At 3.45 am on May 28, 1998, musician Ron Douglas was woken by a pounding at the door of his home in Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley. He opened it to find a former girlfriend, Brynn Hartman, in a state of advanced incoherence. She was wearing a long-sleeve t-shirt, pyjama bottoms and socks. In one trembling hand she clutched a designer purse.
Somewhat reluctantly Douglas invited her in. Between sobs the 40 year-old ex-model whispered “I killed Phil”, meaning her husband, former-Saturday Night Live comedian Phil Hartman who had become internationally famous voicing Simpsons character Troy McClure and Lionel Hutz.
Douglas (57) didn’t believe her. Not until she opened her Prada purse and a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver fell out. Scrutinising it, Douglas noticed three bullets missing.
All three were lodged in Phil Hartman. A 20-minute drive away he lay dead in the four-bedroom home he shared with his wife, their nine-year-old son and six-year-old daughter.
Douglas still wasn’t convinced as he drove Brynn back to her house. It was only when he saw Hartman, 49, slumped in the bedroom, in boxers and t-shirt, that he accepted the horrible truth.
He dialled 911 and then escaped out the back door with nine-year-old Sean Hartman, fearing the hysterical Brynn was about to turn the gun on one or either. As a police officer likewise rushed out with Sean’s six-year-old sister, Birgen, there was a bang from the bedroom. Brynn had shot herself through the mouth. Her body was found next to her husband’s, almost touching.
There are many strange stories in the 30-year history of The Simpsons, which enters the binge-watch wars with the UK debut of Disney+ this week (all 660 episodes are waiting to be rediscovered). None is stranger or more tragic than that of Hartman, whose final Simpsons would not air until the following September.
In Bart, The Mother he plays cornball actor McClure in a public information video about raising small birds – “our fine feathered colleagues”. “Hi, I’m Troy McClure,” begins Hartman from beyond the grave. “You may remember me from such nature films as Earwigs – Euugh! and Man Versus Nature : The Road to Victory.” His bit lasts 76 seconds and is hilarious. The episode is dedicated to his memory.
Hartman was doing well long before the Simpsons. In the early 1980s he’d helped Paul Reubens create childlike character Pee-wee Herman. Later, he was a well-regarded member of the Saturday Night Live ensemble, his Bill Clinton impersonation drawing on the same hammy insincerity that fuelled Hutz and McClure.
After leaving SNL in 1994 he’d had further success with his NBC sitcom NewsRadio, in which he portrayed a smarmy news anchor. He was paid $50,000 per episode – decent for the time and twice what the Simpsons cast were receiving.
Hence his ambivalence when Simpsons show runner Mike Reiss wondered if was interested in appearing in the cartoon. Hartman agreed on the proviso it was a one-off. Stints in the Eighties voicing the Smurfs, GoBots, and Scooby-Doo had left Hartman leery of cartoons. He enjoyed the Simpsons. But this was to be a one-and-done.
And so it was that in November 1990, he found himself turning into the Fox lot at West Pico Boulevard and making his way to the down-at-heel Darryl F. Zanuck ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement) stage. He was to voice an incompetent lawyer name Lionel Hutz, who would appear for the first time in season two episode 10, Bart Gets Hit by A Car.
“[Hutz] never doubted his ability in the courtroom for some reason, even though he had no idea what was going on,” is how Reiss’s successor as showrunner, Mike Scully, would describe the character. He added that Hutz was a mix of “overconfidence and incompetence”.
As he got out of his car, Hartman may still have wondered what he had let himself in for. In cartoons, the convention was to cast established voice-actors. The Simpsons had gone where no animated series had previously ventured by instead using comedians (Jon Lovitz and Kelsey Grammar, aka Sideshow Bob, would make their Simpsons debuts around this time).
Inside the Darryl F Zanuck ADR Stage, the Simpsons crew must have been similarly struck at how out of place Hartman seemed. The comedian wasn’t a movie star. He did, however, carry himself like one.
“He had a real star quality,” Simpsons writer Jay Kogen would tell Mike Thomas in his book You Might Remember Me: The Life and Times of Phil Hartman.
“But I felt it was an old-timey star quality. He was a sharp dresser. Even offstage, he always sort of resembled some sort of weird combination of a 1950s intellectual and Jack Benny.”
The surprises were just starting. A full two hours had been allocated to Hartman’s segment. In he went and out of thin air conjured Lionel Hutz. On the page the lawyer was grubby and inept. Hartman made him tragically hilarious.
And he did it all in 15 minutes. He had so much fun that, on the way out, he mentioned he’d be up for doing it all again, if the Simpsons could find a way to feature Hutz.
A way was found. And then there was a second character, fading Hollywood cheeseball Troy McClure. The hammy matinee star on the way down debuted in episode 13 of the second season, Homer v Lisa and the 8th Commandment. McClure, based loosely on 1970s hacks such as Doug McClure and Troy Donahue, was an immediate hit.
“Everybody loved Phil Hartman,” Simpsons writer and executive producer Jonah Weinstein would say. “He was one of those people who, even if he had a straight line in the episode, he’d make it funny. He was funny and super, super kind and charming. We always wanted to do more with him.”
The Simpsons made Hartman famous. It also hugely increased the strain on his troubled third marriage to former model and aspiring actress Brynn. She was said to be envious of his success. And resentful he didn’t use his new-found prominence to hustle for work on her behalf.
“She was upset with Phil on one, maybe two occasions,” her brother, Greg Omdahl later commented. “He would be doing the Simpsons or NewsRadio. He’d mention, 'maybe I can get you can me a part'. [She would ask] 'did you talk about getting me a part?''Oh I forget'. And she’d be upset about that.”
Brynn had a history of drug and alcohol issues. She’d been off cocaine 10 years when she was reintroduced to it at a New Year’s party at her home. She was also taking antidepressant Zoloft. After the murder-suicide her brother would sue her doctor and the drug’s manufacturer, Pfizer, asserting neither had made his sister aware of possible suicidal side-effects (Pfizer settled out of court).
In public the couple portrayed themselves as a golden couple. That is certainly the impression they conveyed interviewed side-by-side by Howard Stern to publicise NewsRadio in 1993. “I don’t think you should do the show,” said Stern told Phil at the end. “Stay with Saturday Night Live. Do some movies.”
"I have a plane. I have a boat. I have a great house. I have a great family. In fact I have everything I ever wanted," film director Joe Dante remembered Hartman telling him shortly before Hartman’s death. "It feels great."
Nonetheless, cracks were appearing. Brynn wrongly accused Hartman of having an affair. He failed to show up at several marriage counselling sessions. On Mother’s Day 1997 she passed out after drinking too much, leading Hartman to insist she go into rehab. She left early, saying she missed the children.
There was also the time the couple had a furious row in Hartman’s dressing room on Saturday Night Live. Outside, his make-up artist Norman Bryn was shocked by the level of rancour. “Well, Norm, looks like the wife's gonna divorce me this time,” Hartman said, trying to pass it off as a joke.
Brynn’s temper was an open secret. Hartman would arrive at NewsRadio with scratches on his face. On other occasions, he would sleep on his boat. When Hartman’s second wife Lisa sent the couple a congratulations card on the birth of their first child she received from Brynn a letter “that was hair-curling, fury, rage and [a] death threat”.
“The gist of it was, 'Don't ever f****gget near me or my family or I will hurt you. I never want to hear from you… never, ever, ever come near us or you will really be sorry'.”
She had trouble controlling her anger," Steve Small, the lawyer who had looked after Hartman's two previous divorces, told the LA Times. "She got attention by losing her temper. Phil said he had to… restrain her at times."
And then, horribly it all came to a head. On May 27, Brynn went for dinner with writer and producer Christine Zander at Buca di Beppo on Ventura Boulevard. She had two co*cktails and a beer. At 10.15pm she called on her ex, Douglas. She left at 12.45am. Douglas does not recall her as particularly inebriated.
But then, at the family home, as Hartman slept, she shot him three times: between the eyes, in the throat, in the upper chest. She called Douglas, asking if she could come over again. He did his best to dissuade her. She went anyway. A few hours later she was dead too.
“She was a failed actress who deeply resented [Phil’s] success,” Hartman’s NewsRadio co-star Joe Rogan would say in 2014. “As he became more and more successful, their relationship became more and more contentious.”
Hartman at least left behind a rich legacy. He appeared in just 52 Simpsons episodes out of 660. Yet Lionel Hutz and Troy McClure are two of the show’s most beloved creations. For as long as they live on so, in a sense, will he
