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      Teri Garr’s Life in Pictures

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      Teri Garr, who died on Tuesday at 79, will be remembered for her strong comedic chops and for her ability to act with her eyes, displaying a wide range of emotions.In 1983, she earned an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress for her performance in “Tootsie” opposite Dustin Hoffman. That movie, like many others on Garr’s résumé, showed that she could command attention alongside her male counterparts. If her best-known roles could had a common thread, it was the erratic behavior of the men in her characters’ lives.Offscreen, Garr faced hurdles related to her health and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1999, after more than a decade of symptoms. She eventually became a spokeswoman for research into the disease, making appearances in her wheelchair.Here are some snapshots from her life and career.Stanley Bielecki Movie Collection/Getty ImagesIn “Young Frankenstein” (1974), Garr played a beautiful but ditsy German lab assistant.CBS, via Getty ImagesGarr and Frankie Avalon in 1965.CBS, via Getty ImagesGarr’s eyes were perhaps one of her most recognizable features as an actress. They could show pain, sympathy, vulnerability and intrigue.Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection, via Getty ImagesAmy Irving, Carrie Fisher and Garr in 1977.Paul Drinkwater/NBCU Photo Bank, via NBCUniversal, via Getty ImagesA regular on the talk show circuit, Garr was a favorite guest of both David Letterman and Johnny Carson.Columbia Pictures/Getty ImagesGarr as Ronnie Neary in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977), directed by Steven Spielberg.ShutterstockGarr, with Jackie Gleason in “The Sting II,” hailed from a show-business family. Her father was a vaudevillian.Columbia Pictures, via AlamyBy the mid-1960s, Garr had appeared in four Elvis Presley movies. She eventually took on more serious roles, earning an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress for her performance as Sandy Lester in “Tootsie” (1982).Sherwood ProductionsEntertainment Pictures, via AlamyIn a departure from her ditsy roles, Garr played an overconfident ad-agency workaholic opposite Michael Keaton in “Mr. Mom” (1983).Alan Singer/NBCU Photo Bank, via NBCUniversal, via Getty ImagesGarr’s comedic chops made her stand out against a crowded backdrop of Hollywood actresses during the 1970s and ’80s. She hosted “Saturday Night Live” three times.ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content, via Getty ImagesMichael Westmore, Garr and Zoltan Elek at the Academy Awards in 1986.Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, Inc., via Getty ImagesGarr married John O’Neil in 1993 and later welcomed a daughter, Molly O’Neil.Getty ImagesGarr played Phoebe Abbott in three episodes of “Friends” over the show’s third and fourth seasons.Rusty Russell/Getty ImagesWhile making films, Garr noticed troubling physical symptoms and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1999. She later became a spokeswoman for M.S. research and support.Valerie Macon/Getty ImagesGarr with Leonard Maltin, Mel Brooks and Cloris Leachman. More

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      Teri Garr, Comic Actress in ‘Young Frankenstein’ and ‘Tootsie,’ Dies at 79

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      An Oscar nominee for her role in “Tootsie,” she was also a favorite guest of David Letterman and Johnny Carson and a three-time host of “Saturday Night Live.”Teri Garr, the alternately shy and sassy blond actress whose little-girl voice, deadpan comic timing, expressive eyes and cinematic bravery in the face of seemingly crazy male characters made her a star of 1970s and ’80s movies and earned her an Oscar nomination for her role in “Tootsie,” died on Tuesday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 79.Her publicist, Heidi Schaeffer, said the cause was complications of multiple sclerosis.Ms. Garr received that diagnosis in 1999, after 16 years of symptoms and medical research; she made her condition public in 2002. In late 2006, she had a ruptured brain aneurysm and was in a coma for a week, but she was eventually able to regain the ability to walk and talk.Onscreen, Ms. Garr’s outstanding features were her eyes, which could seem simultaneously pained, baffled, sympathetic, vulnerable, intrigued and determined, whether she was registering a grand new discovery or holding back tears. If her best-known roles had a common thread, it was the erratic behavior of the men in her characters’ lives.Ms. Garr and Dustin Hoffman in “Tootsie” (1982). She was nominated for an Oscar for her performance as the neglected friend-turned-lover of an actor played by Mr. Hoffman.Moviestore Collection Ltd/Alamy Stock PhotoIn “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” she initially went into denial when her husband (Richard Dreyfuss) became obsessed with U.F.O.s, but promptly abandoned him, taking the children, when he built, in their family room, a mountain of garbage, fencing and backyard soil.In “Oh, God!,” Ms. Garr was supportive when her husband (John Denver), a California supermarket manager, told everyone that he was hanging out with God incarnate (George Burns). In “Tootsie,” for which she earned a 1983 Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress, she whined eloquently as the neglected friend-turned-lover of an actor (Dustin Hoffman) who was behaving strangely. It turned out he had been posing as a woman to get better acting jobs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Teri Garr Found the Soul in Memorable Ditsy Blondes

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      In “Tootsie,” “After Hours” and other films, she played truly unhinged characters while also layering in sadness or drama.In “Tootsie,” Teri Garr perfected the polite way to say you had a bad time at a party. Bidding a friend good night, her character, a struggling actress named Sandy, tells him, “It was a wonderful party, my date left with someone else, I had a lot of fun, do you have any seconal?”She sounds sunny as she’s saying all this and barely takes a breath. It’s a master class in comedic despair.Garr, who died on Tuesday at 79 from complications of multiple sclerosis, turned the neurotic basket case into an art form. On paper a Teri Garr role could be written off as a daffy blonde, but in her hands she gave these women depth and made them entrancingly funny.Garr came from a show business family — her father was a vaudevillian, and she arguably inherited that can-do spirit of performing. Though she had appeared in a number of television shows and films throughout the 1960s, including as a dancer in multiple Elvis flicks, she was introduced to most audiences in Mel Brooks’s “Young Frankenstein” (1974, not currently streaming), playing Inga, the laboratory assistant to Gene Wilder’s Frederick Frankenstein. (Don’t mispronounce it.)Brooks first presents her lying in the back of a hay wagon. She’s beautiful and busty, but immediately lands her first punchline.“Hello,” she says seductively, in her ostensibly Transylvanian accent. “Would you like to have a roll in the hay?” Wilder pauses, taken aback by her apparent forward proposition. She interjects, brightly. “It’s fun!” She starts flinging her body around, singing, “Roll, roll, roll in the hay.” She doesn’t mean the sexual innuendo — or maybe she does.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Extra Extra! The End Times, Onscreen

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      Alien invasions, viruses, zombies, meteors, natural or human-caused catastrophes. When the end is nigh in apocalyptic, dystopian, disaster or horror films and television shows, there is often a distinct moment that offers audiences a glimpse of what was known in those last days before civilization was forever changed: the front pages of newspapers.Sometimes the camera lingers on the page, allowing us to read headlines that telegraph the scramble to make sense of unprecedented events. Other times, blink and you’ll miss it.In some instances, these front pages are the last ones printed in the before-times; in others, humanity endures in the end, though it is certainly transformed.The pivotal disaster might have been long past. Or perhaps it’s only the beginning of the end.‘Men in Black’ (1997)Alien threats endanger Earth.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Paul Morrissey, Andy Warhol’s Cinematic Collaborator, Dies at 86

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      In films like “Trash” and “Women in Revolt,” he brought movement, character and something resembling a story line to the Warhol film aesthetic.Paul Morrissey, whose loose cinéma-vérité films made with Andy Warhol in the late 1960s and early ’70s captured New York’s demimonde of drug addicts, drag queens and hipsters and turned an unlikely stable of amateur actors into underground stars, died on Monday in Manhattan. He was 86.The death, in a hospital, was caused by pneumonia, said Michael Chaiken, his archivist.In films like “Flesh,” “Trash,” “Heat” and “Women in Revolt,” all made on budgets of less than $10,000, Mr. Morrissey brought movement, character and something resembling a story line to the Warhol film aesthetic, which had consisted of pointing a camera at an actor or a building and letting it run for several hours. (Warhol’s “Empire” was a continuous shot of the Empire State Building that lasted eight hours and five minutes.)Relying on a shifting collective of amateur actors, like Joe Dallesandro and Viva; transgender performers, like Jackie Curtis, Holly Woodlawn and Candy Darling; and marginal downtown characters, Mr. Morrissey concocted a distinctive blend of squalor and melodramatic farce that captivated many critics and even, in some instances, translated into box-office success.The scripts, such as they were, were almost entirely ad-libbed. The stars simply portrayed themselves. And the plots defied synopsis.Mr. Morrissey, front, with, from top, Joe Dallesandro, Holly Woodlawn and Jane Forth, in a publicity photo for Mr. Morrissey’s 1970 film “Trash.”Henri Dauman/Jour De Fete Films“Trash,” Mr. Morrissey’s biggest critical and commercial success, followed the trials and tribulations of Mr. Dallesandro playing a heroin-addicted gigolo earnestly, if groggily, trying to support his wife, played by Ms. Woodlawn. “Women in Revolt” took the theme of women’s liberation and grafted it onto a sendup of Hollywood women’s pictures of the 1930s, with Ms. Curtis, Ms. Woodlawn and Ms. Darling striking poses and reflecting on their status in a sexist society.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      David Harris, Actor in the Cult Classic ‘The Warriors,’ Dies at 75

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      He played Cochise, a member of the Warriors gang who navigated a panoply of costumed aggressors in New York City.David Harris, who played a member of a street gang in the 1979 cult classic movie “The Warriors,” died on Friday at his home in New York City. He was 75.His daughter, Davina Harris, said the cause was cancer.As the Warriors evaded and did battle with rival crews in New York City streets and subway cars, Mr. Harris in the role of Cochise dutifully supported his brothers. In a gang that conformed to matching red leather vests, Cochise cut a defiant presence with his headband and turquoise necklaces that bobbed to the rhythm of their violent journey home to Coney Island.After the Warriors are falsely accused of killing a gang leader, they have to navigate a panoply of colorful and costumed rivals — malevolent mimes, pinstriped baseball bat thumpers and villains aboard a school bus fit for “Mad Max.”In a movie with moments (the sinister bottle clinking, the baritone bellow of “Can you dig it?”) that have been recreated and parodied in media in the decades since the film’s release, one of Mr. Harris’s scenes inside a rival gang’s den was a central point in the mayhem.After being seduced by an all-female gang, a party in an apartment quickly turns sideways, with a hand near Mr. Harris’s face suddenly wielding a switchblade. He bobs and dodges, jumps and jukes before swinging a chair and plowing through a door that allows him and his fellow members to escape bullets and blades.“We thought it was a little film that would run its little run and go, and nobody would ever talk about it again,” Mr. Harris said in an interview in 2019 with ADAMICradio, an online channel about TV, films and comics.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      California Governor Proposes $750 Million in Annual Film Tax Credits

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      Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to more than double the amount the state offers in incentives, which would make its program one of the nation’s most generous.Responding to pleas from California’s film industry, which has struggled to rebound from labor unrest and industry disruption, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday announced a proposal to more than double the size of the state’s film tax incentive program to $750 million annually.If the proposal is approved by the State Legislature, California would offer more money to entice film productions than any state except Georgia, which provides unlimited tax credits. California’s existing program is capped at $330 million annually. The increase would go into effect on July 1, 2025.“California is the entertainment capital of the world, rooted in decades of creativity, innovation and unparalleled talent,” Mr. Newsom said in a statement. “Expanding this program will help keep production here at home, generate thousands of good-paying jobs, and strengthen the vital link between our communities and the state’s iconic film and TV industry.”In recent weeks, state economic development officials and entertainment executives in Los Angeles have publicly expressed concern over the persistent slump in film production, begging officials to do more to keep film shoots in the state.Over the past 20 years, states have aggressively wooed Hollywood, offering movie and television productions more than $25 billion in filming incentives, according to a survey by The New York Times. Thirty-eight states offer some form of incentive, including Georgia, which has extended more than $5 billion in film tax credits since 2015, and New York, which has provided at least $7 billion in credits. More

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      We Ranked the 25 Jump Scares That Still Make Us Jump

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      The floor creaks, the music turns ominous and an uneasy quiet sets in. Then BAM! It’s the classic jump scare. This staple of horror movies, when done well, is instantly memorable. With Times film writers, filmmakers and stars weighing in, we ranked the 25 jump scares that still get us every time. WARNINGThis article contains […] More