Clue, arrested development actor was 80

Martin Mull, the comedic musician and actor who got his start in the 1970s TV series “Fernwood 2 Night” and later appeared as Colonel Mustard on “Clue” and in “Arrested Development” and “Roseanne,” died Thursday in Los Angeles . He was 80.

His daughter Maggie made this known his death on Instagram, writing “I am heartbroken to share that my father passed away at home on June 27, after a brave battle with a long illness. He was known for excelling in every creative discipline imaginable and also for creating Red Roof Inn commercials. He would find that joke funny. He was never not funny. My father will be dearly missed by his wife and daughter, by his friends and colleagues, by fellow artists, comedians and musicians, and – the sign of a truly exceptional person – by many, many dogs. I loved him very much.”

Mull was nominated for an Emmy in 2016 for his guest role as political aide Bob Bradley on “Veep.” Most recently, he had made guest appearances in ‘The Afterparty’, ‘Not Dead Yet’ and ‘Grace and Frankie’.

He guested in the 2015 NBC comedy “Community” as George Perry, the father of Gillian Jacobs’ Britta Perry, and in the CBS comedy “Life in Pieces.”

Mull had a recurring role from 2008-2013 in “Two and a Half Men” as Russell, a pharmacist who illegally uses and sells drugs and attended Charlie’s funeral in the season 9 premiere episode. The actor also returned in “Arrested Development” as a rather incompetent private detective named Gene Parmesan, who has a habit of appearing in idiotic disguises.

Mull was a series regular on Seth MacFarlane’s Fox comedy “Dads,” a season in which Seth Green and Giovanni Ribisi played Ribisi’s character’s father as the owners of a video game company in 2013-2014.

In 2008, he guested on ‘Law & Order: SVU’ as Dr. Gideon Hutton, whose denial of the existence of AIDS leads to his conviction for willful negligence in the deaths of several people.

Mull’s film and television career actually all started with his stint as talk show host Barth Gimble on the wicked, satirical Norman Lear-created TV series “Fernwood 2 Night,” which was later renamed “America Tonight” in 1977 and 1978. The talk show also starred Fred Willard as Gimble’s dim-witted sidekick Jerry Hubbard. These shows were spin-offs of Lear’s groundbreaking soap opera “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.”

RELATED CONTENT: Martin Mull on Fred Willard: ‘He was absolutely, unconditionally original’

Willard, who died in 2020 at the age of 86, and Mull collaborated again on the 1985 HBO mockumentary “The History of White People in America.” Mull played Roseanne’s gay boss Leon Carp on her ABC sitcom of the same name from 1991-97, and he reunited with Willard for a 1995 episode of the show that featured the two in what was certainly one of the first gay weddings on television .

On Ellen De Generes’ sitcom “The Ellen Show” (not to be confused with the earlier series “Ellen”), which ran for 18 episodes on CBS in 2001-2002, Mull was a series regular as Ed Munn. From 1997 to 2000, he again starred in ‘Sabrina, the Teenage Witch’ as ​​director Willard Kraft.

From 1998 to 2004, Mull was a regular on the game show “Hollywood Squares” in a series of 425 episodes, many of them as the main square.

Martin Eugene Mull was born in Chicago to an actress and director mother and a carpenter father. The family moved to North Ridgeville, Ohio, when he was two; when he was 15, they moved to New Canaan, Connecticut. He studied painting and graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Master of Fine Arts in painting.

Mull first broke into show business, not as an actor or comedian, but as a songwriter, writing Jane Morgan’s 1970 country single “A Girl Named Johnny Cash,” which peaked at No. 61 on Billboard’s country charts. Shortly afterwards he started his own recording career.

He composed the theme song for the 1970 series “The 51st State,” and was the music producer of the 1971 film “Jump.”

Throughout the 1970s, and especially in the first half of the decade, Mull was primarily known as a musical comedian, performing satirical and humorous songs both live and in studio recordings. In the early 1970s he opened for Randy Newman, Frank Zappa and Bruce Springsteen in various live performances.

His self-titled debut album, released in 1972, featured notable musicians including Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, the band’s Levon Helm, NRBQ’s Keith Spring and Libby Titus. Other albums included 1974’s ‘Martin Mull and His Fabulous Furniture in Your Living Room’, 1974’s ‘Normal’, 1974’s ‘Days of Wine and Neuroses’ (1975) and ‘No Hits, Four Errors: The Best of Martin Mull’ (1977). , “Sex and Violins” (1978) and “I Am Everyone I’ve Ever Loved.” According to a profile on the AV Club website, Mull “earned a hit on the Billboard Hot 100 with the single ‘Dueling Tubas.’ His early albums were recorded for Georgia-based Capricorn Records, which was closely associated with the Allman Brothers and other Southern rockers of the era.

In the AV Club interview, Mull was asked how a painter found his way into acting, to which he replied: “You know, every painter I know has a day job. They teach art at a university or drive a taxi or something. And I happened to be lucky enough to get a job that is extraordinary and a lot of fun and that requires me to buy a lot of paint.”

“As far as acting goes, I had a musical career for about seventeen years, I had bands and so on, and it ended up being just my wife and I playing big rooms in Vegas, and that was possible. Don’t ask for more than that. There were limos and suites and stuff. But it made me sick. So I thought I’d give it a try to write for television. And I was in for an interview with Norman Lear, and I was a big fan of Mary Hartman. I went in and talked to him for, oh, I’d say a good hour. We had a good conversation. And then he said, ‘We don’t need writers. It was nice meeting you. I will see you.’ And six months later I got a call to come in and read a portion.

After gaining attention for playing Barth Gimble in the syndicated series “Fernwood 2 Night,” he played one of the few leading roles of his career in the 1980 feature film “Serial,” a satire on life in Marin County in which Mull’s Harvey Holyroyd serves, in the words of the Technicolor Dreams blog, “as the clever audience surrogate, verbally challenging every facet of Marin’s laid-back lifestyle.”

Also in 1980, Mull played a supporting role in Tony Bill’s “My Bodyguard” as the hotel manager, father of Chris Makepeace’s leading man Clifford. In “Mr. Mom” (1983), Michael Keaton was the stay-at-home dad, Teri Garr was the working mom, and Martin Mull “is the devious president of the ad agency, with plans to promote Garr in his own life,” in the words of Roger Ebert.

In 1984, Steve Martin and Martin Mull teamed up to create the sitcom “Domestic Life,” in which Mull starred as a commentator on Seattle TV whose teenage son runs highly successful businesses from his room and makes loans to his parents, but the CBS series lasted only ten years. episodes.

The actor was part of the ensemble in Robert Altman’s satirical, little-known look at the lives of high school students, “OC and Stiggs” (1985). That year, Mull also played Colonel Mustard in “Clue,” an adaptation of the board game, one of the film roles for which he is best remembered.

He starred in and wrote the screenplay for another little-known film, the Robert Downey Sr. directed “Rented Lips” (1988).

Mull tried mainstream television again as the star opposite Stephanie Faracy of NBC’s “His & Hers,” which disappeared in 1990 after thirteen episodes, and in “The Jackie Thomas Show” (1992), starring Tom Arnold and after eighteen episodes of ABC disappeared. episodes.

The actor began his sideline voiceover work with 1993’s “Family Dog,” an early Brad Bird series in which he provided the lead voice.

Mull appeared as a guest on two episodes of Garry Shandling’s HBO series “The Larry Sanders Show” from 1992 to 1993. He also had a supporting role in the hit ‘Mrs. Doubt Fire.”

Trained as a painter, Mull has practiced his art since the 1970s, and his work has appeared in both group and solo exhibitions. One of his paintings, After Dinner Drinks (2008), owned by Steve Martin, was used for the cover of ‘Love Has Come for You’, an album by Martin and Edie Brickell.

He is survived by his wife, the former Wendy Haas, an actor and composer whom he married in 1982, and his daughter Maggie, a TV writer and producer.