Speed Bumps Can't Slow Teri Garr

Long before her fresh-faced appeal landed her major roles in films like "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "Mr. Mom" and "Oh, God!" Teri Garr was in the chorus in a dozen movies, including "Viva Las Vegas," one of nine she did, starring Elvis Presley.

"They'd call up, 'There's an audition down in metro, you wanna go?' I mean, I felt like I was in the 40s and, like, was sitting at some switchboard," Garr recalls.

"'I'll be right down. Okay, go down there' and audition and Elvis's boys would be there: the mafia. The Memphis mafia guys and they'd say 'I'll hire her and hire her and Elvis likes her,'" Garr tells Sunday Morning correspondent Rita Braver.

Asked if Presley ever spoke to her, Garr says, "Yeah he talked to us right away and invited us to a party at his house. And you know we'd go, 'Oh, yeah, a party at Elvis's, yeah.' We'd go up there and it wasn't really a party at Elvis's. It would be like -- you know what do you wanna go up -- they should have just said, 'You wanna go up and watch Elvis watch TV?' 'Cause that's what you'll be doing. And you know, OK, that sounds like fun."

Garr's adventures in films and out are detailed in her new autobiography titled "Speed Bumps."

Garr explains the book's title, saying, "Well, speed bumps, I was thinking, you know you're driving along, everything's OK and then there's a speed bump to go, 'slow down.' Go over it real slowly and you hit the pedal and you keep going and I just thought it was kind of a nice metaphor for life."

But if you think her 1999 diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, the crippling disease that has cost her much of the use of her right arm and leg is one of the biggest speed bumps, then you don't know Teri Garr.

"I think there are other things that are much worse than, you know, you get an illness. You can't help it, there's nothing you can do about it so you do the best you can," Garr says.

Doing the best she can has always been part of Garr's credo. Now 60, she grew up in Los Angeles with two older brothers in a show business family.

Her mother, Phyllis, was a former dancer. Her dad, Eddie, a traveling comedian and a gambler…with a drinking problem. He died when Garr was 11.

Garr's brief relationship with her father has had a lasting effect, she says. "Yeah, I think of that now when -- when I think of that -- people and friends say, 'Well, we'd like to set you up with somebody.'

"I say, 'Well, does he gamble and drink and can he ignore me?' 'cause those are the things that attract me and were like my father did. But, yeah, he did all those things. And, but he was still a very nice guy and -- and meant well and everything. But I think it just, it just took him over, and he couldn't handle it," Garr says.

While her mother toiled as a wardrobe mistress on the old NBC lot, Garr studied dance and when she finished high school broke in quickly to those movie musicals.

Despite having fun dancing, Garr decided to pursue acting. "Well, you know, when I was a dancer I would see that dancers were treated like garbage. I mean like, like extras," Garr says.

"You know and sit on a bench. The actors had these big trailers and you know people are, hundreds of people asking, 'Would you like coffee? Would you like me to massage your feet?'

"What? I'm thinking, well, wait a minute. How do I get from here to there because this isn't working for me? So I have to figure out how to get there," Garr says.

Garr admits that to get a shot, she listed roles she never had on her résumé.

"I figured once I got in the door, they'd hire me immediately," Garr says. "But they're not gonna let me in the door unless I have a good headshot and a good résumé. So I put in the résumé a few things that looked better, like "Desire Under the Elms" on Broadway and a few credits. And then on, on, on the side of it was an asterisk. And the bottom of the page of the asterisk I put lie.

"And no one ever noticed that it was, what does that mean lie. It's a lie. That's not true. I didn't want them to, you know, think I was dishonest in any way," Garr quips.

Gradually she started getting small film and TV parts.

But, her big movie break came in "Young Frankenstein," released in 1974. At first, director Mel Brooks told her she was up for the part of Gene Wilder's fiancé, a role Madeline Kahn had been offered, but wasn't sure about.

"It was my third callback," Garr remembers. "I was so excited. He goes, 'No I'm sorry to tell you, Madeline's gonna do this part, but you can come back tomorrow morning with a German accent. I'll let you try out for the part of the assistant.'"

Summoning her German accent, Garr says, "Yeah, so I said, 'Oh, can I come with a German accent tomorrow? Just wait a second. I be right back.'"

She went on to do a series of dramatic and comic roles, including the 1982 Blockbuster "Tootsie" with Garr playing the girlfriend Dustin Hoffman dumps.

Garr was nominated for an Oscar, but it was not to be. Garr lost the award to "Tootsie" co-star Jessica Lange.

Garr's off-beat sense of humor made her such a frequent guest on David Letterman's show in the 80s and 90s that he thanked her when she appeared with him just last month.

As for speculation that Garr and Letterman enjoyed a secret romance, Garr jokes, "It was true. No, I don't know. It wasn't true."

In real life Garr was married briefly to John O'Neil, a contractor. They adopted their daughter, Molly, together. She's now 12.

"In my mind she was meant for us, you know, from the get-go so yeah it's been wonderful. She's the best thing that's ever happened to me," Garr says of Molly.

But even before Molly's adoption, Garr was beginning to experience symptoms of MS, weakness in her leg, for example.

In Garr's book, she explains that once rumors began of her illness, acting work grew scarce.

"It did, it put the kibosh on, you know, it took the wind out of that sail a lot, but I kept going and kept pursuing people and trying to get work," Garr says.

Through the years, she managed to keep her career going, recently appearing on an episode of "Law and Order," playing a defense lawyer.

But the other role that Garr has now decided to play is as a spokesperson for MS, though she can still be reticent about her condition. She invited us to videotape her Pilates workout, for example, but doesn't like to be shown walking.

"Yeah, I've had a couple of incidents. You know and when I first started getting a lot a weakness in my legs, I live in a two-story house, I would fall down. I fell down the stairs like three days in a row," Garr says.

"Just fell down the stairs. I went, 'All right. This has gotta stop.' I have to walk down one step at a time now. So now it takes me a long time to get down a stairway in the stairs in my house. But I learned, and I rolled with the punches," Garr says.

The one thing that Garr does not want is anyone's pity. And when she makes her regular appearances sponsored by Serono, the company that manufactures the MS drug she takes, there's a lot more humor than sorrow.

"MS is a strange disease and it, it effects everyone a different way," Garr says. "Actually my doctor asked me the other day about sexual functions and I said, "Well, I don't know. I haven't been invited to any lately.'"

And when you see her cheerfully signing her new book with a special stamp she had made and scrawling with her left hand, you begin to believe that for Garr, MS really is just a minor speed bump in a full and funny life.

"What's happening to me is I'm still happy and functioning, being able to listen to music, see good movies, read good books, what else is there that I can't, you know, I mean I'm OK," Garr says.

"And I think other people can do that too, whether they have MS or not. You know, they can go on with their lives and think before they vote," Garr quips, and adds one last humorous barb: "Please people don't drink and vote. We'll all pay for that."