It's the great Teri Garr's birthday. Here she is dancing next to a smokin-hot Ann-Margret and Elvis in VIVA LAS VEGAS. 
She was in nine Elvis movies. As a background dancer. She was a background dancer in the legendary TAMI Show, gyrating around Marvin Gaye. Now obviously she went on to greater things, but I will pay tribute today to the section I call The Elvis Years.
You can see her dancing in all of his movies - but she's most recognizable in "C'mon Everybody" from VIVA LAS VEGAS. She's seen behind Elvis and AM in their first little scene together - horizontal stripe sweater, blue and pink. Teri Garr! Hilarious!
Cut to: Close Encounters. Teri has done Young Frankenstein. She's working constantly. The Elvis Years are in the rear view mirror. So, a group of people were talking and for whatever reason, Viva Las Vegas came up. Steven Spielberg said, "That's one of my favorite movies."
First of all: !!!!!!!
Teri Garr says, "You know I was IN Viva Las Vegas." It was as though she had said, "I was in Casablanca". Spielberg could not BELIEVE it and was like, "Tell me EVERYTHING right now."
The other story I like from The Elvis Years was from one of the movies - Roustabout I think (with Barbara Stanwyck). The director was harassing Teri Garr publicly - she wasn't getting a step right or something, or she didn't understand the direction ... something like that -
And he was getting frustrated and impatient and he finally shouted, "Would someone tell that fat dancer on the left what she's doing wrong?" Suddenly Elvis - who had a huge temper but almost never showed it - stood up and said, "HEY. DON'T TALK TO HER LIKE THAT."
30 years later in an interview, Teri Garr sighed softly after telling the story, still excited, and said, "Elvis stuck up for me."
Elvis knew the movies he was making were dumb. If everyone wasn't having fun making them, then what was the point? Nobody should be yelled at, ever, making freakin ROUSTABOUT and Elvis knew that. Elvis said, "APOLOGIZE to her." The dude apologized.
Her memory of working with him (she liked him a lot): She was under contract, and so the same group of people were cast in the same things. It was basically all the same dance troupe, doing all these different movies. Everyone got very tight. Elvis wanted to be one of the gang.
She said that she could tell he didn't want to seem different from everybody else. But of course he was different. He would stand there awkwardly, as they were all goofing around, almost like, "Hey, you guys, can I play in the sandbox with you?" She found it touching.
So they'd be like, "Sure, Elvis, you can come play cards with us, or go to the beach with us, and we'll all pretend that you're not this total FREAK of nature and that everything is normal, sure, whatever." Anyway. I love her stories about him. And I love her. The end.
Look out, Marvin! Teri Garr is off the stairs and headed your way!
