The Phil Hartman Story
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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and it's just us. Jerry's not here. And this is Stuff You Should Know, the invincible duo, the ambiguously gay duo. Yes, sir, you are correct. That was pretty good. I love it when there's like a impression of an impression.

that's all i do it's true that's my specialty but you do it so well yeah that would that bit was uh obviously phil the great phil hartman the late great uh phil hartman's ed mcmahon and that was a uh that was something that in college and you know my college years were generally the phil hartman years on snl my good friend eddie and i you know eddie

We, for some reason, that one really occurred. And still to this day, one of us will say something and the other will go, yes, sir. Yeah. I mean, it's timeless for sure. Yeah. Really stuck with us. I'm sure there's even people walking around doing that who have no idea who Ed McMahon is. Yeah, probably.

There's at least two. That's what I'm putting money on. You and someone else? I know who Ed McMahon is. I'm a fully realized person. I know. I'm joking. We're not talking about Ed McMahon, though. Not really. We're talking about the first guy you mentioned you were doing an impression of, Phil Hartman, who turns out to be a pretty great, complicated, tragic, ultimately, dude.

Yeah. You know, actor and comedian known best for his work on probably Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons. And Dave helped us with this. And he wanted us to shout out a book by Mike Thomas called You Might Remember Me, colon, The Life and Times of Phil Hartman with one N, even though he was born with two N's on the name Hartman. Right. Yeah. I thought that was pretty, pretty crazy. He dropped the second N for his, his name.

I guess stage name. It looks like a typo. That would be my guess. The second N? Yeah, it just looks odd. Well, maybe they pronounced it a little differently, too, like Phil Hartman. Probably so. So when he was born in 1948, when he was still named Phil Hartman, he was born in Brantford, Ontario. And that might sound familiar to hockey fans because that's where Wayne Gretzky's from.

But after Wayne Gretzky, I would say Phil Hartman's probably the second most famous person from Brantford, Ontario. Boy, I hope you're right. I'm totally not. There's going to be like Tawny Katayian or something will be from Brantford, Ontario. Although she may still fall behind Phil Hartman. She passed away too, I believe, right? I don't know. I stopped keeping up with her after she and David Coverdale broke up. I think Wayne Gretzky's alive, though.

Yes, he is alive and slapping. That's right. Phil was a middle kid, number four of eight. And as oftentimes with the middle child, especially in Phil's case, when you have an older brother who is like super athletic and handsome and a younger sister that needed special care because of a rare condition called Angelman syndrome. Phil, it seems like felt like he needed to sort of just attract attention by goofing off and being the class clown, the family clown.

Yeah, that's what middle kids do. He had like Jan Brady syndrome, but instead of wearing an Afro wig, he became an actually funny person, right? Yeah. I guess one of the big things that happened to him was when he and his family moved to California when he was 10. Nine. Okay. Nine.

eight, something like that. He was around that age. And California, like, really suited his blood. I mean, he was born in Ontario. When you move to, like, Malibu area, like, you're, that's a pretty good move, typically. I love Toronto, and I'm not, like, throwing shade on Ontario in general, but

You know, when you move out to Southern California from there, it's a little different, you know? Yeah, especially if it turns out you love surfing, sailing, and smoking weed, or smoking grass at the time, I guess you would say. Yeah, the three S's. Yeah, because something that I learned yesterday was that Phil Hartman was a big pothead.

Yes, but the kind that the cops wouldn't search your car if you got pulled over, which is a lesson to all those potheads out there. You don't have to look like a pothead to be a pothead. Yeah, yeah. You can look straight and make the cops laugh and they'll just say, go along your day. You're just a fun kid. Exactly. I'll just totally ignore that smell coming out of your car. Yeah.

So, yeah, he was really into Southern California life. Apparently, he was a great surfer by the time he was 13. This guy was just full of surprises. Yeah. And around this time, maybe even a little earlier, he started to get into comedy. He took the steps that every young comedian takes, and that's you start idolizing some different comedians, stand-up comedians.

And his were Bob Newhart. Yeah. And Jonathan Winters, who, even if you don't know who Jonathan Winters is, but you're a Mork and Mindy fan. Yeah. He was the giant old baby that arrived in an egg at Mork and Mindy's doorstep, I guess. Yeah. And Winters and Newhart actually...

they were sort of comedians, comedians back then in that era from the 1950s and into the 60s. And both of them were just incredible stand-ups. Jonathan Winters was so funny.

especially like with character work and stuff like that, which Newhart didn't do. So between the two of those, he got a pretty like well-rounded comedy education, memorizing those albums, doing like I did as a kid, memorizing comedy albums, performing bits for friends and family, stuff like that.

And especially on Winterside, those impressions that Jonathan Winters would do. Phil Hartman would copy those and then come up with his own. Yeah. And very quickly, he excelled past even Jonathan Winters. Like he was in rich little area by the time he was probably, you know, mid teens. Yeah. There's a great story they found. I think it was from the book that he and a bunch of friends went skiing at Mammoth Mountain outside of L.A.,

And as the story goes, they were hanging around at the hot springs that night. And Phil's friend said, hey, man, start, you know, doing some of your your bits here for everybody and impressions. And this sounds like one of those stories is sort of, you know, grown over the years because they say over over two hours, Phil performed basically in front of 100 strangers. I'm not quite sure.

If I believe that part, because I've been to parties at ski resorts, hanging out at hot springs, and I'm sure he got a lot of jokes in, but I'm not sure if everyone would just sit there for two hours and watch some guy. Right. And then one of his friends announced, ladies and gentlemen, that was Mr. Phil Hartman. And someday he's going to be a big star. Remember this night.

Yeah, maybe it happened, but it's a good story. It's probably apocryphal, but I bet a version of that story happened where Phil was like the life of the party essentially is my takeaway. Yeah, from a pretty early age, right? So he's clearly funny. He's really good at impressions, but his path to...

comedy, I guess, was kind of circuitous because he, well, his brother, his older brother, the handsome athletic one you mentioned earlier, John, John decided he wanted to try to get into acting. And I guess this was before Phil could even get a chance. And John went to Hollywood, came back reporting that he was not okay with how seedy Hollywood was. Amoral, not anything like

an Ontarian would be okay with. Yeah. And so he said, I'm not going to do acting. And I think that kind of scared Phil a little bit or at least guided him away from acting for a little while. Yeah, it seems like it. John went into the music business and co-founded a management company called Hartman & Goodman. And it seems like they had a real...

had their thumb on the pulse. Thumb on the pulse? Sure. You can do that, right? Yeah, you could use your thumb for that. They had their thumb on the pulse of that Laurel Canyon sort of country rock scene because they ended up managing the likes of Neil Young, America, Buffalo Springfield, Eagles, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Brown, Mamas and the Papas. Wow. Kind of that whole scene they were management for. That is a mellow roster, man. It is. And probably a lot of grass being smoked.

Yes. And Phil smoked a bunch of it, too. He got brought on eventually. He went to art school for a little while, tried to go to the University of Hawaii, was turned down. And I'm sure he wanted to go to the University of Hawaii to surf. That's exactly what I thought. Yeah. So his older brother was like, hey, man, you're not doing anything. You got some art school under your belt. Why don't you come and work for me?

As a roadie, because that's what people who go to art school end up doing almost invariably. Yeah. He hooked him up with a little hippie rock band called Rockin' Foo, F-O-O. Did you listen to any Rockin' Foo? I didn't. I looked up the band members, though. One of them was...

It was a child actor prior to Rock and Foo. He was on F Troop, Gunsmoke, a bunch of other stuff. And then another one was the guitarist on a lot of the Monkees hits. Oh, that's cool. I listened to like three Rock and Foo songs and I liked it.

Oh, okay. I saw a photo of the band and I was like, I'm not listening to that. Well, it's probably not your bag, baby. It was that sort of, you know, kind of that, again, that Laurel Canyon sort of country rock thing. I dug it. I thought it was pretty cool. Hey, I love America. Don't get me wrong. I think they're great. You're no communist. Out of all of the lists of bands that you rattled off there, you know, I like that band the most. Yeah, it's just not your bag. I get it. I'm not bagging on you.

Okay. Thanks for not bagging on it. I mean, for it not being my bag. Yeah. I mean, you like Kraftwerk, for God's sakes, and elevator music.

I like most stuff, just not the things that you rattled up. Definitely no. No. Yeah. I'm virulently opposed to listening to Eagles. They manage Sonny and Cher, too. You probably like them the most. They're fine. Okay. I don't remember what I said on our Sonny and Cher episode, but I don't remember ever being, like, super into their music. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

I guess none of this really matters because what we're really talking about is Phil Hartman and him being a roadie. He kind of started living the rock and roll lifestyle as a roadie for some of these bands.

And because he had some art school and he was kind of a developing artist at the time, his brother was like, hey, why don't you do some of these album covers for some of the bands? And he did. And at least one of them was pretty good. Yeah, he did two for Rock and Foo. I think they only did two albums. So he dominated their album cover art. Nice. He did some for Crosby, Sills and Nash or Sills and Nash. I wrote that, too.

America. He did one for your favorite band, America. Yep. Did one for Poco that's probably the most noteworthy for their album Legend of this. It's a very minimalist artwork of a horse. And I wanted to mention it is all over the Internet that he did the cover for Steely Dan's seminal album Asia. And he did not. But it's everywhere on the Internet as fact. And it's it's paradoxical.

Apparently not true. What a weird rumor, because that's just such an arcane fact about him that he ever designed any album covers. But then for a rumor to be about him making one that he didn't, that's really bizarre. But that's the Internet for you, right? Yeah. And I'm pretty positive it wasn't him because other people sleuthed it out and dug up the actual artist. And so if you're about to email and say, dude, he did Asia, I think he did not.

No, the guy who actually did it was Phil Hartman with two Ns. Right. That's why people were confused, I think. Yeah, good point. So around this time also, Phil kicked off. And by the way, we're on a first name basis with Phil Hartman, so we're just going to keep calling him Phil. He kicked off what would become...

essentially his trademark for his love life, which was he would fall head over heels for a very, very pretty girl and they would be hot and heavy for a while. And then he would get married and then basically be like, this isn't working out after a couple of years. And the first person he did that with when he was, I think, 21, maybe 22, was a 19-year-old woman from Malibu named Gretchen Lewis.

And she got pregnant pretty quickly while they started dating. But they didn't keep the kid, but they got married after all. Yeah. They divorced in 1972. So I guess either two years or a little under two years.

And after that, he got his first professional stage credit when he played Harold Harold Hill in The Music Man for the Santa Monica Theater Company. And Mike Thomas, the guy who wrote the biography, had a quote about from one of Phil's co-stars in The Music Man that said Phil was a true artist.

He didn't really march to the same drum as other people, although it was a part of him that wanted to be perceived as normal. He went through life trying to find a character that he could present to the public that seemed normal and wholesome. And that is also sort of a repeated theme when you talk to friends and colleagues and family over the years was that

No one knew the real Phil. And I've known people like that. It's an interesting thing to sort of create personas rather than be yourself. And that seemed to kind of be the case with him. Yeah, he was heavy into impression management basically everywhere in his entire life. Oh, yeah. In all corners, right? Yeah.

And also just one thing about his first acting credit being playing Harold Hill, because he went on to play Lyle Lanley or Lanely. I can't remember which one who is basically the Simpsons version of Harold Hill from the Music Man in the monorail episode. Written by Conan O'Brien.

Man, yeah, he was one of the better Simpson writers early on. He was. But on that thing about not seeing the real Phil, there was one friend who later said that there was a small room inside Phil that no one will ever get to. So just sort of kind of reinforcing that idea. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And the friend said, I hear it stinks of feet. Should we take a break? I think it's time, yeah. All right, we're going to take a break and come back and talk about Phil's entry into the Groundlings right after this. ♪

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So, Chuck, we've surely talked about the Groundlings here and there. There's just no way we haven't. But just to refresh, they are a sketch and improv comedy troupe founded in L.A. who've basically launched the careers of...

tons and tons of comedians, including a lot of people on Saturday Night Live. Apparently Saturday Night Live drafts heavily from the Groundlings, Second City, and that's it. But some of the people from Saturday Night Live who were Groundlings, including some who were Groundlings with Phil Hartman, John Lovitz was one, Sherry O'Terry, Maya Rudolph, Kristen Wiig, Will Ferrell, and the list just keeps going on. Forte. Got to mention Forte.

He wasn't on Saturday Night Live, though. That's why I didn't mention him. What? Was he? Well, Forte was MacGruber, my man.

Oh, I didn't realize that was a Saturday Night Live character. Sorry, Will. Sorry. And the Falconer. I didn't realize that he was on Saturday Night Live. I thought those were like standalone things. No, he I mean, I just mentioned that because Forte is one of my all time favorite actors and SNL character members, cast members. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You're both then. No, you didn't insult me. I just I just love Forte. He did. He did the weirdest characters on that show kind of consistently. And I always just respected him for that.

Nice. Well, that's great. Was he the last man on Earth?

Yeah, yeah. Okay. I like that too. Yeah, he's wonderful. I like him a lot. I like him separately. I also like The Last Man on Earth. So now that the two are joined, I really like him even more. Yeah, my only Will Forte experience was, I think I mentioned this before, but he was an attendee at a good friend's wedding. And my friend sat me, sat Emily and I at his table because he knew I was such a fan. And I partied all night with Will Forte and he was the coolest, funnest dude.

Oh, that's a great story. Yeah, just a real sweetheart. So, yeah. So we're talking about the Groundlings, right? Yeah. And this is, I don't know, this story doesn't seem to be apocryphal. It seems to be actually true. It's just exactly how it played out is kind of under question. But there was a birthday party that a friend of Phil Hartman had. I guess a group of them went to a Groundlings show.

And before the show, Phil Hartman just decided to get up on stage and start doing some of his act. Could that be true?

Who doesn't have it? Supposedly. I mean, somebody who's hungry for the stage, I guess. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, sure. Right. And so for two hours, he had 100 strangers just totally enwrapped. No. A hot springs developed in the room. But no, apparently he definitely killed on stage. And the story is that the groundlings came up to him after he got off stage and were like, you're in. You want to be in?

That seems to not be true. It seems to be that he went up to them afterwards like, hey, what do you think about me getting an audition now? And they said, sure. And he went and auditioned and they said, you're in. Yeah. See, that's the first part of the second part was the part that I don't believe. Right. Because I don't see how there's any way at an improv theater. I know a lot of people in those theaters.

over the years. And for someone just to jump up on stage and do a bit, I bet they would not have been like, you're wonderful. Can you join? It would have been like, dude, don't ever do that again. Right. Exactly. Like if they went up to him afterward, they probably would have said like, please leave. Yeah. Yeah. So who knows? But it's a good story. I would love to eventually to do episodes on the Groundlings, Second City and UCB is just like a little trifecta suite. Okay, great.

At any rate, no matter how it happened, Tracy Newman, who was the founding member of the Groundlings, said that Phil Hartman walked into the Groundlings ready to go. Right. And that would also... There was a similar quote, I think, from Lorne Michaels years later that said he basically was ready the moment he walked into Saturday Night Live, too. Yeah. He was just a very dedicated actor. And one of the people who really looked up to him became one of his best friends, a fellow Groundling, John Lovitz. And he was saying that he would...

He called him the king of the groundlings, which is pretty cool. But as his career went on, he became known as the most reliable actor in any group. He would stick to the sketch. Yeah.

Even if it was going badly, he would hang in there. He wouldn't bail on it. He would just keep going into the end. And usually the impression I have is that if he was in a sketch, if it would have gone badly otherwise, if other people were in it, if he was in it, it probably wasn't going badly in the first place, which makes it easier to stick to. Yeah, he just seemed kind of unflappable. We'll talk about some SNL stuff in a bit, but...

Yeah, well, I'll just save it for then. But one of his most popular Groundlings characters was Chick Hazard.

who was the hard-boiled detective like out of the film noir and that's a character that he would sort of reprise in different ways over the years um he was a good he was just good with his mouth and good with words and could just rattle off really complex long strings of comedic dialogue like you know pitch perfect without missing a beat and just just very very skilled like some people are funny and some people are super skilled and he was one that was both

Right. Yeah, well put, Chuck. I think we can end the podcast there. Or we should talk about his second marriage. Okay, well, first, though, we should say he was with the Groundlings for 11 years, and that is quite a while for being a member of a sketch comedy troupe, including one that doesn't have a TV show or anything. It's like a live theater group. It's a long time. But I think that's kind of like an indicator of the dedication that he brought to you

acting comedy yeah comedic acting I'm not sure yeah I mean he didn't sort of make it in the public eye until he was in his late 30s and that's just a long time to hang in there yes especially in comedy it's not like late 30s is old but if you haven't made it by that time as an actor or comedian or something you're probably sort of wondering like well should I take up you know surfing again

Right. To those stuff you should know, listeners out there in your late 30s trying to break into acting still do not be discouraged by what Chuck just said. Keep going, guys. You can do it. No, don't start surfing. I mean, I didn't get into my career until my late 30s and didn't get really success until my 40s. So I'm I'm living. I mean, you're younger than me, so you are just a pup.

No, that's not true. I was in my mid-30s when things started to pick up, for sure. No, but I mean, it's funny that I said that because we're good examples of like, hey, you never know what's coming around the corner. Oh, that's absolutely true. Boy, I could tell you some stories of times when I thought, this life is not going to work out for me. Oh, boy. You and me both, man. So we said that he split up with his first wife, Gretchen, in 1972. Yeah.

He did the bachelor thing for about another decade, and he ran into a woman named Lisa Jarvis. I'm not sure how they met or even necessarily when, but I know in 1982 they got married, 10 years after his last divorce. And it basically followed the same pattern as his first marriage. He just, like, it just was like fireworks, and then it cooled off, and then he lost interest. Yeah, their marriage only lasted a few years. They divorced in 1985.

The same year that he ended up having some of his first big successes, and that was because five years prior, a guy walks into the Groundlings in 1980 named Paul Rubens with a character named Pee Wee Herman under his arm or under his belt. Yeah. Have you seen the documentary yet?

I still have not since you asked me yesterday. I know. I thought maybe you would have gone and watched it last night or something, but okay. No, it's so close to being on my TV. I have no idea. It's really good. So there's a lot about him developing the Pee Wee Herman character, Paul Rubens, at the Groundlings with a lot of help from other Groundlings. Apparently, they show some of the early stuff there.

on this documentary, he was much more like obnoxious. He threw Tootsie Rolls at the crowd. He would insult the crowd. And then even after he kind of started to get peewee like developed,

Those early stage shows were full of like sexual innuendo and stuff that a little kid wouldn't pick up on, but adults would find funny. But there weren't little kids at these shows anyway, so it didn't matter, right? Right. But one of the people, my point was, that really helped develop it was Phil Hartman. Yeah.

And I think even up to the first season of Pee-wee's Playhouse, he played Captain Carl. His character was, he played a character on Pee-wee's Playhouse for the first season. Yeah. The surly boat captain, Captain Carl, there were other groundlings around as well, either, you know, in the show with him or writing for him. And Phil was one of the writers as well. Uh,

And they were selling out every night. They ended up at the Groundlings. They ended up moving to the Roxy Theater, which is a little bit bigger, which we talked about in our Sunset Boulevard episode. Yeah. And or if it hasn't come out yet, we will talk about it on that episode. Yeah. And then in 1980, there was a producer named Paula Kaufman who said she wanted to create a kid show for adults. Saw Pee Wee at the Groundlings and was like, this is it. This is the show.

Yeah. Again, this documentary, like this particular part when they're developing the TV show, it's just not so amazing, right? I can't wait. So Phil was there when Paul Rubens did an HBO special. It was essentially one...

I guess an HBO version of the stage show that it started out as. That caught the attention of other people in Hollywood, and they said, hey, how about a movie? And they did Pee Wee's Big Adventure together. Phil Hartman was a co-writer on that. And that was 1985.

And so things are finally starting to pick up in ways that Phil Hartman had been hoping. He'd been writing scripts. He'd been auditioning for TV shows. Now, all of a sudden, he had a hit movie writing credit under his belt. So he's thinking, OK, things are about to take off, which explains why in 1985, when Lorne Michaels came to him and said, hey, do you want to audition for Saturday Night Live? He said, no, I'm good. I'm going to pass on that.

Yeah, this was Lorne Michaels' return to SNL. He very famously had an absence from the show, and the show kind of did not fare well without Lorne Michaels, the creator. You weren't a fan of the Tim Kazerinsky years? I mean, no, some of that stuff is okay, but just as a general success, the show was kind of going downhill. Yeah. But I did, I get your joke, first of all, Tim Kazerinsky. Yeah.

He was funny, though. I like that guy. Oh, no, he was. He was, like, perfect for the characters he played, like, on Police Academy. I can't remember his character's name. He was great on that. I was the same guy. I forgot about that. Yep. But Lauren came back to save the show in 85, 86.

He, again, like you said, asked Bill to come aboard. He said no because he was, you know, he thought he could make it as an actor, you know, in just regular comedies. And John Lovitz joined instead. And then John Lovitz got him another audition for the 86-87 season. He went in. He had already met Lorne a couple of times. One when he met Lorne Michaels, I believe, at the—

I think when Rubens hosted SNL for the first time is when he first met Lorne, but then he also had a small part in Three Amigos, which Lorne produced. And then if you ever have a chance, just sit down on YouTube and watch the Phil Hartman audition for SNL. He did that Chick Hazard character first.

He did one of the fake commercials. And that's where you can tell just how skilled he is, because it's one of those fast talking commercials where he's talking like this about a product. But it's not, you know, he's not reading cue cards. It's just in his brain and memorized. And he just it's flawless. And you hear something that you just never hear in an SNL audition, which is people laughing. They're very famous for just sort of sitting there stone faced. Yeah. Even if you're doing well and you hear people laughing in the background. Right. Yeah, that is very telling for sure.

So there's one part of his audition reel where he does an impression of a German comedian doing impressions of famous people. It was so good. He said the funniest man in Germany, Gunther Johann, right? Yeah. And so Gunther does impressions of like Jack Nicholson, John Wayne, Jack Benny, but they're all speaking German.

And it's just like a spot on impression of John Wayne. Yeah. Speaking German. And he's doing an impression of a German comedian doing these impressions. It's just amazing. He goes right into it. Yeah. It really does show off his talent. Plus, it's also hilarious, too. Yeah. It's great. You know, a lot of times when you talk about people being funny, it loses its...

Yeah. So just go watch it. Agreed. Totally agree. He was hired with pretty rock star cast. All new members, Jan Hook, Dana Carvey, Victoria Jackson and Kevin Nealon. Man, what a dream team. Yeah, pretty good. And that really kind of helped bring the show back. And how. I mean, to me, that's like the golden age. I think it destroys the 70s. The 70s was cool and like.

amazing and and you know really um energetic but the 80s were just like pro okay to me okay so it could be just that's one the one i grew up with who who knows but i mean there is that theory that whatever age you were in high school i think is your favorite the what you think is the best snl cast okay well i i might subscribe to that theory no i love i love that era so um

Let's back up a second because you said that he met Lorne, Phil Hartman met Lorne Michaels when Paul Rubens, Pee Wee, hosted Saturday Night Live in 1985. And the reason that he was there was because Paul Rubens brought Phil Hartman along and another collaborator from the Groundlings, John Paragon, as his writers to work with the Saturday Night Live writers to make good sketches for Pee Wee Herman for that episode, right? Yeah.

So Pee Wee or Paul introduced Phil to Lauren. Lauren comes a calling the next year and the year after that. And eventually Phil says, hey, Paul, I've got to go. I finally got my break. I'm going on Saturday Night Live.

And Paul was not happy about that. If you've seen the documentary, which I know you haven't, they covered this. I watched it real quick. Just now? Okay. So you know then, they covered this in the documentary. Apparently, it's not a very well-known or it's kind of a forgotten story, but they had a falling out and they didn't really talk or ever reconcile for the rest of Phil Hartman's life. Because Paul was, and there's really no other way to put it,

Very, very jealous. He felt spurred, jilted, spurned, jilted, spurred to action. And he was also, yeah, very jealous because he had tried out for Saturday Night Live and did not get picked up.

And I can't remember who got the spot instead of him. And then, yeah, and then Phil Hartman left Pee Wee's Playhouse to go to Saturday Night Live. So Paul was kind of a...

Not the most forgiving person from what I can tell from the documentary. So he just held that grudge for the rest of Phil Hartman's life. Oh, man. That's sad. It is sad for sure. I hate hearing that. I might pause that part or skip over it when I watch the documentary tonight. It's at 123.36 is when it starts. Shall we take our final break?

Yeah. All right. Let's take another break and we'll talk about a meeting in 1985 that would change the course of Phil Hartman's life right after this. Thank you.

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All right. As promised, a meeting in 1985 would change the course of Phil Hartman's life. And that is when Phil met a woman named Brynn Omdahl at a party. She was a tall, beautiful blonde from Minnesota, but moved to L.A. to be a model or an actress or both.

And previous to meeting him in the late 70s and early 80s, she had an alcohol problem. She had a cocaine problem, but had gotten sober to her credit and was looking for a good dude to hook up with. And when she met Phil, he was this is sort of right before her.

Um, Peewee's Big Adventure came out and he got the offer to, uh, you know, be on SNL. So he was at a pretty low point auditioning and his coming out of that second marriage. And so he was like, all right, this beautiful woman loves me and then maybe validates me in a certain way. And so they got together.

They did. And it was just like all the other ones, except this one was like when it burned red hot, that could also be really bad, too. Yeah. It wasn't just like two people super into each other. It was also two people who like couldn't couldn't like just just clashed a lot. Right.

So they would get in really big fights and then they would make up and they would get in another fight and then they would make up. And despite this, early on, they still ended up getting married and went on to have two kids, Sean and Bergen. I think Sean was the oldest. And he was the boy and Bergen was their little girl. And from all accounts, Bryn was a really good mom and...

and really loved Phil Hartman, but there was a huge issue in that she was an aspiring actress, and she wanted to... I think she wanted Phil to help her career more than he was comfortable helping it. Yeah. And I totally get this. He was not the kind to be like, hey, can you get my wife on your show? Or, you know, have you seen my wife act? She's great. Why don't you give her a shot? He just would not do something like that, right? So...

That then and there caused some pretty serious static between the two. And then on top of that...

After they got together, his career actually started taking off. So in addition to him not helping her, she was like living in his shadow. So that was a big source of conflict between the two. Yeah, for sure. So he's got this marriage that starts, you know, that's, you know, rocky like his other relationships had been, but it has staying power more than the others. He was 37 when SNL started, right kind of when they got together.

And his nickname on SNL was The Glue. You kind of talked earlier about how he was always sort of looked at as a stabilizing force in the Groundlings and SNL. And his nickname was The Glue because he was just perfect, basically, whenever he performed. We got to talk about some of his best characters. Phil Donahue was one of my favorites when he did Phil. Ed McMahon, of course. The aforementioned Ed McMahon was one of my favorites. Yeah.

I really, for some reason, loved the Frankenstein-Tonto-Tarzan bit that he and Kevin Nealon and John Lovitz did. When they did Little Drummer Boy? It was so silly, but I loved it. It's pretty good. He was Frankenstein, right?

Yeah, he was Frankenstein. I think Lovitz was Tonto and Nealon was Tarzan. If you haven't seen it, look it up. But basically the whole point is none of them speak English. And so they would do like Christmas songs and Frankenstein would just go. And Lovitz did Tonto. And, you know, looking back, it was probably a fairly racist depiction of a Native American. Yeah. And then you said Nealon was Tarzan. And yeah.

I don't even know what Tarzan did. Probably just like jungle grunting. It was, it's very good. I mean, like basically we should just sit here for the rest of the episode and talk about Phil Hartman sketches. Cause each one was better than the last, like, um, unfrozen caveman lawyer. Yeah.

First of all, what a, what a, like just an exceptional idea to start with, but he's, he just pulls it off so perfectly. This smarmy lawyer, who's an unfrozen caveman who went to law school and became a smarmy, I guess, a personal injury lawyer. Yeah, I think so. And again, like we can talk it out and it will kill any funniness to it. Just go watch that one. Go look up colon blow, the Saturday Night Live commercial. Yeah. Classic.

It is. And then Ronald Reagan Mastermind. Did you watch that one? Yeah, I remember. I didn't rewatch it, but I remembered it. I rewatched it and I remembered it. It came out around the time the Iran-Contra affair scandal broke. Yeah.

And at the time, Ronald Reagan was like, I don't know anything. Like, I didn't know. Who knows who knew? Like, I didn't know this was going on. So they make fun of him and his public persona, just kind of being this doddering old man who doesn't really have his finger on the pulse of his own administration to this when people aren't around and it's just him and his staff.

him just, like, barking orders and being totally super sharp and being the mastermind behind everything. It's... And, like, his just turning public Reagan on and off and then turning that private, like, aggressive Reagan on and off. It's just...

I mean, like you really see like this guy was amazing, like like one of a kind. Basically, I can't think of anybody who could do the stuff that he did before him or since. Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. Well said. He would go on to do another president very famously in 92 when Bill Clinton won the presidency. And he had just a dead on Clinton impersonation, just not only the voice, but just his sort of the.

The smarmy kind of Bill Clinton thing and the ego like they they lampooned him very, very well, very effectively. Yeah. There's one where he was jogging into a McDonald's while he was running for president during like a campaign stop. And he's like, you know, about to kiss a baby. And he looks past the baby and says to the mom, like, hey, are you going to eat the rest of those French fries? And it just goes from there.

Oh, my God. It's perfect. So one of the things about Saturday Night Live that I learned even as a young viewer, if you're on beyond a certain number of years, it starts to have a certain kind of look. Like it kind of shows the world like you are perfect for Saturday Night Live. But for some reason, it's not clicking outside of that. So you just hang in there as long as you can at Saturday Night Live. And what's astounding and nuts is that that happened to Phil Hartman. He was there through...

A couple of cast changes, like big time, huge cast changes where it went from like Kevin Nealon and Jan Hooks to Chris Farley and David Spade. Yeah. And Chris Rock, too, at the same time as well. And I think Sir Silverman came in around that time, too. So like he was in for a huge transition. He straddled two big transitions of Saturday Night Live. And that's just like with the Groundlings.

This is a really long time to be a member of Saturday Night Live, and I think he felt overlooked because a lot of his colleagues were starting to get their own movies and he was not. Yeah, I mean, he was on for eight seasons. Over those eight seasons, he was in more sketches than any other cast member.

Uh, when he retired from SNL, they gave him, uh, on the show, they gave him a, a little statue of an Elmer's glue, like a fix to a trophy kind of thing because of his nickname, the glue. But yeah, he, he definitely was getting side parts in these movies. Like he was in, so I married an ax murderer. He was in cone heads.

But he wasn't the star. And by the time he was Rock and Sandler and those guys came along and Farley, he was in his 40s and he was kind of playing the straight man roles like the old man of the family. One, you know, sort of obvious example is the Matt Foley, you know, living in a van down by the river, the motivational speaker sketch. Phil Hartman was the dad. And, you know, no one remembers that because everyone remembers Chris Farley, you know,

Quick aside, that sketch was created and written by Bob Odenkirk. Oh, I forgot he wrote for Saturday Night Live too. Yeah. And the reason I know that is because I watch Kevin, I follow Kevin Nealon on Instagram and he does this

I don't know if he releases them as a podcast. I'm going to have to look, but he does these hikes through one of the, you know, canyons there in LA and the Hollywood Hills. And he interviews people on these hikes and he was interviewing Bob Odenkirk and they were talking about that sketch. That's awesome. Yeah, it's cool. It is a great sketch, but you can kind of see how like Phil Hartman's super pro really contained and perfect delivery and style is

It doesn't jibe well unless he's just playing it straight to somebody like Farley just going berserk. Right. You know? Totally. So, yeah, he finally, he left. He left on great terms. He just killed Saturday Night Live. He became a legend on Saturday Night Live. And he went on to still have a pretty great career. He went on to do four seasons of News Radio, which is one of the great underrated office comedies, along with...

Working, the one that Fred Savage was in, did you ever see that one? No. No.

It was good. And Just Shoot Me is the other underrated office comedy of all time, I think, from the 90s at least. But he was on four episodes of news radio, had a great character. Four seasons, yeah. What did I say? Episodes. Yeah, seasons for sure. Had a great character, Bill McNeil, and he just basically picked up a second part of his career. And then also, simultaneously, he was doing The Simpsons too, which is where a lot of people fell in love with Phil Hartman.

Yeah, just a little show called The Simpsons. He was asked in 1990 to do some voiceover work for that show. And he said, yeah, I'll do it. But just one time, because he apparently had a pretty bad experience doing voiceover for animation for the Dennis the Menace animated show. I remember that. But he said, I'll do it just once. But then, of course,

That didn't last because he was great on it. And he started working with the writers, started developing characters. And for eight seasons, he voiced some of the most iconic characters. Of course, the great Troy McClure and Lionel Hutt's attorney at law are the two sort of most notable because, you know, they would come on as their little side bits here and there. But Troy McClure actually ended up getting a pretty major storyline when he hooked up with which one was it?

I think Patty, I don't remember. One of Marge's two sisters. I couldn't remember if it was Patty or Selma. Selma. Yeah, that's right. It was one of them. Yeah, they fell in love. And that's from one of my favorite lines from Troy McClure was after they went out on a date, he sees her the next day and

His famous line was, you may remember me from whatever, like acting role that he was in. And in this case, he said, I'm Troy McClure. You may remember me from certain dates like last night. Yeah, he was well known for that. You may remember me from such educational films as The Decapitation of Larry Leadfoot. Oh, man. Or Here Comes the Metric System. Yeah.

He was great. Yeah. And like he had one episode where he was big, but the rest of the time it was just like you said, a little side thing. And he still created a legendary character times two. And as a matter of fact, when he died, the Simpsons are like Lionel Hutz and Troy McClure will never appear on the Simpsons again. They just couldn't. No one else could do it. Yeah.

So speaking of him dying, this is going to go long because this is kind of an involved story. But he like I said, he and Bryn had a lot of tension. Apparently, Phil Hartman had an anxious avoidant attachment style when she wanted to talk. When she was confrontational, he would basically get in a sailboat and sail off to Catalina Island alone. I take it. But he was just he would withdraw. You couldn't get to him.

That was the way that he dealt with it. And she did not like that. I think it made her feel very lonely. And then again, she was living in a shadow. He wasn't helping her career. They had two kids. And again, she was a really, really good mom by all accounts. She also had some former demons that she had conquered, including an alcohol addiction and an addiction to cocaine. And she was clean when she and Phil met. And she stayed clean for a while.

But she got back on the cocaine train after she did coke with Andy Dick at a news radio party, Christmas party in 1997.

Yeah, I mean, we don't know if that's the first time she started back again, but as the story goes, he offered her cocaine. He said that he didn't know that she had had a drug problem before, did not know that apparently she had been clean. And John Lovitz for many, many years was very public about blaming Andy Dick.

um, for, you know, for her falling off the wagon. And it led to a crazy story where in 2007, uh, John Lovitz assaulted Andy Dick at the laugh factory and like got into a, uh,

I mean, I was going to say a fistfight, but it doesn't sound like it was punchy, but more John Lovett's, at least as the way he tells it, ramming Andy Dick's head back into the bar like repeatedly and said, I would have kept doing it, too. But the bartender stepped in. I'm Frenchie. Yeah, he apparently he he took over for Phil Hartman after Phil Hartman died on news radio. And one of the first days he.

He said to Andy Dick, I wouldn't be here if you hadn't given cocaine to Bryn. So he blamed Andy Dick for the death of Bryn and Phil. So Andy Dick didn't like that. Later on, he said he saw they saw each other at a restaurant. He said, I put the Phil Hartman hex on you. You're the next to die. And then the next time they saw each other is when John Lovitz beat up Andy Dick, which, I mean, had no idea about that. Did you?

No, I didn't know that story until today or yesterday or whenever you sent it over, which is just one of those crazy stories. But very sadly, it was May 27th. And, you know, we should say Brynn at this point, she was upset about Phil's, you know, smoking too much weed. She was had an anxiety problem. She was suffering through some depression. She got on antidepressants.

started drinking again. Not sure who started the cocaine thing, maybe Andy Dick, but she got back into cocaine and was in a pretty bad state of mind. And on May 27th, 1998, she had gone out for drinks at an Italian restaurant and wanted to go to another bar, but her friend didn't want to. So she called up her old drugging buddy from the 70s and early 80s, a guy named Doug,

And Doug was clean now, but said, why don't you come over to my house? She had some more drinks over there and was basically complaining about her marriage, about Phil smoking too much pot and then not getting along and, you know, being just at loose ends. And at one in the morning, he's like, you know, you need to go home. You need to go home to your husband. So she did. I don't think she had much of a choice. Doug was like, you got to leave.

And I guess when she got home shortly after that, she and Phil got into an argument. Phil went off to bed, managed to fall asleep. And remember, Bryn is on Zoloft, has been drinking for hours now, and is on cocaine.

And she went and got one of their guns, a 38 special, and walked up to Phil while he was sleeping and shot him three times, once in the head. And I never saw if he woke up or if he even knew it happened. Hopefully not. And he just died while he was asleep. That would be what I would hope. But he died instantly because he was shot three times at close range. Yeah, so...

About an hour after that, she called up her friend Doug, who she was just with. She was super, super drunk at this point.

Doug said, you needed to sleep this off. She didn't tell him at that point when it happened. And about 20 minutes later, she shows up back at Doug's house saying that she killed Phil and he doesn't believe her. And then apparently, as the story goes, while she was there, the gun fell out of her purse and he was like, what is going on? He helps her sober up over the course of a couple of hours, drives her back over at about six in the morning to their house, and he sees Phil dead.

And he calls the cops. And at that point, Brynn locks herself in the bedroom with Phil's body. And that's where she was when the cops arrived.

Yeah. Both of their kids were in the house at the time. I think Sean, the oldest, woke up and Doug was like, let's get you out of here and took Sean outside to the police. But the whole time Bergen's sleeping, like her mom just murdered her dad. And then it just gets worse, actually. Yeah. So she is barricaded in the room with Phil. The cops are there. She's making phone calls to friends and family, stalking.

saying, you know, confessing basically to what she had done. And finally, her last call was to her sister, Kathy. She said, take care of my children. Just let them know how much I love them. She got a second gun and laid down on the bed next to Phil and shot herself and killed herself. Yeah. And became one of the most hated people ever.

in America, if not the world, almost overnight. I remember eating her guts when I heard about this. Me too. As an older person, I have a little more empathy for just the amount of loneliness. And then also being on antidepressants, cocaine and alcohol definitely is not a good combination, especially when you have guns in the house. But yeah, I've changed my approach to her a little bit. And I was kind of happy to read that at the funeral, she

Phil's brother, John was asking the people in attendance, like, please try to find it in your heart to forgive her for this. Like this wasn't, this is, this was a horrible thing, but it's not like she was evil. She was a loving, a loving wife and a loving mother. And like, let's try to remember her for that. Yeah, for sure. And especially at the funeral to, to have the guts to say something like that was pretty, pretty standup thing to do, I think. Um,

Yeah, a good life lesson there. Phil was going to come back to news radio. It's not like he was done with the show. He was going to come back for season five, but like you mentioned, John Lovitz took over.

Uh, the first episode of season five dealt with the death of the character. It was called Bill moves on. Yeah. Very emotional episode. Uh, and I think you already mentioned that they, you know, the Simpsons was like, we're never ever going to get someone to do Troy McClure or Lionel Hutz again. Yeah, it's true. And then he finally got his, um, star on the walk of fame in 2014. Yeah. And we should mention, uh,

Brynn's sister Kathy respected her wishes and she's who raised the kids. Yeah. Along with her husband. Yeah. So good for her. Yeah. Good for them.

That's Phil Hartman. One of the sad outcomes of all this, Chuck, I think is when you search Phil Hartman, just Phil Hartman, most of what comes up on the first couple pages of search engines is about the murder. Yeah, yeah. Not like, look at all the hilarious stuff he did. So maybe look up Phil Hartman SNL videos and just go from there. Totally. And that's all we have to say about Phil Hartman for now. So I guess, Chuck, it's time for Listener Mail. Listener Mail.

Uh, this is from... Katie.

Josiah, a six-month-old baby. Oh, wow. And Chris. This is amazing. Hey, guys. My wife and I were just listening to the William A. Mitchell story from a few weeks ago. We heard that Bill was the inventor of Tang. My wife is from Georgia, but I'm from the Midwest, so we always like to talk about things we grew up with, different foods and traditions, restaurants, et cetera, and how they were similar or sometimes very different. Well, I found out that I consumed Tang in a very unique way, apparently. Hot. I thought he was going to say right up the nose. Yeah.

When I was young in the winter months in Ohio, my dad would warm up the kettle and mix Tang in boiling water. It was a warm drink that we could have whenever we played out in the snow, and my sister and I loved it. And he called it hot Tang. And I just thought all Tang was consumed hot, which is pretty funny. I've actually never drank cold or even room temperature Tang. Hope all is well with you and yours. With love from North Georgia, Katie, Josiah, six months old, and Chris. I would try that, especially with like a cinnamon stick.

Yeah, it sounds like you ever have like Theraflu or something when you're sick. Man. Or a hot toddy. I love the taste of Theraflu so much. I would drink it once in a while when I'm not sick.

It really puts you to sleep, man. It really does. If you get the good stuff. I, too, love Theraflu. The warning on the box about your liver is that it scares me, so I only do it once in a while. Yeah. I mean, we should get them on as a sponsor, man. We should. We should drink it on the podcast once in a while. Yeah, but I bet Tang, Hot Tang is pretty similar, and I bet a little whiskey in there would be pretty good. Yeah. Well, don't get Katie started this early. She's only six months old. No, Katie's the wife. Oh, okay. Well, who is six months old?

What was it, Josiah? Oh, okay. I thought Katie's last name was Josiah. I see. There was a comma in there that I wasn't aware of. Yeah, Chris wrote the letter. Right. He...

Mary and Katie. Okay. And they had Josiah six months ago. Okay, gotcha. Well, I guess I should just say congratulations to Katie and John. Yeah, for Josiah and everything else. There you go. Yeah, and thank you also for sending the email. That was a great one. Hot Tang sounds wonderful. We'll go try it. And if you want to be like Katie, Josiah, and Chris, who I may have just called John, I'm not sure, you can send us an email too at stuffpodcast at iheartradio.com.

Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, everybody, it's your favorite play cousin, Junior, from the Steve Harvey Morning Show. You know, the Toyota Tundra and Tacoma are designed to outlast and outlive, backed by Toyota's legendary reputation for reliability. So get in the Tundra with available iForce Max Hybrid engine, delivering exceptional torque and towing capacity. Or check out a Tacoma.

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