‘Frankenstein’ Re-Released; Garr Recalls Laughter

“Young Frankenstein” changed Teri Garr’s life and career.

Though she had done a lot of TV and even appeared in bit parts in such films as “Head,” with the Monkees, it was the 1974 Mel Brooks comedy that put the actress on the map.

“I don’t think I would be living the fat life I’m living now if it hadn’t been for this movie,” says Garr, who played the dumb blond Inga to perfection.

“Once you are in a movie that is a hit, you get to go and audition for other things,” Garr explains. “Often until that time, I had fake resumes, trying to get my foot in the door. With this one, I got a chance to be in other stuff.” She subsequently worked for director Francis Ford Coppola in “The Conversation” and “One From the Heart,” Steven Spielberg in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” Martin Scorsese in “After Hours” and Carl Reiner in “Oh, God!” She received a best supporting actress nomination for 1982’s “Tootsie.”

Brooks’ terrific sendup of Universal’s “Frankenstein” movie classics of the ‘30s is being re-released this week by Fox Video on both VHS ($15) and DVD ($35).

The special “25 1/2” anniversary edition includes behind-the-scenes footage and production outtakes featuring stars Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman, Peter Boyle, Kenneth Mars, Garr, Madeline Kahn and Cloris Leachman.

Garr recently saw “Young Frankenstein” again on TV. “I hadn’t seen it in years,” she says. “It really makes me laugh. I’m glad that it holds up.”

The actress says that the performers could barely keep a straight face during production. “We laughed all the time,” she recalls. “The one scene in which Madeline Kahn arrives at the castle and Gene Wilder says, ‘Can you help me with these bags?’ And Marty Feldman says, ‘Yeah, you take the blond and I’ll take the one with the turban,’ Gene Wilder is just laughing. It was impossible to get him to do it without laughing.”

Director Brooks, she adds, was the “funniest. He made everybody laugh all the time. He insisted. He said that his job was to make everyone laugh.”

Though the performers stuck to the Brooks-Wilder script for their dialogue, there was all sorts of improvising of comic business during the production. “I have to use the phrase ‘comic genius’ on everyone’s part except my own, because I didn’t have much of a part in this,” Garr says. “But some of the key scenes--how they were done and put together [was amazing].

“The scene where Kenny Mars and Gene were playing darts. In the script, it was just written dialogue, so all of the stuff of the darts going the wrong way, they thought of it on the set. Everything like that in the movie was created as we did it.”

Garr recalls that she attended a cattle-call audition of 500 women who were trying out for the role of Dr. Frankenstein’s fiancee.

“Mel kept telling me, ‘You’re very funny. But I want Madeline Kahn. But she doesn’t want to do it.’ He was and still is madly in love with Madeline Kahn. So I was called back and called back. One day he said, ‘Madeline is doing this part, but you can come back tomorrow with a German accent and I can give you a chance to try out for the role of Inga.’ I came back the next day and that’s how it happened.”