Sad news well-circulated by now — Teri Garr died today at her home in LA. She was 79.

She was a sweet-acting, funny actress who nailed a near-60-year career. As I posted about Stevie Nicks’s musical-life stand on abortion a couple of days ago, and how I had a ‘crush‘ on her in the 1970s, of course, one among a bunch (Diane Keaton, Olivia Newton-John, Carol Kane, Linda Ronstadt, to name a few), and although I’d forgot to list Teri Garr, she would have been there on that wishful roll call. I first fell in love/awe of her performing skits on the “The Sunny and Cher Comedy Hour,” starting in 1972.
And then came the big-screen — “The Conversation,” “Young Frankenstein,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” and later “Tootsie,” in which she was nominated for a best-supporting Oscar.

I hadn’t heard much about her lately and was taken suddenly aback on hearing of her death.

Apparently, her health had gone to shit — she had MS.
From The New YorkTimes obit: ‘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.‘

She was a wonder at deadpan delivery — an explosive black-and-white example:

Michael Dorsey’s hard-pressed girlfriend, or not, yet here we are once again…

(Pix above found at Wikipedia.)

(Illustration out front: Salvador Dalí’s 1958 painting, “Meditative Rose,” and found here.)