She was 79.
Garr died Tuesday in Los Angeles, more than twenty years after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, her manger Marc Gurvitz told CNN.
She first shared her diagnosis publicly in a 2002 interview with CNN in an effort raise awareness for others living with MS.
“I think everybody is scared and frightened when they hear something like that,” Garr recalled of first learning her diagnosis, after visiting 11 doctors and experiencing years of symptoms they couldn’t explain. “That’s because there’s so much – you know, there’s not a lot of information out there about it. And a lot of people don’t know that it’s not that bad. I mean, I’m going on with my life.”
The daughter of a Broadway performer and a Rockette, Garr studied dance growing up and began auditioning soon after she graduated from high school in Los Angeles. Her earliest credits include dancing and appearing as an extra in films like Elvis Presley’s “Viva Las Vegas.”
