You Might Remember Me The Life and Times of Phil Hartman

by Mike Thomas

  Though Gretchen says she grew accustomed to the scene, bearing witness to it certainly darkened her worldview. “Oh, my God! If ever there was naïveté that went sour, it was mine,” she says. “I mean, the stuff I used to see go on in that house. Ultimately, you got used to it, but it was a constant revolution of women. Sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll.” In the process of trying to extricate Phil from that world, Gretchen encouraged him to get “a real job,” which at first he was hesitant to do. But it was increasingly necessary for their survival.

  With only meager sources of income, the couple lived a bare-bones existence, moving from Phil’s cabana to a cramped one-bedroom apartment across the street and maintaining a fiscally conservative lifestyle with their white-and-orange tabby cat Russell (named by Phil after musician Leon Russell), black mutt Levi, and a king-sized waterbed. Still car-less, Phil shared Gretchen’s red VW bug, which was eventually replaced by a blue-and-white VW van. And though they kept their circle of intimates tight—two or three couples at most—Phil continually attracted admirers. “He wanted to be a comedian,” Gretchen says. “It was his passion. We had a lot of friends because he was so funny. People wanted to be around him, and they always wanted him to perform.”

  Together with a friend who managed a movie theater in Malibu, Phil got his first taste of improvisation when the two of them staged comedy skits on weekends before and after screenings with pals Wink Roberts, Mark Pierson, and others. “It was such a small community back then,” Gretchen says, “that I’m surprised someone like Henry Gibson didn’t wander in there and discover Phil.”

  Although the newlyweds were scraping by “paycheck to paycheck,” Phil’s ambition to succeed in showbiz outweighed his financial concerns. “Phil had such a strong desire to be what he wanted to be,” Gretchen says, “but he wasn’t going to prostitute himself to be that.” The highly connected John Hartmann might have helped, she says, but Phil was reluctant to accept assistance from anyone. Not that John offered any. “It was interesting when I’d hear him say, ‘I manage Sonny and Cher,’” she says. “But then the reality of it was, ‘Well, where are they? Bring them over.’ But that stuff just never materialized.”

  At the time, John says, he was struggling himself and unaware of Phil’s dire circumstances, because Phil never said a word. Pride and principles prohibited him from doing so, as did a reluctance to make waves or put others out. And so, since freelance artistry was at best an inconsistent means of subsistence, Phil scored a design job with the Santa Monica ad agency Farrell-Bergmann, Inc. “It was kind of a low point,” says Phil’s attorney friend Steve Small, who at the time dated founder Bergmann’s secretary and worked across the hall. Both men shared an interest in photography and talked about it when they could. The agency was small and Phil earned low wages doing paste-ups for print ads. He didn’t last long there and was, Small says, happy to leave.

  That June, Phil stood drop-jawed in front of a television as his former Westchester High schoolmate, Charles Manson acolyte Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, staged a protest and answered reporters’ questions outside an L.A. courtroom where Manson was being tried for masterminding multiple murders—including that of filmmaker Roman Polanski’s pregnant young wife, Sharon Tate, in L.A.’s Benedict Canyon. A budding peacenik and an occasional participant in protests, Phil thought to himself, “Darkness is descending on the movement.” Five years later Fromme was imprisoned on charges that she attempted to assassinate President Gerald Ford with a semiautomatic handgun. She spent more than three decades in lockup until her release in 2009.

  * * *

  In late September 1970, after a fierce Southern California wildfire (commonly referred to as the Malibu Canyon Fire) driven by 80-mph winds destroyed 150 homes, killed ten people, came a half-mile from idyllic Malibu Colony, and ultimately charred half a million surrounding acres, Phil and Gretchen moved from their badly smoke-damaged apartment and into a nearby condo. The down payment on it, $5,000, was a gift from Gretchen’s father. He helped in other ways, too. But the monthly mortgage—which amounted to a couple of hundred dollars more than they’d paid to rent their previous pad—was a couple of hundred dollars too much. Still, they somehow made do and got along in the process, even taking on a roommate for a time. “There were never cross words between the two of us,” Gretchen says. “I mean, we had our issues—like, we didn’t have enough money. But we didn’t live ahead of ourselves. Our life was really simple, kind of like in that Shirley MacLaine–Robert Mitchum movie What a Way to Go!”

  Before long, though, stress—partly brought on by mounting bills—began taking its toll. To further complicate matters, Gretchen again became pregnant. Phil wanted kids, five of them, even back then—but not then. The timing, Gretchen says, was worse than before, and so she quietly had her second pregnancy terminated at a clinic in Beverly Hills. “Twice it was accidental,” she says, noting that even the use of an IUD had failed to prevent conception. “And whatever smarts we had, we just knew we weren’t bringing a kid into the world. We just weren’t ready.” Phil stayed cool and gave no hint of being upset. Gretchen admits, though, that if something bothered him, “certainly nobody ever knew—and that included me.”

  “He didn’t have a lot of requirements,” she adds. “He really didn’t. And he definitely didn’t expect anything of other people. My attitude is if I give out to you, you’d better give me something back emotionally. He wasn’t that kind of guy.”

  That same fall, Phil transferred his credits from Santa Monica City College to San Fernando State University (now Cal-State Northridge), a four-year institution, where he took graphic arts classes but declared no major. He dropped out the following spring. A few months before doing so, in early February 1971, a massive earthquake registering 6.6 on the Richter scale rippled through much of Southern California and portions of neighboring states, causing $500 million in damage, killing sixty-five people and injuring two thousand more. Aftershocks, seismic and otherwise, continued for several more months.

  By late that year, Phil and Gretchen had lost their spark and grown apart. Continuing money woes and Gretchen’s most recent pregnancy were key issues, but even more detrimental was a “flirtation” she had carried on with a bigwig client from the dentist’s office where Gretchen found work after quitting her bank gig. “It was exciting,” she says. “I got to see a barber come into his office and give him haircuts, manicures, and cater to his every whim. But I was just a bystander caught up in it all. When it came down to the rubber meeting the road, I tucked tail and ran home to Phil. I told him everything, which was nothing, but I believe it did irreparable damage to an already fragile and strained marriage.”

  The end of their union was as inauspicious and unexpected as its beginning. As easily as they’d come together, they drifted apart. Steve Small handled the divorce proceedings, which were cut-and-dried since Phil and Gretchen had few if any assets to divide. “There was no drama to it,” Small says. Gretchen agrees, calling the split “a real matter-of-fact kind of thing. I don’t remember ever walking into a courtroom.” By March 1972 their marriage was officially dissolved, though they stayed in sporadic contact and on friendly terms for the next quarter-century. “I take full blame for whatever didn’t work out,” Gretchen says. “I don’t know that we’d still be married today, because fame and glory might have changed all that. But from what I believe and things I’ve read, Phil didn’t change.”

  * * *

  For the first time in a couple of years, Phil was a free man—a young, talented, good-looking bachelor in the casually amorous Age of Aquarius—and he took full advantage of his newfound liberation. “The guy was a frickin’ animal!” Paul Hartmann says admiringly. “I’m sure he had a new [pickup] line for every occasion.” Having moved to a first-floor studio apartment on Santa Nella Boulevard in Malibu, in a funky mansion-like structure where the swashbuckling thespian Errol Flynn was said to have dwelled decades earlier, Phil drew and surfed (though not typically near his place, where
the waves were too small) and smoked weed and charmed the ladies. He also landed the role of River City con man Harold Hill in a 1973 production of The Music Man at Santa Monica’s Morgan-Wixson Theatre. There he met a fellow aspiring actor named Floyd Dozier, who shared Phil’s interests in wave riding, drama (the showbiz kind), and cars. They hit it off right away. “Everybody wanted to be his friend because he was an interesting guy,” Dozier says. “Immediately when I met him, I sensed there was something really different about him. He was a true artist. He didn’t really march to the same drum as most people, although there was a part of him that wanted to be perceived as normal. He went through life trying to find a character that he could present to the public that seemed normal and wholesome.”

  During their first hang session they surfed, then shared a joint. Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell’s 1971 LP Blue, cued up by her countryman Phil, provided the soundtrack. There were also Music Man bashes on the beach with fellow cast members (Dozier was also part of the production). As ever, partygoers gathered around to watch Phil do impressions. And, as ever, Jonathan Winters routines were common. “Do Arnold!” revelers yelled, referencing a famous Winters bit called “Moby Dick & Captain Arnold” from the comic’s hit 1963 album Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Sometimes, on lazy afternoons, Phil and Dozier watched old black-and-white movies on television. Phil, Dozier says, was encyclopedic in his knowledge of actors and the characters they played. John Wayne’s were among his favorites.

  Phil and Dozier talked religion and philosophy, too, much as Phil had with Holloway back in high school. Though still a fan of the Urantia Book, Phil had lately become intrigued with another mystical tome: the ancient Chinese Book of Changes—or I Ching. It contains a so-called divination system that is essentially used to foretell events and solve problems. “Throwing the I Ching,” as the parlance goes, involves tossing three coins (Chinese ones, pennies, etc.), then multiplying the number of heads by two and tails by three. The sum total of those numbers becomes the basis for interpretation via the symbolism of sixty-four different “hexagrams.”

  Phil frequently threw the I Ching for others and himself, as he was deeply curious about his own fate—and, if possible, redirecting it to better align with his aspirations. When Paul came across Phil’s I Ching years later he found scraps of paper inside, and on each scrap variations of Phil’s name (Philip Hartmann, Phil E. Hartman, etc.) in Phil’s handwriting along with calculated “destiny” numbers. In numerology, each letter has a value and each value a meaning. The name “Phil Hartmann,” for instance, has a “destiny number” (or “expression”) of 8, a “soul urge” of 11 and an “inner dream” of 6. Which meant, in short and in part, that Phil was an ambitious, practical, materialistic, spiritual utopian who envisioned living a happy-go-lucky family life, with doting children and a devoted wife. Merely dropping one “n” would change his destiny number (and thus, to Phil’s way of thinking, his actual destiny) to an even more desirable 3—the height of artistic fulfillment.

  * * *

  In an attempt to help bolster Phil’s artistic pursuits, Dozier bought his buddy a new drafting table, where Phil spent many solitary hours sketching, cartooning, and working on freelance graphic art projects as they came his way. “You know how some artists have an ego about being an artist?” Dozier says. “He wasn’t like that. But he was real serious about his craft. He’d get cranky if you were interfering with it.” But freelance work was spotty, and Phil’s money was typically tight. What he really needed was another salaried job, though a return to the ad world at Farrell-Bergman was entirely unappealing.

  Fortuitously, John Hartmann and his music business partner, Harlan Goodman, had just settled into swanky offices at Hollywood’s Crossroads of the World complex on Sunset—formerly Alfred Hitchcock’s headquarters. Its walls were paneled in redwood, gray gabardine, suede-leather and tartan plaid. “H&G” (for Hartmann & Goodman) was etched into a small window above the entrance. With high-profile clients like Crosby, Stills & Nash, America, and Poco, John and Goodman needed someone to design album covers. Phil was a natural choice, and before long he set up shop on the second floor of the ship-shaped structure’s bow.

  As a jack-of-all-trades, doing everything from layout to printing and the preparation of artwork, Phil came into the office almost every weekday and was busier than he’d ever been—not to mention earning some coin for his efforts. Although his monthly stipend of $750 plus a small per-album fee (based on the amount budgeted for graphic art, which was generally $7,500) wasn’t much to live on, Phil was again tight-lipped about asking for help. “Quite frankly, he wasn’t happy with John,” Small says. “John would screw him monetarily, and it caused some ill feelings. I had conversations with my wife and Phil when he was debating whether he should stay and do what he was doing or go in another direction.”

  John, though, says he was never aware of Phil’s situation until years later, when Phil admitted that he’d gone through a tough stretch while working at Hartmann & Goodman. “Phil was a very strong character,” Harlan Goodman says, “but such a sweetheart, such a beautiful soul, that there was this great internal struggling [because] he didn’t want to be a burden. So he wouldn’t tell us.”

  Goodman also witnessed Phil’s ongoing search for a concrete identity. “He was constantly trying to figure out who he was. Some days he was a cowboy, some days he was a surfer, some days he’d come in with a jacket and a tie.” A used Porsche 924 and a pickup truck were among his modes of transportation, and Phil’s outfits were always vehicle-appropriate.

  Ongoing money issues aside, Phil’s long H&G tenure—which lasted from 1973 to 1980—saved him from further corporate boredom and provided him with a wealth of professional experience, beginning with his conjuring of cover art for Poco’s 1974 album Seven. Often clad in faded OshKosh overalls, H&G’s newest employee—a one-man art department—could usually be found tucked away in his always-tidy alcove. Besides Seven, other album artwork included a now-famous cover painting for History: America’s Greatest Hits, the minimalist horse sketch that fronts Poco’s bestselling Legend LP and a logo for Crosby, Stills & Nash that is still used as a stage backdrop when they tour.

  After attending band meetings to get a sense of what each group envisioned artistically, Phil regrouped with John Hartmann to hash out further details. Before creating an initial mock-up, he did deep research and sought out other works for inspiration. Things he witnessed in everyday life—people, places, objects—were catalysts as well. His image for Poco’s Legend was spurred by black-and-white Asian brush paintings of horses with dust swirling around their heads that Poco member Rusty Young and his wife came across one day while shopping for furniture. “When I saw that artwork, I thought it was just providence,” Young says. Excited, he phoned Phil and they made plans to meet at the store so Phil could see the paintings for himself. Once he had, the wheels began to turn. Instead of aping the artist’s style exactly, Young suggested, why not omit the dust and draw a single horse using as few lines as possible? Phil loved the idea, retired to his studio, and before long he’d produced a dozen different versions. Young and Phil chose the winner together.

  Done in an entirely different style, Phil’s portrait of America was loosely based on the work of enormously popular American illustrator and painter Maxfield Parrish, who plied his trade in the first half of the twentieth century, was revered by Norman Rockwell, and was fond of rich colors. Parrish, too, was a darling of the rock ’n’ roll set. One of his paintings appears on Elton John’s Caribou. Another was adapted for the Moody Blues’ 1983 album The Present. “[Phil] would always come back with way more than I had even imagined and blow us all away,” John says. “Each situation was unique. With America’s Greatest Hits, he did it all on his own. He came with what he presented as roughs for the cover. The band immediately said, ‘That isn’t the rough; that’s the cover.’ He probably knew that was going to happen, but was being modest.”

  But it wasn’t all toil at H&G, de
scribed by John as “an extremely happy place.” Says Goodman, “We really believed in the people that we worked with. We cared about them a great deal and they cared about us. You couldn’t call it a job.” As befitted H&G’s rock ’n’ roll environment, a steady stream of groupies flowed in and out of the offices; pot was plentiful (“There wasn’t a time that I walked into that office that someone didn’t offer me a joint,” rock photographer Henry Diltz says) and corporate bullshit minimal. In keeping with the spotlight-loving side of his bifurcated personality, Phil served as a sort of in-house jester. On one occasion, Diltz recalls, Phil trotted out a comedy bit he’d been working on starring a German John Wayne. And when, toward the end of Phil’s stint, a young aspiring actress named Daryl Hannah stopped by to be photographed by Diltz (he snapped her early publicity stills), Phil suddenly popped into the frame wearing a curly red fop wig. Hairbrush in hand, he proceeded to affect the voice and mannerisms of a fey and fussy English hairdresser. “It turned into this half-hour bit,” John Hartmann told Larry King in 2004. “Everybody in the office gathered to see Phil do his thing.” Goodman likens Phil to a comedic gunslinger: “If you weren’t careful, he could drop you to your knees, convulsed in tears.”