This, unfortunately, is not a joke. Mr. Hartman was a talented man.
Comic Actor Phil Hartman, Wife Dead
Filed at 2:03 p.m. EDT
By The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Phil Hartman, who impersonated President Clinton on ''Saturday Night Live'' and went on to star in the NBC sitcom ''NewsRadio,'' was found shot to death in his home this morning along with his wife in a suspected murder-suicide.
The 49-year-old actor's wife fatally shot herself while police were in their house investigating his death.
Police and an ambulance responded to a call of shots fired shortly after 6 a.m. at the home in the Encino section.
Officers were removing two children from the home when Brynn Hartman, 40, shot herself, police Lt. Anthony Alba said. That shooting came shortly after police found her husband's body in the master bedroom.
''We are investigating this as a possible murder-suicide,'' Alba said. ''We know for sure that the female inflicted her own gunshot wound. She shot herself as police were removing the second child from the home,'' Lt. Anthony Alba said. ''Mr. Hartman had been dead for a while.''
Hartman, 49, got his break on the ''The Groundlings,'' which has produced such names as Pee Wee Herman (Paul Reubens) and Steve Guttenberg.
Hartman appeared on ''Saturday Night Live'' for eight seasons, which he found stressful. He told People magazine in a 1995 interview, ''The rejection and backstabbing could be painful but the hardest thing was competing against your friends for airtime.''
He joined ''SNL'' in 1986, part of a cast that included Jon Lovitz, Dennis Miller and Dana Carvey. Hartman scored with his amazing skill at impersonation. During his seven seasons, he mimicked upwards of 70 famous people, including Clinton, Ed McMahon, Jimmy Swaggart and Phil Donahue.
''Even at Westchester High in West L.A., I was class clown, because I could do John Wayne, Jack Benny, Jack Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and entertain my friends on the senior lawn,'' he remembered in a 1995 Associated Press interview. ''But I never seriously considered it as a career choice.''
''NewsRadio'' came along in 1995, with Hartman playing the vain anchor Bill McNeal. The show was a critical favorite, but had difficulty finding an audience as it bounced around NBC's prime-time schedule.
It had several brushes with cancellation, and it was somewhat surprising when NBC announced last week it would come back for another season in the fall.
Hartman also did voices for ''The Simpsons.''
''One of the remarkable things about my career is that it has been marked by steady, incremental progress. No sudden spikes up, and no sudden downfalls, either,'' he said in 1995.
''I haven't really been slammed, like some of my buddies. I can't imagine that I'm going to avoid that in my career. Because I came into it so late, after working in the corporate world of advertising and graphic design, I know how hard the average person works, because I've been there.
''I've succeeded beyond my wildest dreams -- financially and the amount of fun I have in my life.''
Like Dan Aykroyd, the late John Candy and numerous other comics, Hartman was born in Canada. Unlike the others, he grew up in the United States -- Connecticut and Southern California. He studied art and wound up in graphic design, doing album covers for rock bands.
Hartman got his start in show business in 1975, when he dropped in on an improvisational comedy club and was impressed by the comics' fast wit.
In a 1995 Associated Press interview, he recalled that he told himself, ''I gotta do this!''
He joined a workshop of the Groundlings comedy troupe and later became a member. He got bit parts and collaborated with fellow Groundling Paul ''Pee-wee Herman'' Reubens on the script of ''Pee-wee's Big Adventure.''
''I was 36, and I had decided to quit acting because it was so disappointing,'' Hartman recalls. '''Pee-wee's Big Adventure' was relatively successful, and if you can be associated with a hit, a lot of doors open. I found the writing arena to be much less competitive.
''As an actor, I felt I couldn't compete. I wasn't as cute as the leading man; I wasn't as brilliant as Robin Williams. The one thing I could do was voices and impersonations and weird characters, and there was really no call for that. Except on 'Saturday Night Live.' ''
It isn't the first time tragedy has struck cast members of ''Saturday Night Live.''
John Belushi, who went from the original ''SNL'' cast in 1975 to Hollywood stardom in films like ''Animal House,'' died of a drug overdose at age 33 in 1982.
Fellow cast member Gilda Radner, who went from ''SNL'' to Broadway and occasional films, died at age 42 of ovarian cancer in 1989.
Last December, Chris Farley, ''Saturday Night Live'' star of the early 1990s who also appeared in films such as ''Tommy Boy,'' died of a drug overdose. Like his idol Belushi, he was 33.
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