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Martin Mull

 
Quotes By: Martin Mull
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Artist: Martin Mull
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Home > Library > Entertainment & Arts > Pop Artists

Similar Artists:

Warren Zevon, Dan Hicks, They Might Be Giants, Leon Redbone, Tom Lehrer, Steve Martin

Followers:

Da Yoopers

Worked With:

Keith Spring
  • Active: '70s
  • Genres: Comedy
  • Instrument: Vocals, Guitar
  • Representative Albums: "Mulling It Over: A Musical Oeuvre View," "Martin Mull & His Fabulous Furniture in Your Living Room," "Martin Mull"
  • Representative Songs: "Santa Doesn't Cop Out on Dope," "Licks off of Records," "Dueling Tubas"

Biography

Although best known as a comic actor on television shows ranging from '70s talk show satire Fernwood 2-Night to '90s teen fluff sitcom Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Martin Mull is also a gifted musician who released several fine albums towards the beginning of his career. While his peculiar sense of humor is evident on all of his albums, Mull is no Weird Al-style parodist; his albums are skewed singer/songwriter pop/rock with a strong jazz influence, which just happen to have funny lyrics.

Mull was born in Chicago in 1943. Somewhat surprisingly given his later success as a performing artist, Mull originally trained to be a painter. After receiving a master's degree from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1967 and studying in Italy, Mull settled in the Boston area and became involved in the local improvisational comedy and folk music scenes to supplement his income while continuing his painting career. Eventually forming a full band called Martin Mull and His Fabulous Furniture (which at one point included future Cars keyboardist Greg Hawkes), Mull signed to the fledgling Capricorn label in 1972; his self-titled debut was one of the imprint's first releases. Although Martin Mull is an excellent album nestled somewhere between Warren Zevon and Leon Redbone, widespread commercial success seemed unlikely. A live album called Martin Mull and His Fabulous Furniture in Your Living Room!! showed that the idiosyncratic performer was developing quite the cult following, based on the enthusiastic audience at this gig. The live album also provides an outlet for Mull's standup comedy skills, as some of the song introductions go on longer than the songs themselves.

Mull released two more albums on Capricorn, 1973's Normal, and 1974's Days of Wine and Neurosis, which broke little new ground commercially but refined his style. His music was becoming considerably more jazz-based -- much of Days of Wine and Neurosis has a definite Fats Waller feel -- and his lyrics more bizarre and cutting. Unfortunately, his sales remained minimal, and Capricorn dropped him, only to release the compilation No Hits, Four Errors: The Best of Martin Mull, following his television success.

Just after a one-off album on Vanguard, 1975's stripped-down In the Soop, Mull's career took a much different turn when he was hired as wife-beating villain Garth Gimble on Norman Lear's satirical soap opera Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. Although Mull's character was quickly killed off -- speared to death on a Christmas tree -- he was popular enough that Lear created a spin-off for Mull, a deadpan parody of local TV talk shows called Fernwood 2-Night, starring Mull as smarmy Barth Gimble and Fred Willard as his dense co-host. The show was never more than a cult favorite, but it was popular enough to get Mull a new recording deal with ABC Records. 1977's I'm Everyone I Ever Loved basically picks up where Days of Wine and Neurosis left off, but 1978's Sex and Violins is a full-fledged orchestral album in the tradition of Frank Sinatra's albums with Nelson Riddle, arranged and produced by Frank DeVol, a noted composer of television themes who played bandleader Happy Kyne on Fernwood 2-Night. Although the entire enterprise is dripping with irony, from Harry Shearer's opening remarks as an ABC Records spokesman onwards, there's also an obvious love of the style on display.

ABC Records imploded not long after the release of Sex and Violins, and Mull signed to Elektra for what would prove to be his final album, 1979's Near Perfect/Perfect. A return to the low-key pop/rock style of his first two records, it's also the most overtly comedic of Mull's albums. After this, Mull returned to his first love, painting, scoring numerous one-man shows at museums around the world, supplementing his work with medium-profile television acting and writing gigs. In 1998, Rhino released the two-disc set Mulling It Over, collecting the best material from Mull's four Capricorn albums. ~ Stewart Mason, All Music Guide
Actor: Martin Mull
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  • Born: Aug 18, 1943 in Chicago, Illinois
  • Occupation: Actor, Writer
  • Active: '80s-'90s
  • Major Genres: Comedy
  • Career Highlights: My Bodyguard, The Serial, Clue
  • First Major Screen Credit: FM (1978)

Biography

Martin Mull intended to become a painter when he enrolled in the Rhode Island School of Design, but his Scaramouche-like sense of the ridiculous led to a career as a nightclub comedian. The deceptively conservative-looking Mull is widely recognized as one of the most accomplished satirists in show business. Even before he gained TV fame, Mull's barbed comedy albums had earned him a following on the college campus circuit. His first major TV assignment was Mary Hartman Mary Hartman (1976-77), where he was seen as Garth Gimble, an ill-tempered wife beater who ended up being impaled by a Christmas tree. When Mary Hartman Mary Hartman producer Norman Lear developed the spin-off series Fernwood Tonight in 1977, Mull was brought back as glad-handing emcee Barth Gimble, Garth's twin brother. In films since 1978, Mull is often called upon to portray an underhanded or vacillating CEO (vide Mister Mom). His well-groomed mustache and tweedy appearance served him well as Colonel Mustard in the 1985 movie version of the venerable board game Clue. Back on television, Mull has etched such indelible comic characterizations as Leon Carp, Roseanne Connor's gay boss, on Roseanne (1988- ), and the leading roles of Martin Crane in Domestic Life (1984) and Dr. Doug Lambert in His & Hers (1990). In collaboration with Allan Rucker, Martin Mull was the creator/writer of a devastating series of lampoonish "cultural studies" books and TV specials, under the blanket title The History of White People in America. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Filmography: Martin Mull
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Wikipedia: Martin Mull
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Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Wikipedia
 This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (February 2007)
Martin Mull

Performing at the Boarding House in San Francisco, 1976 Photo: David Gans
Born August 18, 1943 (1943-08-18) (age 66)
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Occupation Actor, Comedian, Painter, Musician
Years active 1972 – present
Spouse(s) Wendy Mull (1982-present)

Martin Mull (born August 18, 1943) is an American actor who has starred in his own television sitcom and acted in prominent films. He is also a comedian, painter, and recording artist. He is by nature a satirist and incorporates his comedic sense into all of his work.

Contents

Biography

Personal life

Mull was born in Chicago, Illinois, and raised in North Ridgeville, Ohio, from age 2 to 15 years old, when his family moved to New Canaan, Connecticut, where he attended and graduated from public high school.[1] He studied painting and went on to graduate from the Rhode Island School of Design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Master of Fine Arts in painting. Twice divorced, Mull is married to singer Wendy Mull.

Career

Following a period of stand-up comedy performances and humorous song recordings including opening for Frank Zappa at Austin's Armadillo World Headquarters in 1973, his first famous role was as twins Garth Gimble and Barth Gimble in the television nighttime absurdist soap opera Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976), which led to spin-off comedy talk shows Fernwood 2-Night (1977) and America 2-Night (1978), in which he played Barth Gimble as emcee, opposite Fred Willard as sidekick Jerry Hubbard. In one episode of The Golden Girls, he played a hippie who was afraid of the outside world. In the 1970s, he appeared in a series of Pizza Hut commercials dealing with various ways to eat a pizza.[citation needed] During 1984, Mull starred in a CBS sitcom, Domestic Life, with Megan Follows playing his teenaged daughter. He had a long-running role playing the boss of lead character Roseanne Conner on the TV series Roseanne. He has appeared as a guest on the game show Hollywood Squares, appearing as the center square in the show's final season. During 2008 and 2009, Mull guest starred in two episodes of the television series Gary Unmarried as Allison's father.[2]

A caricature of Martin Mull in front of Hollywood Hills Amphitheater at Walt Disney World's Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park.

He has acted in feature films, including:

Recurring roles followed on several television series:

During the 1980s, Mull starred in a series of television commercials for Michelob and in a series of television and radio commercials for Red Roof Inn (a chain of budget-oriented hotels owned at the time by Accor) during the mid-1990s. Mull voiced a lazy robot on one episode of the cartoon series Dexter's Laboratory, in which he has a rather clueless partner, voiced by Fred Willard. Mull voiced the role of The Evil Cad on Freakazoid! He has recently (2003-2007) done the voice of Vlad Masters/Vlad Plasmius on Danny Phantom.

In 1990, he guest starred in an episode of The Golden Girls.

In 1998, he guest starred in an episode of The Simpsons.

In late 2004, he portrayed "Gene Parmesan," a private investigator who was better at showing up in strange places in strange disguises than in actually finding anything out, on the Fox TV series Arrested Development. The episode was called "¡Amigos!".

Despite devoting himself full time to painting, Martin added many acting credits in 2008, including shows such as Family Man, Two and a Half Men, Law and Order: SVU, Gary Unmarried, The New Adventures of Old Christine, The Bonnie Hunt Show, and, in 2009, in the viral advert That's Not Fake.[3]

In the animated series Family Guy, the name of the elementary school is Martin Mull Elementary.

In a thinly-veiled reference to Mull, Ben Stein wrote the following:

July 26, 1977
The comedy variety show I have been working on is finished taping for a few months. I went to the "wrap party" last night at the Bistro restaurant, a fine and fancy place. A lot of my friends from the studio were there . . . .
After an hour, the star of the show appeared with his girl friend. He is a funny guy who used to sing at small nightclubs and colleges. He played a role on Mary Hartman and then he was killed off. I begged our studio head not to lose him and he was saved for his own show, partly at my pleading request. When we first met, he called me "Ben" and was always full of jokes and pleasantries. When he got on the air, he started calling me "Benny," when he did not pass me without a word. Last night, after he had made it big, he saw me and said, "Well, look who's here." It's a standard line for people when they can't remember someone's name.
That ruined the party, even though the Bistro does make pretty good cannelloni.[4]

Discography

  • Martin Mull (1972)
  • Martin Mull and His Fabulous Furniture In Your Living Room! (1973)
  • Normal (1974)
  • In The Soop With Martin Mull (1974)
  • Days Of Wine And Neuroses (1975)
  • I'm Everyone I've Ever Loved (1977)
  • No Hits, Four Errors- The Best Of Martin Mull (1977)
  • Sex and Violins (1978)
  • Near Perfect/Perfect (1979)
  • Mulling it Over- A Musical Ouvre-View of Martin Mull (1998)

Artworks

References

Text document with red question mark.svg
 This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (August 2007)
  1. ^ "Martin Mull". Patterson & Associates. http://www.pattersonandassociates.com/bios/Martin_Mull/index.html. Retrieved 2006-09-17. 
  2. ^ Google cached version of a futoncritic.com page on Gary Unmarried
  3. ^ "Trident Finds It Hard to Go Viral". Wall Street Journal. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123439670534574971.html. Retrieved 2009-03-13. 
  4. ^ Stein, Ben: Dreemz, 1978, Ballentine Books, (pg. 200) ISBN 0-345-28156-X.

External links

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Roseanne
Episodes
Main cast
Recurring cast
Characters

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