it’s amazing her phone still works after the beating she gives it. (It’s a good thing cell phones weren’t as prevalent back then.) Pam gets to say all of the things to Jay that Ronnie Neary never got to say to Roy in CE3K. Unlike Ronnie, Pam doesn’t leave Jay, who buys her love back with a necklace. At least Pam gets the happy ending with Jay (depending on your definition of “happy”) that Ronnie never got with Roy.
Did you remember that Garr had a guest-starring gig on Friends? Here’s a little character back story: Series regular Phoebe Buffay (played by Lisa Kudrow) had a very traumatized childhood which she disclosed a bit at a time over the course of the show and often with a sense of humor. Phoebe’s mother Lily committed suicide and her father, Frank Buffay (Bob Balaban), abandoned Phoebe and twin sister Ursula. In the third-season finale, Phoebe reached out to Lily’s best friend Phoebe Abbott (played by Garr) who revealed she, not Lily, gave birth to the twin girls. (She, Lily and Frank were in a throuple.) In the fourth-season premiere after the initial shock wore off, the Phoebes started to bond. We saw Teri one last time in the 11th episode of the fourth season. Her comedic timing was pretty spot-on during her three episodes. And if for some reason you didn’t enjoy her arc, imagine Garr (as Ronnie Neary) and Balaban (as Close Encounters' David Laughlin) consoling each other after Roy Neary leaves on the mothership.
Sestra Paige:
Before I start, just a few words about Tootsie for a second. Jessica Lange won the best supporting actress Oscar for that 1982 movie. Problem was she was more deserving of best actress for Frances, but was blocked there by Meryl Streep for Sophie's Choice. So Jessica got best supporting actress and Teri's best chance for the little gold man fell by the wayside. Personally I think Garr was better in Tootsie than the Oscar winner.
Also I didn't want to leave out some of my favorite Garr moments -- she was one of David Letterman's all-time favorite guests. So I'm going to sprinkle in some videos between my picks, because whenever I think of Teri, I think of these. Dave had a crush on her, and he didn't hide it well. It was so charmingly awkward that all their interactions reflected that fact.Young Frankenstein (1974)
It's my favorite Mel Brooks movie for a reason -- and that reason is the unparalleled cast bringing Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's creation to life. (Putting Shelley's surname in the credits is one of the early jokes, right?) Gene Wilder is brilliant as the title character, the grandson of the doctor depicted in early Frankenstein film incarnations. Apparently he looked exactly like Grandpops, judging by the portrait hanging in the Transylvanian abode. Every single actor on the canvas garners laughs -- Garr's first one comes from a roll in "ze hay." She plays Inga, called upon to assist the good doctor in and out of the operating room. I think it was this film that really got me into studying Teri's reactions, what was expressed on her face serves as subliminal dialogue. The other actress I appreciate in this manner -- Madeline Kahn -- also rocks in this movie and I really enjoy the fact that, although they might be considered on-screen rivals, they don't need dialogue to drive home that point.
Oh, God! (1977)
In 1977, Teri Garr played the frazzled wife twice. In both, her character's husband experiences something beyond belief. Beyond what a normal woman trying to keep her home in order in the '70s could comprehend anyway. I don't think there were a lot of support groups ready, willing and able to help, and if there were, how would she have found them without social media? But I digress. In Oh, God! (which came out a couple months before my favorite film of all time), John Denver (Jerry Landers) plays an assistant supermarket manager approached by God (George Burns) to spread the good word. Not in a bombastic way, just through basic human kindness. Problem is wife Bobbie (Garr) and the world at large might have been more ready to believe in the appearance of extraterrestrials. Well, not quite (see below), and these filmmakers tweaked their ending (how did they know when it came out first?) so both of Teri's characters wouldn't be filing for divorce.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Sestra made a few references to it -- kind of like when Richard Dreyfuss' Roy Neary has those subliminal impressions but doesn't know the full picture until he sees Devils Tower on the screen. Roy's moment of clarity only comes after Ronnie Neary (Garr) and his kids have cleared out, though. Close Encounters is a very divisive movie, if you can't get past the fact that Roy bails on his family, you're probably not going to buy into his ultimate journey to meet the aliens. I get that, and one of the reasons it's the case is because of Teri's work. She went all in on the '70s wife and mother, even shopping for the Neary set. The actress didn't bat an eye in the movie's most emotional scene when Adrienne Campbell (Silvia Neary) wouldn't stop complaining about a fly in her mashed potatoes during filming. "It's all right," Garr says as Ronnie in the take that made it into the final cut. That kind of poise solidified her place in "a wonderful film" -- those are Teri's words, said to me a decade ago.
After Hours (1985)
So much happens just because poor beleaguered Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) wants a plaster-of-Paris bagel-with-cream-cheese paperweight in downtown Soho. Well, that and a date with Marcy (Rosanna Arquette). After Hours is populated with a ton of eccentric characters played by quirky actors with Garr's kind of caché. It might been tough to make a memorable impression in such circumstances, but not for Teri. She specialized in lonely hearts, and waitress Julie might just have been the loneliest lonely heart of them all with her retro wardrobe, beehive hair-do and vintage record collection. Paul's ill-fated date with Marcy might have seemed like the opposite of a meet-cute, at least until Julie tries to seduce Paul with a cross between The Monkees' "Last Train to Clarksville" and Joni Mitchell's "Chelsea Morning." Then she has one of those meltdowns that can only happen when someone hurts your feelings after you've passed the breaking point.
Dick (1999)
One of my favorite films of all time is All the President's Men, so picking a flick that flips the script of history is akin to saying the moon landings didn't happen. But Dick leans so far into alternate reality that it doesn't come anywhere close to initiating that kind of response in me. Kirsten Dunst (Betsy Jobs) and Michele Williams (Arlene Lorenzo) vibrantly portray the teens who find their way into the White House. Arlene even crushes on President Richard Nixon (Dan Hedaya). The girls uncover through a series of wacky circumstances instigated by yummy-looking (and dosed) brownies that he's not a dreamboat and become the impetus for his downfall. Garr plays Arlene's mother, Helen, and it's picture-perfect casting. The fact that she references the era's Reese's peanut-butter cup commercials -- "Your peanut butter is in my chocolate ... Your chocolate is in my peanut butter" -- is like hitting the mother lode in a Walgreens' post-Halloween candy sale.