The “Young Frankenstein” and “Tootsie” star was 79 years old

Teri Garr, the comedian and singer who brought her cheerful personality to “Young Frankenstein” and was nominated for an Oscar for her role in “Tootsie,” died Tuesday in Los Angeles after a long battle with multiple sclerosis. She was 79 years old.

An influential performer for comedians including Tina Fey, Jarre was a familiar face in dozens of TV shows and films in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. The actress revealed in 2002 that she had multiple sclerosis, and suffered an aneurysm in 2006.

Having begun her career as a dancer, Jarre first came to attention in the role of Inga, the saucy assistant in Mel Brooks’ 1974 film “Young Frankenstein,” who greets Gene Wilder’s Dr. Frederick Frankenstein with the unforgettable song “Would You Like a Roll in the Hi-Ze?” ?” ?”

On Friends, she played Phoebe Abbott in three episodes in 1997 and 1998.

In Steven Spielberg’s film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jar was the wife of Richard Dreyfuss’ character. She received an Academy Award nomination for Supporting Actress, starring opposite Dustin Hoffman as his actress girlfriend in Sydney Pollack’s “Tootsie,” and playing the working mother of Michael Keaton’s stay-at-home father in “Mr. Mother.”

Born in Ohio, she moved to Los Angeles, graduated from North Hollywood High School, and studied at Cal State Northridge before moving to New York to study acting. Starting out as a speed dancer, she can be seen shimmering behind the performers in the filmed rock concert “The TAMI Show” and in six Elvis Presley shows, most of which were choreographed by her mentor, David Winters. During the 1960s, she had small roles on sitcoms including “That Girl,” “Batman” and “The Andy Griffith Show.”

Jarre’s first speaking role came in the offbeat Monkees feature film The Head, written by Jack Nicholson, whom she met in acting class. In the “Assignment Earth” episode of “Star Trek,” she played a ditzy secretary, the first in a series of similar roles.

She became a regular singer and dancer on “The Sonny and Cher Show” before landing a role in Francis Ford Coppola’s film The Conversation.

Coppola cast her again in “One From the Heart.” Her other roles include being the wife of John Denver’s character in Oh, God, the mother of the boy hero in The Black Stallion, and roles in Dumb and Dumber and Mom and Dad Save the World.

Jarre worked with many of the most prominent directors of the era: in addition to Brooks, Spielberg, Pollack and Coppola, she worked with Martin Scorsese on “After Hours” and Robert Altman on “The Player” and “Pret-a-Porter.” Her many television roles included runs on “M*A*S*H,” “The Odd Couple,” and “The Bob Newhart Show.”

A neighbor explained AV Club In a frank and feminist 2008 interview, she explained why she was often portrayed as the “long-suffering wife” in films like Mr. Mom: “If there’s a woman who’s smart or funny or witty, people are afraid of that, so they don’t They write that. They just write parts for women where they let everything roll over them, where they let people sweep their feet over them. Those are the kind of roles I play, the kind of roles that exist for me in this world in this life.”

Despite her obvious attraction to big-name directors, she found many of her encounters in the industry to be unbearably sexist, such as being told by the producers of “The Sonny and Cher Show” that if she wanted to, she would get paid the same amount as him. Men, it can. Leaves. “The whole world is sexist, starting with this show. That was an example of that: not getting paid what other people got for doing the same thing. So I started learning early on that women are being screwed over,” she told The AV Club.

She has hosted “Saturday Night Live” three times and has made frequent appearances on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” and “Late Night With David Letterman.”

Her career slowed down in the late 1990s, although she continued to have small roles in films including “Dick” and “Unaccompanied Minors,” and she also voiced Mary McGuinness in two Batman animated films, “Batman Beyond: The Movie” and “Batman Beyond: The Movie” and “Batman Beyond: The Movie”. Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker.

She published her autobiography, “Speedbumps: Flooring It Through Hollywood,” in 2006.

She is survived by her daughter, Molly O’Neill, and grandson, Terren.