Christmas, 1977: Teri Garr Plays the Same Part in "Oh God" and "Close Encounters"
I was watching Close Encounters the other day and as the long-suffering (but non-supportive) wife of Richard Dreyfuss was played by Teri Garr and suddenly I flashed back to the Christmas season of 1977 when both Close Encounters and ANOTHER movie called "Oh, God!" played in theaters and how whack it seemed that Teri Garr played the same essentially thankless role in TWO movies released practically at the same time.
In "Oh, God," Teri Garr doesn't believe that her husband John Denver has actually met God and has an ongoing relationship with Him(in the personage of George Burns in a cap.)
In "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," Teri Garr doesn't believe that her husband Richard Dreyfuss has actually encountered space aliens and is engaged in an ongoing quest to find and meet those space aliens again.
Even though, in each movie, Garr's character has justification for her concern (and in each movie, she has young children with the "crazy" husband)...she's kind of a villain by default in both movies, not standing by her man, leaving him(or threatening to leave him) when the going gets tough, etc.
One almost felt that Teri Garr got two big roles in two big movies because...no other actress wanted them?
I DOUBT that...I'll bet that plenty of other actresses wanted them, but Garr got them and earned the enmity of film audiences everywhere. Because in both Oh, God and Close Encounters, WE are on the side of the "crazy" hero because WE know he's not crazy.
It's Alfred Hitchcock's definition of suspense: "Give the audience information that key characters on screen don't have."
So..WE know that John Denver DID meet God. Teri Garr doesn't have that key information.
So...WE know that Richard Dreyfuss DID meet space aliens. Teri Garr doesn't have that key information.
And in both movies...but especially Oh, God...we CRAVE the moment on film when OTHERS learn that God really is George Burns and the space aliens DO exist.
Both Oh God and Close Encounters also posit, in the male character, a working-middle class kind of guy who can't risk losing their working-middle class job(Grocery store assistant manager for John Denver, utility lineman for Richard Dreyfuss) and who are thus that much more dependent on their wife to keep their family together through the crisis.
The outcome for Teri Garr as the wife is different than "Oh God" than in "Close Encounters," though. I'll leave it at that.
Oh, I'll go a little further: In Close Encounters, Dreyfuss is offered a more supportive alternative woman to Teri Garr...Melinda Dillon as a single mother who shares Dreyfuss' belief in the space aliens..and wants to rescue her kidnapped little boy from them.
...and this leads to ANOTHER kinda thankless role for Teri Garr..in Tootsie...as the long-suffering girlfriend to Dustin Hoffman who loses him to the more exotic Jessica Lange.
...which leads to a LESS thankless role -- but of the same type -- for Teri Garr in ...Mr. Mom. Garr here plays the stay-at-home mother to a husband whose crisis is...job loss. And mom starts working and dad takes care of the house and kids.
Though Teri Garr was perhaps most famous for her "comedy sexpot" in Mel Brooks Young Frankenstein, she seems to have cashed in for a few years as the "put upon wife or girlfriend" and in 1977, it reached a peak: practically the same character in two movies(both hits) released at the same time: Oh, God, and Close Encounters.