You might remember Phil Hartman from SNL, The Simpsons, or NewsRadio.
But his life was beset with heartbreak, and it ended with an unspeakable tragedy.
Here's a look at the all-too-brief and incredibly tragic life of Phil Hartman.
Phil Hartman's first gig in show business didn't have anything to do with acting and
comedy.
Hartman got his start in the music industry in the 1970s with success as a graphic designer
specializing in rock 'n' roll.
He created more than 40 album covers, including cover art for the 1979 Poco record Legend.
But Hartman would get very lonely in the isolating job of drawing all day, and he'd entertain
himself by doing different funny voices, which led him to join the Groundlings comedy troupe
in 1975.
He told Jam!
Showbiz,
"I had to find an outlet."
It was there where he met fellow performer Paul Reubens, who created a high-voiced, man-child
character named Pee-Wee Herman.
Hartman helped Reubens write a stage show featuring the character, which in turn led
to a deal to write a big-screen Pee-Wee movie.
"I know you are but what am I?"
"You're an idiot."
"I know you are but what am I?"
They wrote Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, which begat the Saturday morning show, Pee-Wee's
Playhouse, where Hartman frequently appeared as his salty sailor character Kap'n Karl.
Then Hartman and Reubens cut off contact.
Hartman said in 1996:
"I still don't speak to Paul Reubens.
We just had a falling out and never put it back together."
Reubens is similarly vague on what happened, telling Westworld in 2016:
"We worked together on a lot of stuff, along with a coffee group of some of the other Groundlings:
Phil, me, John Paragon...three men and three women.
We were going to go out and rule the world.
That didn't work out very good.
I think about Phil all the time."
Saturday Night Live enjoyed one of its peaks in the late 1980s, with a cast that included
Dana Carvey, Jan Hooks, and Phil Hartman, who joined the show in 1986.
He built up an array of impressions and characters.
He was so vital to SNL that his show nickname was "The Glue" because he held the show together
and was thus one of NBC's most important talents.
Hartman planned to leave SNL in 1991, but show producer Lorne Michaels convinced him
to stay.
Hartman finally left SNL in 1994, but NBC didn't want Hartman to bolt too far, so it
pitched him on the idea of an updated and reinvented TV variety show, featuring sketch
comedy and scripted behind-the-scenes banter.
It was going to be called The Phil Show.
When the similar The Martin Short Show flopped in the fall of 1994, The Phil Show was scrapped,
forcing Hartman to sign on for a supporting role in NewsRadio.
"Now, much as you'd like to find something juicy here, that's all there is to it.
Come on."
Phil Hartman wasn't only a comic actor, he was an accomplished comedy writer.
He won an Emmy as part of the sketch-writing staff of Saturday Night Live, but Hartman
was never able to get Hollywood to take a chance on his film scripts.
According to an interview on Larry King Live with Hartman's brother, Josh Hartman, the
actor penned numerous scripts that never got made into movies.
One script was Mr. Fix-It, a horror comedy he wrote in 1984.
In the Hartman biography You Might Remember Me, Hartman is quoted as describing the script
as, quote, "an American nightmare" about a family that lives near a toxic waste site,
where a poisoned water supply makes a son and mother ravenous and:
"The father's face is torn off in a terrible disfiguring accident in the first act."
Back to the Future director Robert Zemeckis tried to get studios and investors interested
in Mr. Fix-It but to no avail.
According to individuals in the know, Phil Hartman's marriage to model and actress Brynn
Omdahl was often rocky.
Hartman and Groundlings member Cassandra Peterson, better known as the pop culture figure Elvira,
Mistress of the Dark, were friends for years, so Peterson figured she could be honest with
Hartman and tried to discourage him from marrying Omdahl in 1987.
Peterson told Mr. Showbiz:
"She was a very troubled person with a lot of problems."
According to Mike Thomas' Hartman biography You Might Remember Me, when Hartman told Peterson
he was proposing, she claimed that she exclaimed, quote, "Oh, god, no!"
Peterson reported that Hartman then stormed away from her.
She said:
"It's the first time, and, I think, last time, I ever saw him angry."
The two performers had a major falling out that lasted for years because of Peterson's
reservations about Omdahl.
Brynn Omdahl struggled with personal problems before and during her marriage to Phil Hartman.
According to Brynn's brother, Greg Omdahl, she developed a drug problem in the 1980s
after moving to Los Angeles.
She reportedly got sober and lived a drug-free lifestyle for the better part of a decade
but eventually started using cocaine again.
At a 1997 Christmas party at Hartmans' home, Phil Hartman's NewsRadio co-star Andy Dick
gave cocaine to Omdahl.
Hartman's friend Jon Lovitz told the New York Post:
"Phil was furious about it."
According to a friend who spoke with the Los Angeles Times in 1998, Brynn checked into
a rehabilitation facility.
That put a strain on the marriage, and Omdahl reportedly co-wrote a chillingly prophetic
screenplay about a woman who shoots her husband and then takes her own life.
The tumultuous marriage of Phil and Brynn Hartman ended in May 1998 in tragedy.
According to the Los Angeles Times, police were dispatched to the Hartmans' California
home after receiving a report of gunshots.
They arrived to find nine-year-old Sean Hartman, Hartman and Omdahl's son, running out the
front door.
The authorities went into the house and removed their six-year-old daughter, Birgen.
A search of the home revealed that Omdahl had taken her own life with a self-inflicted
gunshot wound after fatally shooting Hartman in his sleep.
According to a coroner's report from Los Angeles County, Brynn had an extremely high blood
alcohol level, as well as a significant amount of cocaine in her system, along with a prescribed
dose of a common antidepressant.
Brynn Omdahl was 40 years old at the time of her death.
Phil Hartman was 49.
Phil Hartman's shocking and tragic death in 1998 was devastating for his family and friends
and sent waves through Hollywood, altering or outright canceling multiple Hartman-starring
projects in the works.
The two recurring characters he voiced on The Simpsons, D list actor Troy McClure and
sketchy lawyer Lionel Hutz, were immediately retired rather than recast.
On the animated series Futurama, Hartman was set to voice arrogant space captain Zapp Brannigan
but Billy West took over, performing the character in tribute to Hartman and how he thinks the
late actor might have done it.
Hartman's long-running sitcom NewsRadio was still in production at the time of his death.
The following fifth season premiere found the cast tearfully memorializing the actor
and his character Bill McNeal.
Hartman's close friend and SNL castmate Jon Lovitz filled the vacancy in the cast as a
new character.
"He was like the big brother I always wanted, and he was just the nicest guy ever.
And we became-"
"The best of friends."
"Yeah, like brothers."
Phil Hartman, one of the greats.
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide
Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).