Martin Mull

Mull was born in Chicago, the son of Betty Mull, an actress and director, and Harold Mull, an acoustics engineer.^[3] He moved with his family to North Ridgeville, Ohio, when he was two years old.^[1] They lived there until he was 15 years old when his family moved to New Canaan, Connecticut. He attended and graduated from New Canaan High School.^[4] Mull studied painting and graduated in 1965 from the Rhode Island School of Design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts; in 1967, he earned a Master of Fine Arts in painting, also from RISD.^[5]

Mull broke into show business as a songwriter, penning Jane Morgan's 1970 country single, "A Girl Named Johnny Cash", which peaked at No. 61 on Billboard's country charts. Shortly thereafter, he began his own recording career.^[6]

Throughout the 1970s, and especially in the first half of the decade, Mull was best known as a musical comedian, performing satirical and humorous songs both live and in studio recordings. Rather than use the stage trappings of most musical acts, Mull decorated his stage with comfortable thrift store furniture.^[7] Notable live gigs included opening for Randy Newman and Sandy Denny at Boston Symphony Hall in 1973,^[8] Frank Zappa at Austin's Armadillo World Headquarters in 1973, Billy Joel in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania in 1974; and for Bruce Springsteen at the Shady Grove Music Fair in Gaithersburg, Maryland in October 1974. His self-titled debut album, released by Capricorn in 1972, featured many noteworthy musicians including Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Levon Helm from The Band, Keith Spring of NRBQ, Jack Bone,^[9] and Libby Titus.^[10]

Elvis Costello and Gary Sperrazza attribute the remark "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture" to Martin Mull.^[11][12]

Mull's first well-known acting role was as Garth Gimble in the 1976 television nighttime absurdist soap opera Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. That led to work in the spin-off talk show parodies Fernwood 2 Night (1977) and America 2 Night (1978), in which he played talk show host Barth Gimble (Garth's twin brother), opposite Fred Willard, as sidekick and announcer Jerry Hubbard. Mull appeared as the neurotic, libidinous disc jockey Eric Swan in the 1978 movie FM, his feature film debut. In 1979, Mull appeared in the Taxi episode Hollywood Calling. He created, wrote, and starred in the short-lived 1984 CBS sitcom Domestic Life, with Megan Follows playing his teenaged daughter.

During the 1980s, Mull played supporting roles in the films Mr. Mom (1983) and Clue (1985), and had a rare lead role in Serial (1980). In 1985, he co-created and starred in The History of White People in America—the Associated Press said the mockumentary was "what many thought was his best work".^[13] He also starred in a series of commercials for Michelob and Pizza Hut, and in a series of television and radio commercials for Red Roof Inn with Willard. He appeared in the 1986 Pecos Bill episode of the Shelley Duvall TV series Tall Tales & Legends. In a 1990 episode of The Golden Girls, he played a hippie who was afraid of the outside world.

Mull had a long-running role from 1991 to 1997 as Leon Carp, Roseanne Conner's gay boss (and later business partner) on the TV series Roseanne. From 1997 to 2000, he played Willard Kraft on the show Sabrina the Teenage Witch; he was Sabrina Spellman's high school's vice-principal in seasons 2 and 3 and her high school's principal in season 4. Mull appeared as a guest star on the game show Hollywood Squares, appearing as the center square in the show's final season, from 2003 to 2004. He did the voice of Vlad Masters / Vlad Plasmius, the main villain in Danny Phantom from 2004 to 2007.

 

In late 2004 and in 2013's Netflix-produced Season 4 of Arrested Development, Mull portrayed Gene Parmesan, a private investigator.^[14] From 2008 to 2013, he had a recurring role on the show Two and a Half Men as Russell, a humorous drug-using and selling pharmacist. During 2008 and 2009, Mull guest starred in two episodes of the television series Gary Unmarried, as Allison's father.^[15] In 2015, he appeared in two episodes of the TV series Community as George Perry, the father of Britta Perry. He also starred in the Fox television sitcoms Dads (2013-14) and The Cool Kids (2018-19), the latter with David Alan Grier, Vicki Lawrence, and Leslie Jordan. In 2016, Mull appeared as guest star in the satirical TV series Veep, a role that earned him an Emmy nomination.^[16] His later credits included The Ranch, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and Bob's Burgers.

Mull began painting in the 1970s, and his work has appeared in group and solo exhibits. He participated in the June 15, 1971 exhibit "Flush with the Walls" in the men's room of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts to protest the lack of contemporary and local art in the museum.^[17] His first serious one-person exhibition was held in 1980 at the Molly Barnes Gallery in Los Angeles and was credited by artist Mark Kostabi as instrumental in launching his own career because of "Mull's simultaneous embrace of humor and gravitas in visual art." His work often combined photorealist painting, and the pop art and collage styles.^[18] He published a book of some of his paintings, titled Paintings Drawings and Words, in 1995. One of his paintings was used on the cover for the 2008 Joyce Carol Oates novel My Sister, My Love.^[19] Another one of his paintings, titled After Dinner Drinks (2008), which is owned by Steve Martin, was used for the cover of Love Has Come for You, an album by Martin and Edie Brickell.^[20]

Mull was divorced twice and then married singer Wendy Haas. Mull and Haas had a daughter, Maggie,^[21][22][23] who as of 2021 is a co-executive producer for Family Guy. In a 2010 interview on The Green Room with Paul Provenza, Mull said that he was agnostic:

I certainly don't begrudge someone else their choice to follow whatever they do, it's just for me, it doesn't make a lot of sense. I think more harm has come to this planet through organized religion, probably, than any single situation that we've invented.^[24]

Mull died from a long illness at his Los Angeles home on June 27, 2024, at the age of 80.^[25][26][27]

• Martin Mull (1972)
• "Dueling Tubas" (single) charted at #92 on Billboard's Hot 100 (1973); #87 in Canada;^[33] #70 in Canada AC^[34]
• Martin Mull and His Fabulous Furniture in Your Living Room! (1973)
• Normal (1974)
• In the Soop with Martin Mull (with Ed Wise and Les Daniels, recorded in 1967, released in 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 & Violins (1978)
• Near Perfect/Perfect (1979)
• Mulling It Over – A Musical Ouvre-View of Martin Mull (1998)

• Martin Mull at the American Film Institute Catalog
• Martin Mull at IMDb  
• Martin Mull at the TCM Movie Database
• Martin Mull on Artnet
• Martin Mull discography at Discogs