TONIGHT

• Home
• Video
• Podcasts/RSS 
• Local Showtimes
• Past Shows
• Blogs
• About the Show
• Tell Tavis
• Features
• Mobile

RELATED LINKS

• Article on Ms. Garr
• MS LifeLines
• Ms. Garr's bio

E-mail a friend

Tavis: Pleased to welcome Teri Garr to this program, the Oscar-nominated actress has enjoyed a terrific career in Hollywood. Her film resume includes classics like "Young Frankenstein," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," and I just saw it last night, "Tootsie.' Her latest project is a new memoir about her life in show business, and her battle, her courageous battle, with MS, multiple sclerosis. The book is called "Speedbumps: Flooring It through Hollywood.' Teri Garr, nice to have you here.

Teri Garr: So nice to be here.

Tavis: There's so much in this book, I really don't know where to begin. But I guess I'll start with the MS, because I'm fascinated by the fact that it took 20 years for them to diagnose what was really bothering you. How could that...

Garr: Well I think they didn't have the diagnostic techniques that they do now. When I first got symptoms, and then I would get symptoms, and they would go away. So I thought, oh, well, this is just like a sty, or cold sore, it's gone. Then it would come back later.

But I also think if there was any doctors out there or neurologists that I'd gone to, that did suspect that it might be MS, they went, you know, why tell them it's MS. There's nothing we can do about it anyway. So - it had such a, the myths about it were so terrible and down, and black and there's nothing to be done about it, so let's just not tell them.

Tavis: In retrospect, Teri, do you have reason to believe that there were people who, in fact, might have known, and didn't share it with you? That's a strong...

Garr: No. You know, I went to some really topnotch doctors all over the country. And in fact one very prominent doctor in Boston said, 'You know, I don't know what this is, but it's not MS.' You know, we've done MRIs, so, it wasn't easy to diagnose it. But now today, they can diagnose it quickly. And the good news is that there's a lot of stuff out there to help us, and to help us keep on going. And that's the important thing, is to go on with your life, you know.

Tavis: For a long time you wouldn't talk about the fact you had MS once you knew that you had it, because, not publicly, because you didn't want it to stigmatize you perhaps in the industry. You are very open about talking about it now, you tour the country. You talk about it. Before I get to that part, though, which I want to come back to, let me ask you whether or not, again in retrospect, you are disappointed, angry about the fact that you did not know sooner.

Garr: Well, no. I mean, I don't think there's anything could have done about it anyway. And no, I'm not. But the only thing that was disappointing was that, and I talked about it in my book. Is that I told people, you know, they're testing me for MS. They're testing me for this and that, and people went out and told everyone I had MS. And that was like, you know, in Hollywood - I have a hangnail and you're out.

Gone, she's gone. So that once the rumors - and people would call up and say 'I'm really sorry you have MS.' I'd say, 'How do you know I have MS? I don't even know I have MS. If you talked to my doctor, please let me know.' That kind of stuff. But there's always something frustrating like that in life, you know?

Tavis: Yeah. How did you come to terms then with being open about it? Being out about your MS?

Garr: You know, it's a thing about - I really sat down and thought about it and thought about, what are the consequences of a devastating disease being laid on you? And you stop and you think about life, and about how great life is. And I thought, maybe if I could help other people. I mean, in the beginning I thought maybe just if I could help one person, it'll be worth it.

So I, that's all. I just thought if maybe I could help other people see that life is okay if you have MS. So, that's why I did it. And it's been very rewarding. So far I've helped a lot of people, who have said they, you know. Anytime anybody does anything where they take a stand, you know, it makes other people, it inspires them to say I'm a human being, I can do that too. So, you know.

Tavis: See, I'm fascinated. 'Cause as I go through the book, I get the sense that you are doing the best you can with...

Garr: With what I have to work with. Just like George Bush.

Tavis: There you go. (laughs) See, I'm glad you said that, because that makes my point. Your humor has not gone anywhere. And I get the sense that you have not at all been bothered by the fact that your career was impacted by this. I guess the question is, how do you laugh all the way through this? This ain't funny.

Garr: Are you telling me that my career's been impacted by this? Damn. I thought things had just slowed down. Oh, man.

Tavis: (laughs) See. How do you laugh your way all the way through this?

Garr: You know, I don't know. It's just about how you're made. I mean, some people laugh at things and some people don't. And some people take a different view of life. And I just take an optimistic, positive view. I figure, another thing is, if you get a diagnosis of something like this, there's one of two ways to go. You go down or you can go up.

You can look at it the funny side of it or, you can laugh or you can cry. So I figured I might as well be up about it. Then, of course, there's a lot of funny things about life. But I think I found out that the people that are really disabled, you know, aren't me. Those are the people that can't laugh and can't find joy in life, or the people that can't, you know, find fulfillment or move on. Those are the people I go, too bad for them.

Tavis: That's a fascinating way to look at it.

Garr: Oh, thank you. Fascinating but not true, Miss Garr. Quite insane; very insane.

Tavis: (laughs) I don't know how I'm gonna get through this. (laughs) So tell me about the work that you are doing before I move off the MS. There's so much other stuff that I want to get to. But you travel the country; you're talking about this all the time, helping people?

Garr: Right. I do this work, it's called MS Lifeline, it's a support group to talk to people who are living with MS, or their families or, you know, if you know someone that has MS. And that, I go around and talk about my experiences with living with MS. Exactly what I'm talking about now. So, it's about, you know, just living life and being okay about it.

Tavis: Yeah. This book, as I said three times, it has so much good stuff in it. I just want to throw some things at you, I don't even want to set you up too nicely, just throw some things at you. There is some funny stuff in this book about you and Elvis.

Garr: Funny? In what way?

Tavis: (laughs) Going, first of all, you danced in like, what, two Elvis movies?

Garr: Oh, about six.

Tavis: Nine, nine.

Garr: Yeah, a lot.

Tavis: Yeah, like nine. Including "Viva Las Vegas.'

Garr: That was the first one. I was going to put a picture of Elvis and I dancing in this. And you have to go and get clearances. So I couldn't get the clearance from the Elvis estate, because Priscilla has always been jealous of me, you know. I can understand it.

Tavis: (laughs) So, what was it like starting out as a kid dancing, and then dancing in Elvis films?

Garr: Well, you know, first of all, I was a dancer, like a ballet dancer, so I figured I was a little bit higher and mightier than everybody else. Oh, my gosh. Look at. And I also was a fan and kind of a groupie of everybody. So I walked in, and I think, well, I'm working on this movie with Elvis. And then I thought well, there's millions of people out there in the country, and in the world, who would never even be in the same room with Elvis. I work with Elvis.

So that was kind of fun and nice. And then of course, he was very funny, he's a lot funnier than people - I never heard anybody say Elvis was funny. Hilarious. Very funny guy. But he would have his boys, his Memphis Mafia, say to the girls, 'You guys want to come up to a party at Elvis's house?' So we'd go, 'Oh, yeah, of course we do.'

So, we go up to Elvis's house, and he should have just said, 'Do you guys want to come up to Elvis's house and watch Elvis watch television?' Because it wasn't like a party where there was dips and chips and that. Nothing. It was like, oh, okay, duh. But anyway, he was a nice guy, fish out of water, that story.

Tavis: So you go to his house and just drinking Coca-Cola, watching Elvis watch television.

Garr: Played pool. Watched TV. Yeah, that kind of stuff. Well, you know, he was in Hollywood. He wanted to know where the fun was. And I had a secret. There's no fun here. Just the opposite of fun. But no one seems to know that. People are coming in droves to Hollywood to find the fun. There isn't any here.

Tavis: Somebody's watching right now trying to figure out, is she serious about that?

Garr: Totally. Totally serious. It was more fun in Indianapolis. I was just there.

Tavis: I'm from there.

Garr: I know. That's why I'm saying it.

Tavis: So, Teri's done her homework, too. I love this. She got jokes and research.

Garr: I'm not an idiot, even though I play one on TV.

Tavis: (laughs) Speaking of not being an idiot, one of my favorite stories in the book is on your resume, your professional resume, you wanted to, what's the word I'm looking for? Embellish early in your career things that you had done. But you went about it in a very creative way, so that you wouldn't get called on it.

You'd put the things on that you really hadn't done, but looks good on the resume, and put asterisks by those things that you had not done. And the asterisk at the bottom of the resume said "L.I.E." 'L.I.E.' So, you put...

Garr: Yeah.

Tavis: That was funny to me.

Garr: Fairly honest, wasn't it? It was a lie.

Tavis: It was a lie. Did anybody ever check you on that?

Garr: No one. One guy said, 'Wait, wait, what is that 'L.I.E.' stand for? And I went, 'Long Island Expressway?' No, it means, it's not true. And he just went, 'Oh.' But I figured I put this resume together, it just didn't look good. So I added a few things like 'Desire Under the Elms' on Broadway, and just really big stuff. I mean, it's obviously a lie. But they would read them, and I figured if I didn't have a good resume, they weren't even going to give me a chance, so I had to help them. It wasn't for me. It was for them. Of course.

Tavis: So what do you make of the fact though that in all this time, nobody caught the fact that these were lies?

Garr: Well, my reaction to that is that they're idiots, I guess. The people that do the hiring. And I think we established that a long time ago, hadn't we?

Tavis: Yeah. John Lennon and the Beatles. You were in a recording session for one of my favorite Beatles songs. "Yellow Submarine.' How did this happen?

Garr: Well, I was in London, and gone to London to - actually - how do you say it? Anyway, I'd gone to south France...

Tavis: Monaco.

Garr: Monaco. To do a TV special. And we were in London staying at Cass Elliot's apartment. For some reason, she had this apartment there and we could stay there. But the road manager knew the Beatles. So he said, and we all said, well, we'll be meeting the Beatles. We were just about ready to leave town and he came in one day and said, 'Do you want to go to a Beatles recording session?' And we went, 'Yes. Yes.'

And so we quickly watched the Beatles record this thing, sitting there. They hadn't been together for a long time, and John had just gotten this Rolls-Royce all painted like a caravan. So, we got to, he says, 'You birds want to go out for a ride?' Well, all right. So, we went out, you know, nightclubbing with the four Beatles and us. It was unbelievable.

Tavis: When you sit down and write a book like this, does it occur to you how charmed your life has really been, the experiences, how unique these experiences really are? We're talking about Elvis and the Beatles here, you're just like, yeah, we did this and we did that. Do you know how charmed - does it seem charmed to you?

Garr: Well, yes, I guess so. I mean, yes. I guess I was lucky to be in these right places. I don't know. When I first started working, I worked on "West Side Story" with the original cast, and Chita Rivera was in it, and Larry Kerr, and these people. And I would stand in the wings and watch them on stage, and go this is the real thing, these are great, I'm on the same stage with them. I guess I can be their equal. I don't know. I just sort of made myself be, think that I could be equal to them. Because if I didn't, I would have gone crazy.

Tavis: I wonder if it had anything to do, though, that feeling had anything to do with your mom being in the business. Your mom was a Rockette.

Garr: Yeah, she was a Rockette.

Tavis: Called her 'Legs.'

Garr: Yes, 'Legs.'

Tavis: 'Cause she has long, there you go, yeah. So do you think that had anything to do with the fact that you were already in this business?

Garr: Well, yeah. You know, she was a Rockette, but like many dancers and Rockettes, they become wardrobe people. I don't know why that is. But she became a wardrobe costumer.

Tavis: On one of your films, your first...

Garr: Well she was in, yeah, she was on "Young Frankenstein.' But before that, when I was a kid, she was at NBC and doing all these costumes on shows. And I would go hang out with her and say, well, you know, these people, they're just like me. They have their shoes and their stockings and they're just like, you know, me. So, I guess they're human beings too.

Tavis: Was it cool having your mom around as a costumer on one of your films, or was that like a burden knowing your mom was watching your every move?

Garr: She didn't want anybody to tell anybody that she was my mother. It was very out, to this day, I don't know what that was about. Don't tell anyone I'm your mother. Okay, I don't know what that means. But, I don't know. She was proud of me.

Tavis: Have you always been funny? Were you like this little precocious kid who was cracking jokes and being funny even then?

Garr: Yeah, you know. I had two older brothers who were funny and I wanted to keep up with them and be funny like they were. And we just always thought that laughing was, I don't know. Maybe it's a defense for the horrible Dickensian childhood. But I don't think so. I think I'm just having fun.

Tavis: Anyway. The new book by Teri, I made it through. We started this conversation, leave the book up. We started the conversation Luke Sader, one of my producers around here, said to me, 'You're sitting with a comedy legend. Do not screw this up.' Did I do okay?

Garr: Yes. Well, sort of.

Tavis: Sort of. Okay. Well, I'm sure Luke would tell me...

Garr: You laughed at my jokes.

Tavis: I'm sure Luke would tell me about it afterwards. There's the new book by Teri Garr, "Speedbumps: Flooring It through Hollywood.' Teri Garr, nice to have you on the program.

Garr: So nice to see you, too. Thank you.

Tavis: Glad to have you here. That's our show for tonight. Catch me this weekend on Public Radio International, PRI. Check your local listings. We'll talk on the radio. See you back here next time on PBS. Until then, good night from L.A. Thanks for watching, and as always, keep the faith.