Martin Mull Dies: ‘Clue’, ‘Roseanne’ & ‘Fernwood 2 Nite’ Star Was 80
Martin Mull, who played Colonel Mustard in Clue, Roseanne’s boss Leon Carp in the ABC comedy Roseanne and starred on Norman Lear’s Fernwood 2 Nite, died Thursday at his home. He was 80.
The news was revealed by his daughter Maggie Mull, an exec producer on Family Guy.
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“I am heartbroken to share that my father passed away at home on June 27th, after a valiant fight against a long illness. He was known for excelling at every creative discipline imaginable and also for doing Red Roof Inn commercials. He would find that joke funny. He was never not funny. My dad will be deeply missed by his wife and daughter, by his friends and coworkers, by fellow artists and comedians and musicians, and—the sign of a truly exceptional person—by many, many dogs. I loved him tremendously,” she wrote.
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Mull broke into acting with his role in Lear’s soap spoof Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and its spinoff Fernwood 2 Night after being a country songwriter and musical comedian.
Mull co-starred on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman as Garth Gimble, the husband of Louise Lasser’s titular character – before Hartman got tired of her spouse and stabbed him to death with a Christmas ornament.
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“So he was off the series,” director Louis J. Horvitz told The TV Academy Foundation in 2008. “Norman [Lear] decided Martin was so good he wanted to give him another series. So Garth became Barth, his twin brother, and he now was going to do a parody of the local talk show. And because our studio was on Fernwood Avenue in Hollywood, Norman called it Fernwood 2 Nite.”
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Ostensibly a late-night talk show put on by the denizens of Mary’s small Ohio hometown, Fernwood 2 Nite launched in July 1977 as a summer replacement for Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and became one of the year’s buzziest shows. Mull led as the self-centered, fake-smiling host Gimble, joined by sidekick Jerry Hubbard (Fred Willard) and a cast of characters that included Happy Kyne (Frank DeVol), who hilariously and constantly was depicted as the most dour person on Earth. Then there was the pianist who was rolled onstage in an iron lung and the local official who was a patient of the chinodonist and wore a ridiculous headgear to fix his underbite. Dabney Coleman played the town’s eternally self-promoting Mayor Merle Jeeter on the sohw, which was retitled America 2Nite for Season 2.
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Mull went on to have roles in Taxi and Golden Girls before starring on Roseanne, on which he recurred from Seasons 3-9 as Leon Carp, who first was Roseanne’s (Roseanne Barr) boss at the diner and later her business partner at The Lanford Lunchbox. He was a series regular on Fox’s short-lived 2013 sitcom Dads, playing the father of star Seth Green’s character. He also co-starred in Fox’s 2018-19 sitcom The Cool Kids, opposite David Alan Grier, Leslie Jordan and Vicki Lawrence.
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Among his most recognizable roles was recurring as a school administrator in the WB’s Sabrina the Teenage Witch, starring Melissa Joan Hart. Mull played Willard Kraft, the petty and sometimes tyrannical VP and later principal of Westbridge High, on more than 70 episodes of the popular sitcom from 1977-2000 in Seasons 2-4.
Mull’s dozens of TV credits also included recurring as the goofy detective Gene Parmesan on Arrested Development and a guest turn as Bob “The Eagle” Bradley on Veep for which he earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor.
In film, in addition to starring alongside Tim Curry in 1985’s Clue, he starred in Paramount’s 1980 film Serial as well as roles in Mr. Mom and Mrs. Doubtfire.
His last role was in Apple TV+’s The Afterparty.
Mull also had a career as a voice acting, lending his pipes to TV shows including American Dad!, Danny Phantom, Teamo Supremo and Family Dog and in the 2005 feature Hopeless Pictures. He also guested in voice roles on episodes of The Simpsons, Family Guy, Bob’s Burgers, Dexter’s Laboratory, The Wild Thornberrys and others.
Mull also released a number of stand-up and musical comedy albums during his career, two of which – 1977’s I’m Everyone I Ever Loved and the following year’s -Sex & Violins – dented the Billboard 200 chart. They also included a compilation disc titledNo Hits, Four Errors: The Best of Martin Mull and Your Living Room, which spawned the single “Dueling Tubas.” That parody of the instrumental hit “Dueling Banjos” from Deliverance cracked the Billboard Hot 100 for a few weeks in 1973.
Erik Pedersen contributed to this report.
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