With a name like Martin Mull, you’re either going to be an ancillary comic-book villain’s sidekick or a character actor/comic with a dry, sharp wit and delivery. It’s a good thing, he chose the latter. The word “mull” is something that you ponder over with great thought. You don’t jump at a decision. And maybe’s that why Mull appeared in so many movies and TV shows, but he never was really a leading man.
He had about 150 acting credits to his name but he often looked like the type of sleazy yet mostly harmless neighbor or uncle who your parents didn’t want you spending much time around because you could develop bad manners, which was the title of one of his movies. Mull became known in the late 1970s on the soap opera satire Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman where he played twin brothers Garth and Barth Gimble. Garth, a domestic abuser, would eventually be killed off by being impaled on an aluminum tree.
And Barth would become the host of a late-night satire Fernwood 2 Night and its spin-off America 2 Night. But he began to gain more traction and become a household name, somewhat, thanks to roles as sleazy millionaire Ron Richardson in Mr. Mom who wants more out of Teri Garr’s character than her creative marketing ideas. He would also parlay that same form into Col. Mustard, the veteran of World War II, in the ensemble comedy classic Clue. Alongside comedy greats like Tim Curry, Madeline Kahn, Michael McKean and Christopher Lloyd, Mull balanced Mull between gullibility and braggadocio, trying to take lead of what’s going on. One of the funniest lines of the whole movie is how he tells Wadsworth (Curry) that he came into some money “when I lost my mommy and daddy.” This leads Wadsworth to do a beat and think did he really say, “mommy and daddy.”
(SPOILER ALERT!!! Mustard actually drops a hint early on to the identity of the killers. During the dinner, he quotes Rudyard Kipling by saying, “The female of the species is deadlier than the male.” In the first scenario, it’s Miss Scarlet (Leslie Ann Warren) and the maid, Yvette (Colleen Camp) who are the killers. In the second scenario, it’s Mrs. Peacock (Eileen Brennan). In the third and actual scenario, it’s all the main characters with the exception of Mr. Green (McKean), who is an undercover FBI agent. Thus the majority of the murders are committed by the woman characters.)
Mull would later reunite with his Clue co-star Leslie Ann Warren on the final season of Community as they were the parents of series regular Britta Perry (Gillian Jacobs). This was an in-joke as Mustard and Warren’s Miss Scarlet didn’t like each other when they were paired up to search a section of the mansion in the movie. For the most part, Mull became more known for his abilities to pop up on screen in a few episodes of famous shows like Arrested Development, Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Two and a Half Men and steal the scene from the regulars. He was nominated for an Emmy for Guest Starring on VEEP.
Even in movies through the 1990s and 2000s, he often was cast in supporting roles. He played alongside a young Brad Pitt in the slasher thriller Cutting Class where his character of the District Attorney gets wounded while hunting and spends a whole week trying to get help as he makes his way back home. It provided a little dark humor to the movie and a mystery of whether Pitt or actor Donovan Leitch is the killer. He had supporting roles in Mrs. Doubtfire and Jingle All the Way or played the bad guys in irreverent comedies like Bad Manners and Ski Patrol.
One of his few leading roles is in the atrociously bad Rented Lips, which he wrote, and was directed by Robert Downey Sr. also featured the younger Downey wearing a Nazi uniform and a G-string. But probably one of his most groundbreaking roles, at the time, was as Leon Carp, who played the manager of Rodbell’s Luncheonette, where Roseanne Conner (Roseanne Barr) worked for a time on the sitcom, Roseanne. Leon was gay and often went on dates with other men as Roseanne and others would just say, “Oh.” as they processed it.
At first Leon and Roseanne butted heads because he was more in tune with treating the customer with utmost respect and doing everything by the book. This came into contrast with Roseanne’s way of doing things as he might be short with the customers or look to cut corners. Leon would go on to work with Roseanne when she began her own diner. He would be a consultant on the show and write as well. Eventually, Mull’s Fernwood 2 Night co-star Fred Willard would be brought in later in the series’ initial run to be Leon’s former boyfriend, Scott, an attorney, who returns to the town and rekindles the romance.
But the sexuality of Leon wasn’t used as a joke. It was often his attitude and demeanor toward Roseanne and hers to him that was mostly used as the jokes. Despite how Barr behaves now, the show in the 1990s was known for his progressiveness by introducing gay characters who became welcomed by The Conners. (Although I think making Roseanne’s mom played by Estelle Parsons also gay was sloppy writing as it seems they ran out of ideas.)
Mull died on June 27 reportedly from a long illness. His last film role was Doug Kenney, the co-founder of National Lampoon magazine, in the biopic A Futile and Stupid Gesture. The role was meant as a parody on biopics as Mull played the much older Kenney opposed to Will Forte, who played him as a younger man. In real life, Kenney would die from a fall off a cliff in Hawai’i. His death has been controversial as some people think he committed suicide as Kenney was depressed following the initial negative response to Caddyshack. Others have speculated as Kenney was known to take a lot of drugs, including cocaine, it might have caused him to get to close to the edge and he fell.
While I understood what the filmmakers were doing by making Mull the older Kenney and also narrator, the movie as a whole wasn’t that good. A Futile and Stupid Gesture came out in 2018 and Mull continued to work in TV until 2023 as his last role was on the Apple-Plus TV show The Afterparty.
Mull was 80 at the time of his death.
What is your favorite role of his? Please comment.
Zane Says 