In June of 1969, a band called the Rockin Foo played a show at an L.A. club owned by a friend of guitarist Jimi Hendrix. During their set, Hendrix himself took the stage to jam, followed by his Band of Gypsies’ drummer Buddy Miles, who hit his kick drum so hard it flew about a foot downstage every time he hit it.
So the Foo’s dedicated stoner/surferboy/chick-magnet roadie rushed out, “got on his knees, and held the instrument in place for the song’s duration,” his “shaggy hair” flopping around as the guitar legend wailed just feet from him.
The roadie in question was future “SNL” cast member Phil Hartman, who would go on to create an array of impersonations and original characters — from takes on Frank Sinatra and Bill Clinton that captured the essence of their bawdy and raw qualities, to his hilariously insufferable Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer and Anal Retentive Chef — that made him perhaps the most versatile actor in the show’s history. Just this week, visitors to the website Grantland voted Hartman the second-best cast member ever, behind only Will Ferrell.
“You Might Remember Me,” based on interviews with Hartman’s family and friends as well as Hartman’s letters, takes us inside his professional and personal lives, revealing not just an instinctive comedic genius, but a pot-loving surfer, hippie and ladies man whose 1998 murder at the hands of his third wife, Brynn, remains inexplicable.
Born in Ontario and raised near Los Angeles, Hartman worshipped comedian Jonathan Winters as a child and would perform for family and friends, including mocking his often stumbling-drunk father to his family’s delight.
By college, he had developed his lifelong love of marijuana, as well as a talent for drawing. When his brother John began managing bands, John hired him to roadie for the Rockin Foo, his client, and Hartman embraced the ’60s rock scene and all its accoutrements, even buying a VW panel van and putting a mattress in the back.
He moved into a cabana in back of John’s Malibu home. Actor Larry Hagman was a neighbor, and the two became friends, often getting high in Hagman’s jacuzzi.
Hartman wrote to a friend about “the thrill of really being on the inside of the rock scene.
“I’m a born long-haired man,” he wrote. “That is the lifestyle I love. It all seems like a dream, but it’s really real.”
Indeed it was. The Foo had groupies, and good-looking Hartman dove right in, writing to one friend, “What is every kid’s dream in America? I [slept with] a Playboy Bunny. I won’t give you the details in the mail, but pal it was beyond your imagination.”
When he was 20, Hartman met a beautiful 19-year-old named Gretchen Lewis on the beach. Lewis opened up worlds for him, sexually.
“I no longer have any sex hangup, which had built up, and was beginning to flip me out,” Hartman wrote. “My hangup was that I’d never meet a girlfriend who digs sex as much as me. Well, I’ve met my match!”
Lewis, who married Hartman in 1970, felt similarly. As she told Thomas, “Things went on from a sexual standpoint that I didn’t even know existed before. Just from the point of pure duration, I was a living bladder infection!” Alas, once that chemistry faded, little remained, and the couple divorced in 1972.
Hartman eventually switched from roadie to album-cover designer, and worked full-time for his brother in that capacity from 1973-1980, creating covers and logos for acts including Poco and Crosby, Stills & Nash.
In 1975, he joined the Groundlings, the comedy improv troupe and school that has funneled stars including Laraine Newman, Kristen Wiig and Ferrell to the “SNL” cast. He quickly became a troupe standout, both with audiences, for his comedic ability, and with women, for his flirtations.
Groundling Edie McClurg, best known for proclaiming Ferris Bueller a “righteous dude,” “laughingly recalled” how Hartman “loved to grab my t – – s.” She also told how, because the ladies room at the theater was the one with a sink, Hartman would “saunter in and start washing up. And you could always feel his eyes looking down the mirrors to see what state of [undress] we were in. He was a horny guy, but not in a dirty way. He really appreciated women.”
Along the way, hippie Hartman somehow developed an affinity for guns. He freaked out future “SNL”/”MadTV” writer Dawna Kaufmann, who he was then dating, when he offered to show her his collection. She thought he was joking, but Hartman busted out a Colt .45. “He was really delighted about it, bragging,” Kaufmann said.
Hartman married Lisa Strain in 1983, but the marriage followed patterns similar to his first — wild sexual chemistry, followed by disinterest — and the couple didn’t last two years.
In the mid-’80s, Hartman met an aspiring actress and “statuesque blonde” named Brynn Omdahl. She had a history of addiction, having already done a rehab stint for cocaine and alcohol, and despite their frequent, often vicious fights, Hartman fell hard. He took the plunge for the third time in 1987, marrying Brynn when she was already pregnant with their son, Sean. They would also have a daughter, Birgen.
Hartman was hired for “Saturday Night Live” in 1986, and quickly earned a reputation as a grounding, reliable presence who could make even subpar writing funny as hell. “SNL” boss Lorne Michaels would later say that Hartman “has done more work that’s touched greatness than probably anybody else who’s ever been here.”
Co-star Jan Hooks, who expresses a deep, mostly platonic love for him in the book, nicknamed him “Glue,” as he became the foundation that held the cast together. While nothing romantic or sexual transpired between them, Hartman’s randy qualities were never far from the surface. After one sketch had them making out in a car, Hartman turned to Hooks at sketch’s end, whispered, “You gave me a huge boner. Oh god, I’ve got to run,” then rushed to prepare for his next sketch.
Over time, Hartman grew frustrated with various elements of the show. Castmates and friends Dana Carvey and Jon Lovitz had higher profiles due to their ability to create characters with memorable catchphrases, while Hartman’s impressions kept him lesser-appreciated by “SNL” viewers.
He also bemoaned the show’s live audience, telling one interviewer they should get “real people” instead of “elitist friends of the staff who sit and observe the show rather than getting involved.” Later, Hartman lamented the show’s increasingly juvenile humor at the hands of new castmembers including Adam Sandler and Chris Farley (the latter of whom Hartman mentored, and was close with).
But Hartman achieved his own success — doing characters on “The Simpsons,” and booking many voice-over roles, commercials and small film parts. He entered a new financial stratosphere, including earning $1.2 million alone for a McDonald’s ad he filmed while a vegetarian and $600,000 for a Coke spot that never aired.
At home, though, life was tense. Brynn had a terrible jealous streak, including once sending a horrible threatening letter to Strain, after she had called to congratulate them on the birth of their child.
Increasingly, Brynn would time her arguments for right before crucial Saturday “SNL” dress rehearsals. Kaufmann recalls Brynn visiting the set one day when the cast and writers were gathered in a conference room.
“She comes in and starts sitting on all the guy’s laps and kissing them and putting her tongue in their ears,” she says in the book. “And everyone thought, ‘Oh, isn’t that funny?’ And I thought, ‘How could she do this to Phil? This is so humiliating to him.’ And he’s laughing like he didn’t care. How could you not care?”
As Hartman’s fame grew, Brynn became more jealous and controlling, even erupting with anger when he received fan mail, and threw violent, “object-throwing temper tantrums.” She also suspected, incorrectly, that Hartman was having an affair. They tried marriage counseling, but Hartman would often just not show up. He grew distant, and began to reject his wife in the bedroom.
Brynn backslid into heavy alcohol and cocaine use. On Mother’s Day 1997, Brynn came home plastered, and a furious Hartman insisted she go to rehab. She did, but missing their kids, she left after several days.
Hartman told his mother he was “out of my mind” with concern about Brynn, and said that he told her if she returned in that state again, he would take their kids and leave.
He was clearly suffering. On the set of “NewsRadio,” his first steady job post-“SNL,” he would commiserate with castmate Vicki Lewis, who had similar problems with a drug-addicted live-in mate of her own, actor Nick Nolte.
Hartman would arrive on set with scratches on his face, or disheveled after staying the night on his boat, and ask Lewis, “How do you do this?” Like Hartman, “she had no answer.”
In the ensuing months, Brynn’s moods grew more mercurial. She was prescribed Zoloft, but it only made her more agitated, possibly because she was mixing it with alcohol.
On the evening of May 27, 1998, Brynn met a friend for drinks, discussing her career disappointments while downing two Cosmos and half a beer.
At 10:15, she went to the home of an old friend named Ron Douglas. She complained about Hartman’s frequent absences, saying his preference for hanging out with other friends made her feel like “dirt” and bemoaning that his constant marijuana smoking left him “out of it” much of the time. She also drank three more beers. When she left at 12:45, Douglas felt she did not seem especially intoxicated.
We will never know exactly what transpired next, except that at some point after Brynn returned home at around 1 a.m., she retrieved Hartman’s Smith & Wesson .38 and shot him three times as he slept from just 18 inches away, killing him instantly.
Soon after, she returned to Douglas’ home, shoeless and now obviously drunk. She claimed she thought she had killed her husband, but Douglas didn’t believe her. Finally, he followed her home and discovered the truth.
He called the police, Brynn locking herself in the bedroom as he did so. Inside, Brynn called her sister in Wisconsin, told her that Hartman was dead and said, “Tell the children that I love them.”
Police arrived soon after, and as they tried to figure out the next step, Brynn crawled into bed with Hartman’s body, placed her Charter Arms .38 into her mouth and pulled the trigger.
Various authorities debated, both then and later, whether the combinations of alcohol and cocaine or alcohol and Zoloft might have caused the tragedy. In 1999, Thomas writes, Brynn’s brother, on behalf of the children and both estates, sued Zoloft manufacturer Pfizer for wrongful death, and the company later settled.
Despite their pain and anger, both families did their best to create a unified front for the couple’s children.
Photos of both Brynn and Hartman were on display at the funeral, and during a memorial service that included tributes by Lovitz, Hooks, and Jay Leno, an emotionally devastated John Hartmann took the high road. Directly addressing the elephant in the room, he implored those present not to think of Brynn Hartman as a killer.
“They were victims of the same accident,” he said. “There is no one to hate and no blame to be laid. I beg you to forgive her. So put this incident in your past and close the door. Forget — if you can.”