RIP Martin Mull

 

Martin Mull Dies: ‘Clue’ & ‘Roseanne’ Star Was 80

DEADLINE

By Peter White

June 28, 2024

 

Martin Mull, who played Colonel Mustard in Clue, Roseanne’s boss Leon Carp in the ABC comedy Roseanne and starred with Fred Willard 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.

“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.

Mull broke into acting with his role in Norman 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 Barth 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.

“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 Barth became Garth, 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.”

He 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..

Mull’s dozens of TV credits are included recurring as the goofy detective Gene Parmesan on Arrested Development and a guest turn 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’s The Afterparty.

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.

MULL, Martin (Martin Eugene Mull)

Born: 8/18/1943, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.

Died: 6/27/2024, 

Martin Mull's westerns - actor:

Tall Tales & Legends (TV) - 1986 (Governor Ambrose Peasley)

How the West Was Fun - 1994 (Bart Gafooley)

The Ranch (TV) - 2016-2020 (Jerry)