Teri Garr: Comedy actress who starred as background dancer in Elvis filmed dead at 79

Sometimes credited as Terri, Terry or Terry Ann during her long career, she seemed destined for showbusiness from her childhood.

Her father was Eddie Garr, a well-known vaudeville comedian, while her mother was Phyllis Lind, one of the original high-kicking Rockettes at New York’s Radio City Music Hall.

As Eddie’s career waned, Teri and her two older brothers lived with relatives in the midwestern and eastern US. The Garrs eventually moved back to California, where Teri graduated from North Hollywood High School and studied speech and drama for two years at California State University.

She had begun dance lessons at six and by 14 was dancing with the San Francisco and Los Angeles ballet companies. At 16 she joined the road company of West Side Story in Los Angeles, and as early as 1963 she began appearing in bit parts in films.

She recalled landing her role in West Side Story after being rejected at her first audition but returning a day later in different clothes. From there, she found steady work dancing in movies, and she appeared in the chorus of nine Presley films, including Viva Las Vegas, Roustabout and Clambake.

She also appeared on numerous television shows, including Star Trek, Dr Kildare and Batman, and was a featured dancer on the rock ‘n’ roll music show Shindig and a cast member of The Sonny And Cher Comedy Hour.

Her big film break came as Gene Hackman’s girlfriend in 1974’s Francis Ford Coppola thriller The Conversation. That led to an interview with Mel Brooks, who said he would hire her for the role of Gene Wilder’s German lab assistant in 1974’s Young Frankenstein – if she could speak with a German accent.

The film established her as a talented comedy performer, with New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael proclaiming her “the funniest neurotic dizzy dame on the screen”.

Her big smile and off-centre appeal helped land her roles in Oh God! opposite George Burns and John Denver, Mr Mom (as Michael Keaton’s wife), and Tootsie, in which she played the girlfriend who loses Dustin Hoffman to Jessica Lange and learns that he has dressed up as a woman to revive his career. (She also lost the supporting actress Oscar at that year’s Academy Awards to Lange).

Although best known for comedy, Garr showed in such films as Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, After Hours, The Black Stallion and The Escape Artist that she could handle drama equally well. She had a flair for spontaneous humour, often playing David Letterman’s foil during guest appearances on NBC’s Late Night With David Letterman early in its run.

Her appearances became so frequent, and the pair’s good-natured bickering so convincing, that for a time rumours cropped up that they were romantically involved. Years later, Letterman credited those early appearances with helping make the show a hit.

It was also during those years that Garr began to feel “a little beeping or ticking” in her right leg. It began in 1983 and eventually spread to her right arm as well, but she felt she could live with it. By 1999 the symptoms had become so severe that she consulted a doctor. The diagnosis was multiple sclerosis. For three years Garr did not reveal her illness, afraid that she wouldn’t be offered work. After going public, she became a spokesperson for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, making humorous speeches to gatherings in the US and Canada.

She also continued to act, appearing on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Greetings From Tucson, Life With Bonnie and also had a brief recurring role on Friends in the 1990s as Lisa Kudrow’s mother.

She married contractor John O’Neil in 1993. They adopted a daughter, Molly, before divorcing in 1996. Teri is survived by Molly and a grandson.