Martin Mull
Martin Mull is an actor, born 1943.
Martin Mull was a painter and a musician as well as an actor, and the comedy always sounded like it came from a man with other work to go back to. He was born in Chicago in 1943 and made his name in the mid-1970s on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, the soap parody where he is credited as both Garth and Barth Gimble, and then in its spin-offs Fernwood 2 Night and America 2 Night.
The Mull effect is a man being completely calm about something insane, delivered in a mild, faintly pleased voice that never rises. Colonel Mustard in Clue is played as genuinely aggrieved rather than broad, which is why he survives a film full of people mugging. Gene Parmesan on Arrested Development is a bit part built on disguises that fool nobody, quoted more than most series leads. Vlad Masters on Danny Phantom is a supervillain who sounds like a man complaining about a country club.
The long middle of the career was American sitcoms, where he was the definitive smug neighbour or exasperating boss: Leon Carp on Roseanne, Willard Kraft on Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Russell the pharmacist on Two and a Half Men, plus film work in Mr. Mom, Mrs. Doubtfire and Jingle All the Way. He rarely carried anything and never seemed to want to.
He kept working almost to the end, with parts on The Ranch, Life in Pieces, The Cool Kids, The Afterparty and Not Dead Yet, and died in 2024. Deadpan is the word that attaches to him, and it is right, though it undersells how warm he could make it.
Movies (20)
- Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)
- Clue (1985)
- Jingle All the Way (1996)
- Killers (2010)
- Private School (1983)
- Mr. Mom (1983)
- Miracle Beach (1992)
- Cutting Class (1989)
- My Bodyguard (1980)
- A Futile and Stupid Gesture (2018)
- 2Everything2Terrible2: Tokyo Drift (2010)
- Relative Strangers (2006)
- Ted & Venus (1991)
- Richie Rich's Christmas Wish (1998)
- Edie & Pen (1996)
- FM (1978)
- Ski Patrol (1990)
- The Boss' Wife (1986)
- Think Big (1989)
- Portrait of a White Marriage (1988)
TV (42)
- The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962)
- Two and a Half Men (2003)
- Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (1996)
- Dexter's Laboratory (1996)
- Hollywood Squares (1998)
- Arrested Development (2003)
- Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976)
- Danny Phantom (2004)
- Life in Pieces (2015)
- America's Funniest Home Videos (1989)
- Reba (2001)
- 'Til Death (2006)
- The Ranch (2016)
- The Afterparty (2022)
- The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn (1999)
- The War at Home (2005)
- Not Dead Yet (2023)
- Eastwick (2009)
- Life with Bonnie (2002)
- Gary Unmarried (2008)
- Inside Comedy (2012)
- Tall Tales & Legends (1985)
- My Boys (2006)
- TV 101 (1988)
- The Cool Kids (2018)
- Roseanne (1988)
- America 2-Night (1978)
- Maggie (2022)
- Fernwood 2 Night (1977)
- The Jackie Thomas Show (1992)
Where to start with Martin Mull
Put on Clue. It is one of the few farces where the entire ensemble is playing the same game, and Mull's Colonel Mustard is the funniest thing in it because he alone plays the man as stupid and dignified at once.
Television is where the volume is. Arrested Development gives him the smallest and most quotable of his parts. Roseanne gave him Leon Carp, a mainstream sitcom role for a gay character played without a wink, and he is genuinely good in it. Sabrina, the Teenage Witch and Two and a Half Men are the workhorse jobs.
For the voice, Danny Phantom is the one, a villain performance with real relish. Mr. Mom is the best of the early films, and The Afterparty is the sharpest of the late ones. Anyone who wants the origin should look for Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, which is stranger than anything he did afterwards.
The Fernwood years
Where he was invented. Mary Hartman gave him two brothers to play and the talk-show parodies that followed are still the sharpest thing he did, a fake local chat show performed with total commitment and no wink at the camera.
The sitcom decades
Forty years of being the driest man in the ensemble. Leon on Roseanne was quietly important television, Willard Kraft is the one a generation of children knows, and Gene Parmesan is a two-minute part people still shout about.
The films and the voice work
Colonel Mustard in Clue is exactly the register he was built for, and the film has only grown since it flopped. The eighties comedies use him as the smug neighbour, and Vlad Plasmius is the best of the cartoon work.