Teri Garr, who starred in Tootsie and Young Frankenstein, dies aged 79
Oscar-nominated actress Teri Garr, best known for her roles in Young Frankenstein and Tootsie, has died.
Garr, who also starred in Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, died at the age of 79 due to complications from multiple sclerosis (MS), her manager Heidi Schaeffer said on Tuesday.
She appeared in three episodes of Friends in 1997 and 1998 as Phoebe Abbott, the estranged birth mother of Lisa Kudrow’s Phoebe.
Teri Garr with Dustin Hoffman (L) and Sydney Pollack in Tootsie. Pic: Rex Features/Everett/Shutterstock
In a screen career that spanned more than 40 years, she was nominated for the best supporting actress Oscar for her role in 1982’s Tootsie, starring opposite Dustin Hoffman, but lost out to Maureen Stapleton.
Her most famous role was playing Inga, a Transylvania local who becomes the assistant to Gene Wilder’s Dr Frederick Frankenstein in Mel Brooks’s 1974 comedy hit, Young Frankenstein, part of a star-studded cast that included Cloris Leachman, Marty Feldman and Gene Hackman.
Garr had plenty of memorable lines, such as “Vould you like to have a roll in zee hay?”
She was a familiar face on sitcoms and late-night talk shows, including NBC’s The Tonight Show during the Johnny Carson era.
She struggled with health issues in recent years and in 2002, she revealed she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and had been suffering symptoms for some two decades.
Five years later, she underwent surgery for a brain aneurysm.
Teri Garr in Los Angeles in 2012. Pic: Reuters
She later became a key advocate for MS awareness, traveling across the country to speak with doctors and patients about her experiences, NBC News, Sky’s US partner said. She retired from acting in 2011.
Teri Ann Garr was born in Cleveland in 1944 to showbusiness parents and began dance lessons aged six.
Her father, Eddie, was a vaudeville performer and actor who appeared on Broadway and her mother, Phyllis, had been a member of the Rockettes precision dance troupe.
After studying in Los Angeles, Garr moved to New York to pursue a career first in ballet and then in acting, studying at the famed Actor’s Studio in Manhattan.
Garr, a quirky comedy performer, got her break with bit parts in a number of 1960s Elvis Presley movies, including Viva Las Vegas and Roustabout.
As well as enjoying memorable movie roles, such in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation and One From The Heart, she was a familiar face on TV, including roles in That Girl, Batman, and The Andy Griffith Show, Variety said on its website.
She played a dizzy secretary in an episode of the original Star Trek and became a regular singer and dancer on The Sonny And Cher Show.
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In her autobiography, Speedbumps: Flooring It Through Hollywood, published in 2005, she complained of being typecast as a ditzy woman, Variety said.
In 1993, Garr married building contractor John O’Neil, and that same year, in November, they were present when their adopted daughter Molly O’Neil was born.
The couple divorced three years later.
She is survived by her daughter, and a grandson, Tyryn.
US
Harvard University sues over $2.2bn funding freeze after rejecting demands from Donald Trump’s administration
Harvard University is suing Donald Trump’s administration after it rejected a list of demands from the White House and had $2.2bn (£1.6bn) of government funding frozen.
The Ivy League institution, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is accused of ideological bias and allowing antisemitism during campus protests last year against Israel’s war in Gaza.
The Trump administration, which began a review of $9bn (£6.7bn) in federal grants for Harvard in March, had demanded the university screen international students for those “hostile to the American values” and the end of all diversity, equality and inclusion programmes.
Protesters earlier this month at Harvard called on the university to resist interference by the federal government. Pic: Reuters
Students at a rally last week at Harvard against Donald Trump’s funding policies. Pic: AP
The university’s president Alan Garber has remained defiant and rejected those and other reforms, prompting the US President to question whether the university should lose its tax-exempt status.
Mr Trump accused the institution of pushing what he called “political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?'” in a post on Truth Social.
Harvard has seen student-led protests in recent days calling on the institution to resist interference by the federal government.
Harvard’s lawsuit, filed in Boston, described the research funding freeze as “arbitrary and capricious” and violating its First Amendment rights.
“The government has not – and cannot – identify any rational connection between antisemitism concerns and the medical, scientific, technological, and other research it has frozen that aims to save American lives, foster American success, preserve American security, and maintain America’s position as a global leader in innovation,” the court documents revealed.
Harvard University has rejected a series of demands from the White House. File pic: AP
On Monday, White House spokesperson Harrison Fields issued a defiant response to the lawsuit: “The gravy train of federal assistance to institutions like Harvard, which enrich their grossly overpaid bureaucrats with tax dollars from struggling American families is coming to an end.
“Taxpayer funds are a privilege, and Harvard fails to meet the basic conditions required to access that privilege.”
The Trump administration has also paused some funding for universities including Columbia, Princeton, Cornell, Northwestern and Brown over the campus protests.
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But protesters, including some Jewish groups, say their criticism of Israel’s military actions in Gaza is wrongly associated with antisemitism.
Mr Garber said the institution would continue to fight hate and fully comply with anti-discrimination laws.
A small encampment in support of Palestinians at the Harvard campus in April 2024. Pic: Reuters
The American Council on Education, a non-profit organisation with more than 1,600 member colleges and universities, supported the legal action by Harvard.
“It has been clear for weeks that the administration’s actions violated due process and the rule of law. We applaud Harvard for taking this step.”
US
Hundreds of passengers evacuated after Delta Air Lines Airbus A330 engine catches fire at Orlando International Airport
Hundreds of passengers have been taken off a plane after one of its engines caught fire as it was about to take off, airport officials have said.
The Delta Air Lines plane carrying nearly 300 people was pushing back from the gate at Orlando International Airport in Florida when smoke began to appear from the engine on its right wing on Monday.
There were no initial reports of injuries, the airline said.
Pictures and video published on social media showed flames and smoke rising from the Airbus A330 and passengers sliding down an escape chute as they left the aircraft.
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The Delta Air Lines plane is evacuated. Pic: @dylangwall/Reuters
The plane was heading for Atlanta, a journey of more than 400 miles with a flight time of around one hour and 40 minutes.
The Federal Aviation Administration said it is going to investigate what happened.
Flight 1213 had 282 passengers and 12 crew members, Delta said.
The airline said its flight crews “followed procedures to evacuate the passenger cabin when flames in the tailpipe of one of the aircraft’s two engines were observed”.
A social media user posted a video of what appeared to be a serious fire and flames coming from the Airbus plane, and another video of passengers exiting the plane via a slide.
Orlando International Airport said on X that the fire was on the ramp area and that the airport’s aircraft rescue and firefighting team responded quickly. Airbus did not immediately comment.
Delta said maintenance teams will check the aircraft, and the airline will bring in additional aircraft to help customers reach their final destinations on Monday.
It’s the latest in a series of high-profile aviation incidents that have raised questions about how safe flying is in the US.
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Last month, an engine on an American Airlines jet caught fire after the plane diverted to Denver, forcing the evacuation of passengers onto the wing of the aeroplane. The engine caught fire while taxiing to the gate.
In January, 67 people died after a mid-air collision between an American Airlines regional jet and an Army helicopter near Reagan Washington National Airport.
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