Phil Hartman
The autopsy report of Phil Hartman — comedian, actor, and Saturday Night Live legend, 1948–1998.
Early Life
Philip Edward Hartmann was born on 09/24/1948 in Brantford, Ontario, Canada, the fourth of eight children in a working-class family. When he was 10 years old, the Hartmann family emigrated to the United States, settling in Southern California, where young Philip grew up surrounded by the energy and sprawling suburbs of Los Angeles. It was there, far from his Canadian birthplace, that the boy who would one day make millions laugh began to find his own voice — though at first, that voice would speak through art rather than comedy.
Hartman studied graphic design at California State University, Northridge, and for years he made his living as a visual artist, designing album covers for recording artists of the 1970s. The work was creative and steady, but friends from those years recall that he was always the funniest person in the room — a natural mimic with a gift for finding the absurd in the everyday. By the late 1970s, the pull of performance had become impossible to ignore, and Hartman began trading his drawing board for the stage, setting out on the path that would make him one of the most beloved comic performers of his generation.
Comedy Stardom
Hartman honed his craft with the Groundlings, the legendary Los Angeles improvisational comedy troupe that has served as a launching pad for so many comic greats. He also wrote for a short-lived 1980s television variety show, learning the mechanics of sketch comedy from the inside. Then, in 1986, he joined the cast of Saturday Night Live — and over the next eight seasons he became, in the words of his colleagues, “the glue” that held the show together. Through cast turnovers and turbulent years, Hartman was the steady, reliable utility player who could carry any sketch, anchor any ensemble, and disappear completely into a character.
His gift for impression made him indispensable. Hartman’s parade of spot-on impersonations included a smarmy Bill Clinton, a swaggering Frank Sinatra, a befuddled Ronald Reagan, and a boozy, blustery Ed McMahon, each one delivered with the precision of a character actor and the timing of a master. At the same time, he was lending his distinctive voice to The Simpsons, where he created two of the show’s most enduring supporting characters — the washed-up, self-deluded actor Troy McClure and the hopelessly incompetent attorney Lionel Hutz. Generations of viewers knew that voice before they ever knew the name behind it.
The Later Years
After leaving Saturday Night Live in 1994, Hartman found a new television home as Bill McNeal, the pompous, self-absorbed news anchor at the center of NBC’s NewsRadio (1995–1998). The role was a showcase for everything he did best — vanity punctured by impeccable comic timing — and it earned him a devoted following among a new generation of viewers. Film audiences knew him too, from memorable turns in pictures such as Jingle All the Way and So I Married an Axe Murderer, where he stole scenes with the ease of a man who never seemed to be trying.
In 1987, Hartman married former model and aspiring actress Brynn Omdahl, and together they raised two children, Sean and Birgen. From the outside, the family appeared to have it all — a beautiful home in Encino, thriving careers, and the easy affluence of Hollywood success. But those closest to the couple would later say there was strain in the marriage, a quiet tension beneath the surface of a life that looked, to the rest of the world, like it had been perfectly arranged.
The Death
On 05/28/1998, the entertainment world was stunned by news from the Hartmans’ Encino, Los Angeles home: Phil Hartman, 49, had been shot and killed as he slept by his wife, Brynn, who then took her own life hours later. The couple’s two children were in the house at the time. Police and friends pieced together a portrait of a marriage that had been under growing pressure in the months before that night, and the suddenness of the violence left colleagues and fans reeling — a beloved funnyman gone in an instant, in the cruelest of circumstances.
Tributes poured in from across comedy and television. His NewsRadio castmates, devastated, dedicated episodes of the show to his memory, and the program carried on for one more season in the shadow of his absence. The Simpsons quietly retired both Troy McClure and Lionel Hutz out of respect, a gesture that spoke to how deeply Hartman was loved by his peers. He is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills, where fans still leave tokens of affection for the man whose voice could make anything funny — and whose loss remains one of the great tragedies of American comedy.